Interview #1 - Samuele Mazzolini About Populism in Europe and The Americas - POP - Political Observer On Populism

Interview #1 Samuele Mazzolini about Populism in Europe and the Americas POP Political Obse...
1 de 11
http://populismobserver.com/2015/04/10/interview-1-samuele-mazzolini-about-populism-in-europe-an...
POPPoliticalObserveronPopulism
06/02/2016 10:54
2 de 11
Interview#1SamueleMazzoliniaboutPopulisminEuropeand
theAmericas
This is the first of many interviews that POP will propose in the next months. Scholars, journalists, politicians and experts will answer timing questions about the nature and development of
populism. For this first interview, we have Samuele Mazzolini. He is a PhD candidate in Ideology
and Discourse Analysis at the University of Essex. His research focuses on the declining hegemony of the Italian Left, read through the lenses of post-Marxist discourse theory. He is also interested in Latin American and European left-wing populism. He previously worked for the
Ecuadorian government and is now a regular columnist of the state-owned daily newspaper El
Telgrafo. He is also a blogger for the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.
Samuele Mazzolini
Ernesto Laclau, according to The Guardian, became the

intellectual figurehead of Syriza and Podemos. This ideological marriage could signal that populism is finally losing its negative connotation?
I am not entirely sure that the notion of populism is getting rid
of its pejorative connotation, but that doesnt mean that populist logics are not gaining currency in some sectors of the European Left. In fact, if you look at Podemos and Syriza, they
tend not to be too explicit on the fact that their political practices are quintessentially populist. In the case of Syriza,
they explicitly refuse that label, for two reasons: on one hand, the term is highly discredited, while on the other, not the
06/02/2016 10:54
3 de 11
whole party would be happy with that denomination. Podemos

is more open about it, but I wouldnt say that they use populist as a primary self-definition, this is normally a theme deFrom hightowerlowdown.org
veloped in certain speeches by igo Errejn, its Political Secretary, when he addresses particular audiences.
However, what you are saying between the lines is correct: the Left is ever more eager to embrace the populist path,
even though this is not always expressly acknowledged. Nevertheless, the process is not ubiquitous: while in Latin America populism is widely accepted and internalised within the Left, in Europe this is not so, and we may speak of Spain and
Greece as interesting laboratories in this sense: they are experimenting with a political logic that was once considered
and to an extent still is as a taboo. In Italy instead, this possibility is still quite remote: suffice it to consider the attitude that the bulk of the Left has displayed towards the Five Stars Movement of Beppe Grillo. I am not saying that Grillo
is a panacea far from it but the Left failed to recognise some of the promising elements of that rhetoric.
Whether populism can be considered democratic or not depends on the single case we are talking about. Populism in
and for itself, is not indicative of the ideological orientation: rather, it is a way of constructing politics. Here of
course I am referring to the notion elaborated by Ernesto Laclau, which is a minimalist notion. In his view, populism is a
logic by which the social is divided in antagonistic poles, the people vs the elites. However, the people is the product of a
rhetorical construction, which articulates heterogeneous democratic demands that at a given moment are expressed in
society. You can have populisms that harbour authoritarian temptations, but you can have fully democratic populisms too
Is populism beyond the old-fashioned right-left divide? Or does it
head where there is greater room for consensus?
This is a difficult question, because it could be answered at different levels,
and in my case I have different answers according to the level of abstraction. At an analytical level, I think the divide by and large still holds and can be used as a fairly good interpretative tool
to understand current political events. Basically, what you have is a set of broad ideals and values, and what tells one
06/02/2016 10:54
4 de 11
political project apart from another is the degree of approximation to, or the
type of incarnation of, such values. So, while populism tells about the form,
the Left-Right divide tells you about the normative aspects of a political
practice. In this way, you can have right-wing, left-wing, radical centrist
populisms.
At a political level, it is a different story. Let us focus on the Left. Here, it is
important to grasp the progressive disjunction between the signifier and
the signified. In many countries, the Left has become the signifier of phenomena quite at odds from what it originally stood for. The Left has become
From activistpost.com
associated with inefficiency, authoritarianism, anachronism, fragmentation, irresoluteness, and so on. These associations may be unwarranted in some cases, but they shape the collective
imaginary. Is the leftist symbolic heritage any promising for an emancipatory politics that aspires to be hegemonic? In
the contexts where the Left is highly discredited, anchoring your politics exclusively or prevalently on a leftist identity
becomes a liability rather than an asset. People dont vote you simply because you say you are a true leftist. Populism
gives the possibility to derange the classical political entrenchment, so in a sense it goes beyond Left and Right. You still
have populists that openly declare themselves of the left, like in Latin America and Greece, but being of the left is
not what made them hegemonic. Populism proactively puts together different identifications and pits them against the
oligarchy. This process actually transforms the very identifications that are articulated. So, you have people who always
voted on the Right that are all of a sudden enticed by a discourse that powerfully indicts bankers for their financial misdeeds. In the process of mingling with new constituencies and ideas, they entirely undergo a review of their credos. Thats why in politics we have identifications, which are unstable and reversible, rather than fixed identities. This
of course goes well beyond electoral politics. This is what Antonio Gramsci called hegemony.
You interviewed igo Errejn, one of Podemoss key strategists, who studied Bolivian populism and declared in several occasions to get inspiration from Ernesto Laclau. igo Errejn told
you that Podemos wants to aggregate the people as opposed to the elites, which is a typically populist element. My question is: once in power, how does a populist party can evolve? More precisely: once it represents
06/02/2016 10:54
5 de 11
the political elite, who remain to be blamed?

