Tocqueville Fellows Blog by Jack Buss: A Folktale Hero?

By Jack Buss

Hailing from Plymouth, Michigan, Jack Buss is a member of Furman’s Class of 2027 and a Tocqueville Fellow. He is double-majoring in Politics and International Affairs and Economics.

Understanding the Rise of Populism: Insights from “Populism in America”

There has been an undeniable rise in populism around the world in the recent decade, and many intellectuals have offered convincing explanations for what “populism” actually means, how it arises, how it works, and how to combat it. Dr. Jan-Werner Mueller, Dr. Pippa Norris, and Dr. Eric Kaufmann are three such intellectuals who all proposed brilliant and comprehensive theories during their recent lectures for “Populism in America” at Furman which diagnosed the causes and methods for populism’s recent resurgence.

I found Dr. Mueller’s description of populism—a system of strategies meant to rally supporters to gain power—to be a refreshing refocus away from populism’s loose use as a catch-all term to describe politicians a person does not like. Dr. Norris and Dr. Kaufmann then added descriptions of the underlying causes of people’s attraction to populist leaders—specifically their treatment of cultural “threats” and immigration policy—completing a model that accurately describes the progression of populism in many countries around the world today.

However, those intellectual explanations of populism do not fully answer a question that I have had since Trump’s rise to the presidency: why do people love populists so fiercely and loyally? What emotional connection prompts people to turn the mugshots and indictments of their populist leaders into something idealistic, even while there are other leaders who could serve their interests better?

Beyond Strategy: The Emotional Loyalty to Populist Leaders

Dr. Mueller argued that populist leaders must create a narrative in which they are the only true voice of the people as the person who can represent and solve their grievances best; perhaps the people create their own internal narrative in response, one in which they found not just their voice but also their hero. I argue people find three “heroes” in one in their populist leader, each of which solves a particular kind of need they have: a populist is simultaneously a watchdog protecting them from their fears, an advocate getting recompense for their hurt, and a champion fighting for a solution to their grievances.

Taken as a whole, the people have a folktale hero who is always fighting for them against a tide of opposition, engendering intense loyalty and sometimes near-blind faith in a mythic savior.

The Watchdog: Fear and the Creation of “The People”

Fear, particularly fear of others, is what allows populist leaders to create the definition of “the people” that Dr. Mueller said is characteristic of populism. This definition of “the people” is purposely exclusive, relying on a few distinguishing traits as markers to then distinguish the “true people,” who the populist represents, from “the others,” who are somehow a threat to the “true people” because of an absence of those traits.

In a majority of circumstances, the “others” are invading a space previously reserved for the “true people,” and whether that is an invasion of a country through immigration (Dr. Kaufmann’s explanation) or an invasion of culture by other identities or ideas (Dr. Norris’ explanation), the populist “hero” stands guard at the gates of the space and makes his people feel safe from the threat outside.

Sometimes populist leaders use physical means to keep their “true people” safe, like Trump did when he tried to build his wall or like Xi Jinping when he put the Uyghurs in concentration camps in Xinjiang. However, the watchdog can only get to that point if he first barks about immigrants as criminals or in some way “others” them, tactics that are shared among populists around the world.

The Advocate: Resentment and Recompense

The next step in Dr. Mueller’s populist playbook is to discredit potentially adversarial actors as not speaking for the people, many of whom are often either politicians or academics.

To the populist’s base of support, however, this is not discrediting those who disagree with the populist, this is getting recompense for those who looked down upon them or their ideas, making the populist an advocate for a kind of karmic justice for the “true people.”

I have seen this feeling of being looked down upon even from members of my own extended family, who see places like colleges as full of academics who cannot understand them and who think that they are better than them. Thus, when they hear a populist try to discredit the same “elites” they have felt slighted by, they are only too happy to have an advocate on their side. Eventually, the people take attacks against their advocate as attacks against themselves, thus participating in the discrediting of institutions like the “media” or the other politicians that they perceive are slighting them both.

The Champion: Cultural Grievances and Survival

However, the “true people” are not primarily fueled by feelings of hurt or being looked down upon; they are fueled by political grievances, the solution to which requires someone who is willing to fight for those grievances—a champion.

As Dr. Norris mentioned in her lecture, those grievances could be economic, whether they be concerns about the changing outlook of the economy for working-class people or concerns about the allocation of tax dollars for higher-income people, but more often the truly potent grievances are cultural in nature.

It is in the sphere of cultural issues that the “true people” feel a sense of attack from the “elites” or encroachment from the “others” most acutely, because a perceived attack on their cultural values is an attack on their very identity. Thus, they welcome a champion who will strike back at the “elites” in a defensive war for their very survival, and since they are in a war, their champion can use wartime tactics for their greater good.

The populist’s hallmark tactics of subversion of the rule of law and demolition of institutions, then, are not attacks on democratic norms but an unfortunate bending of the rules in their champion’s justified counter-strike against those who either broke the rules first or do not deserve for those rules to apply in the first place.

The populist’s wartime rhetoric paints the other side, who their supporters might have otherwise tried to negotiate with under different circumstances, as an enemy to be “owned” and defeated, engendering a heightened sense of fear of those different than the “true people” and a heightened loyalty to the fearless leader protecting them.

Folktale Heroism and Populist Loyalty

Of course, this basic narrative structure of populism is far less statistically or theoretically useful than the one that Dr. Mueller, Dr. Norris, and Dr. Kaufmann presented during their lectures. Yet even with their analysis of how the strategies of populism play on specific grievances of specific groups of people, their continued commitment to their populist leader, even after being faced with his mug shots, is a sign of an emotional and parasocial attachment that can only be described as idolization.

That sort of feeling cannot only be created by rational calculation: it involves a narrative that populists and their supporters create together. The populists create an image of themselves as an almost savior-like folk hero, and the people give their “hero” an enemy “other” to fear and fight, both depending on each other for the continuation of the narrative.

No other narrative matters in the end, only that of a people who found themselves in dark times and a folktale hero who will lead them into the light.