A populist party necessarily goes through a degree of institutionalization once in power. However, this observation does not amount to saying that the evolution of a populist party in power is always the same,
or that it necessarily gets co-opted by the existing regime. Many fac-
Iglesias with igo Errejn. From periodistadigital.com
tors influence its evolution.

One of the risks for a populist party is that of falling prey of its own rhetoric. This happens when a populist party stays in
power for a long time and presides over some considerable structural changes, as in the case of the Latin American populist projects. The Ecuadorian context is the one I know the most. What you have there is a considerable leap forward in
terms of social progress, with great strides in the fields of poverty and inequalities reduction, infrastructural modernisation of the country, sovereignty recapture just to mention a few. A stunning political U-turn in less than a decade.
However, the society that the very government of President Rafael Correa
contributed to change has now developed new demands and scenarios.
The current situation requires an innovation of the terms of the discourse,
which is something that hasnt been done. The Citizens Revolution is
losing constituencies as new challenges make for new social grievances
that the government finds increasingly hard to articulate. In particular,
holding together this new historic bloc proves to be difficult by maintainPresident Rafael Correa. From theguardian.com
ing the same old litany. Such a discursive fixity is mainly due to the fact
that the project is over-reliant on a single figure, the figure of the leader,
to the point that a worrisome cult of the personality has developed. In
Ecuador, Correa is the main opponent of many innovations that would bring some badly needed oxygen to the project. It
is ironic because he has been the indispensible catalyst of this political experience, and now represents, in my opinion,
its main encumbrance. Populisms may display tendencies like this and in the Latin American context the political culture of caudillismo doesnt help in this sense -, but I wouldnt say it is a defining feature of populism.
06/02/2016 10:54
6 de 11
As for who remains to be blamed, that is normally the economic elites. We shouldnt lose sight that populisms are often
chiefly addressed at them. While the old political elites are to a great degree normally swept away once a populist
project takes hold (even though bureaucracies stay and they tend to be quite recalcitrant to social transformation to
the point of actively boycotting it in many cases), economic elites are harder to combat. So I am not saying that they remain to be blamed only instrumentally: if a populist party is genuinely to carry out structural reforms, economic
elites will systematically sabotage and threaten it. This in turn is what typically generates an anti-democratic environment, which goes hand in hand with the personalist tendency outlined earlier; when you are facing the open challenge of powerful actors, internal discussion and deliberation in the popular camp are seen as superfluous and even
harmful. This easy temptation to dismiss all criticism as dangerous and flirtatious with the Right should of course be
fought at all costs.
Syriza is another example of left-wing populism in Europe, with a remarkable distinction: it is already in
power. Will they be able to avoid the Greek bail out? If this will be the case, will they be able to maintain their
identity despite the alliance with the conservative party ANEL?
Nobody can even remotely predict what will happen with Syriza and Greece. It is a situation with so many variables that
not even the most mechanistic social scientist would dare to make a prediction. What I can say however is that much of
what will happen is intimately linked to the discussion on the Euro that is going within Syriza. I am not particularly keen
on the positions defended by the Finance Minister Varoufakis: I find it quite foolish to sit at the table with European
technocrats without any ace up your sleeve. The only valuable card that the Greeks have at their disposal is the exit
from the Eurozone and they should fully play it in the negotiations. Varoufakis position doesnt even remotely contemplate exiting the Eurozone, but this is the only way for Tsipras to honour the electoral promise enshrined in the Thessaloniki Programme. We have already seen that insisting on Greek sovereignty doesnt do the trick and that the Troika
does not hesitate to provoke liquidity and financial shortages if the Greek government doesnt comply with austerity
measures. If the Euro-threat fails to achieve a debt renegotiation and the Memorandum is not scrapped, exiting the
Euro for real will still be better than remaining in it, as the mad neoliberal fundamentalism of the German-led alliance is
driving the country to social and economic disaster. In this sense, I think Tsipras should pay attention to what Syriza MP
Costas Lapavitsas, a distinguished economics Professor at SOAS, proposes.
06/02/2016 10:54
7 de 11
As for the alliance with ANEL, I dont find it particularly problematic. The situation was straightforward: Syriza fell short
of an outright majority of just a few MPs. It received a mandate thanks to a major electoral promise: ending austerity. A
government without a stable majority was impossible. ANEL was the only party available to make an anti-austerity
alliance. They had to do it. And its not like ANEL is a proto-fascist party: its a conservative party, wary of big business
and quite nationalist. Far from ideal, but if you are not pragmatic in politics, you end up in the fringes. I think it will be
ANELs supporters that may struggle to maintain their identity in the end.
What distinguishes Podemos and Syriza from the other
parties in Spain and Greece? And, in turn, which are the
peculiarities of the two parties when compared among
them?
Podemos and Syriza articulate a political will of rupture, which
openly confronts the current economic and political system in
Europe, and they do so by advancing a discourse that cannot
be equated to that of other post or neo-communist parties,
Tsipras and Iglesais. From jacobinmag.com
whose capacity to have bearing on public discourse is practically close to nothing.
They no doubt have differences however: Syriza was founded as a coalition of left-wing parties and movements, and its
working still mirrors this composition. Podemos instead is a different type of creature, created precisely out of the dissatisfaction with contemporary radical politics. Their diverse historic origin is reflected in a crucial difference between
the two: while Syriza openly identifies itself as a left-wing force (which is enshrined in its name, after all), Podemos says
to be beyond Left and Right. But thats for the reasons I mentioned earlier.
Does it make sense to talk of populism 2.0? In other words,
would populism be the same without the Web?
I think populism is an intrinsic aspect of politics, so populism is not parasitic upon the Web. Populism is best captured
06/02/2016 10:54
8 de 11
when referring to what Laclau and Mouffe call the logics of equivalence and difference. The former simplify the political space constructing us-them antagonistic relations between elements. The latter instead maintains the elements distinct and autonomous. By so
doing, the political space is rendered more complex.
Constructing a political identity is essentially a combination of these two
movements. When the logics of equivalence prevail, you lean towards pop-
From martenscentre.eu
ulism, when the logics of difference

do, you are closer to institutionalism. This framework rests upon a political ontology
whereby society doesnt have fixed political identities or a fixed destiny, but is fundamentally the product of rhetorical operations. When certain narratives manage to have
the upper hand, then you can talk of hegemony.
The Web instead is the main tool through which these signifying logics are nowadays
conveyed by certain projects, as it was in the case of commercial TV with Berlusconis
tele-populism. The Web brings folklore of its own, but I wouldnt say that populism
Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau.
would be a completely different story without the Web.
From http://www.lanacion.com.ar
Which are, in your opinion, the factors that contribute most to the success of
populist parties in Europe? Is it only the role of the economic crisis or something is changing more deeply?
Let me firstly be clear on this distinction: by shattering existing symbolic configurations, economic crises may lead to
political change, but not always. In other words, there is no in-built mechanism by which economic crises beyond a
certain threshold of hardship produce revolution or a redeeming populism. Discontent can always be re-absorbed
rhetorically and materially: this is what has happened by and large in Europe so far. Nevertheless, crises expose the contingency of hegemonic social relations, making the situation ripe for new projects to present a challenge to power hold-
06/02/2016 10:54
9 de 11
ers in the name of new norms and values. This is what has happened in Greece and could happen in Spain: but it takes
smart political forces to take advantage of the situation.
On the one hand, the economic crisis in Europe has been shaking many foundations of the current axiological system. On the other, however, I dont think its just the economic crisis, but also the transition from Fordism to
post-Fordism that is becoming ever more evident and difficult to bear. The development of what Guy Standing calls the
precariat is a reality which exposes young people to perpetual labour uncertainty. I would say that the vote for Podemos
mainly comes from impoverished middle-class young people, whose possibilities to have a life as decent as that of their
parents are shrinking below their eyes.
Why the success of populist parties is not a homogeneous phenomenon across countries? Could it be linked to
a specific national culture and a certain idea of how power should be exercised?
As I said, populism has a chance to arise when the contingency of symbolic systems is exposed, but of course there can
be structural limitations, such as institutional barriers (like the electoral system), cultures averse to dichotomising discourses, and so on. These obstacles can at times be overcome: who would have thought some 10 years ago that a populist party like UKIP could have thrived in a place like England? Now, populist parties are spreading in many different
places in Europe, except they are sometimes right-wing parties, and as such they carry dangerous ideas. The chief enemy for them is not the banker, but the poor immigrant. It is a populism that pits the poor against the poorest. It
lacks any kind of serious social and economic analysis and, as a result of that, it isnt equipped with any tool to intervene. As such, it is a populism that needs to be rejected and disowned.
I see the potential risk for populism to confuse two concepts: the people
and the state. Typically, this is an element of chaos introduced on purpose
by totalitarian regimes. Can populism avoid nationalism and totalitarianism?
Populism may display organisational and discursive features that have impingements upon democracy that contradict
the ethical thrust that a leftist political project should carry. The ethical thrust has to do with the recognition of soci-
06/02/2016 10:54
10 de 11
etys openness and non-closure. Quoting Claude Lefort, power should always be
seen as a fundamentally empty space, and its filling only as a contingent and
temporary act called hegemony. Chantal Mouffe has enshrined these notions in her
agonistic model, whereby the political Other is not to be perceived as an enemy to
destroy, but rather as an adversary whose right to propagate his ideas is not even
remotely put into question. Articulating a democratic populism that pays heed to
pluralism is a fundamental challenge of contemporary Left.
From twitter.com
More
Be the first to like this.
Interview #6 - Swiss populism and direct
Interview #5 - Ruth Wodak: The Politics of
To the left, to the left: Jeremy Corbyn and the
democracy. A talk with Laurent Bernhard.
Fear. What Right-Wing Populist Discourses

Mean
British return to left-wing populism
06/02/2016 10:54
11 de 11
April 10, 2015 lucamanucci Europe, Grillo, Podemos, Populism, Syriza ANEL, igo Errejn, Berlusconi, Europe, Grillo, Laclau, Mouffe,
Podemos, populism, Populism 2.0, Syriza, Tsipras, UKIP, Varoufakis
OnethoughtonInterview#1SamueleMazzoliniaboutPopulisminEuropeandtheAmericas
Pingback: Il populismo di Ernesto Laclau
The Twenty Fifteen Theme. Blog at WordPress.com.
06/02/2016 10:54

Interview #1 - Samuele Mazzolini About Populism in Europe and The Americas - POP - Political Observer On Populism

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Interview #1 - Samuele Mazzolini About Populism in Europe and The Americas - POP - Political Observer On Populism

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Interview #1 Samuele Mazzolini about Populism in Europe and the Americas POP Political Obse...

Ernesto Laclau, according to The Guardian, became the

whole party would be happy with that denomination. Podemos

the political elite, who remain to be blamed?

Iglesias with igo Errejn. From periodistadigital.com

tors influence its evolution.

whose capacity to have bearing on public discourse is practically close to nothing.

ulism, when the logics of difference

would be a completely different story without the Web.

Be the first to like this.

Interview #6 - Swiss populism and direct

Interview #5 - Ruth Wodak: The Politics of

To the left, to the left: Jeremy Corbyn and the

democracy. A talk with Laurent Bernhard.

Fear. What Right-Wing Populist Discourses

British return to left-wing populism

Pingback: Il populismo di Ernesto Laclau

The Twenty Fifteen Theme. Blog at WordPress.com.

You might also like