THOMAS FRANK
People without power. A Brief History of Antipopulism
trans.: Antonis Galanopoulos
Foreword: Yannis Stavrakakis
ed.. Ekremes, 2022, p. 336

In recent years, we have frequently coined new meanings for certain words or coined new terms to fit our changing political and economic conditions. Simple words like judgment, memorandum, flexibility, supervision, guardianship have taken on new dimensions and new meanings. In the book “People without power. A Brief History of Anti-Populism”, Thomas Frank, an American political analyst and essayist, examines the changes in the content of the term “populism” and on this occasion captures and analyzes what he calls democratophobia, the global aversion of governments to the people, the masses and the demands of the people.

Thomas Frank urges supporters of modern representative democracy to stop despising the masses.

Today, populism is an ambiguous term with no specific political focus. It is often used in politics as well as in the media and is commonly used as an insult. Populist has become synonymous with demagogue, fanatic, conspiracy theorist, opportunist, and so on. At the same time, it has lost all political overtones, since it can fit equally well into different ideological directions.

And yet, the author points out, this is exactly how a serious bias occurs with important political ramifications. Therefore, he begins with militancy and from the depths of his democratic consciousness to defend populism and, throughout American political history, to prove the loss of the significance of the popular will, the need for a popular base in political life. power, for the obligation to fulfill popular demands.

The starting point for the correct meaning of the term can be found, according to the author, in the agricultural mobilizations that took place in the United States at the end of the 19th century during the Great Depression. Agricultural producers – the vast majority of the population at that time – owed merchants loans that they could not repay, thereby increasing their poverty and degradation in order to survive. The mass movement of that time, the movement of the “common people” against the government, gradually acquired a powerful political force, expressed by the People’s Party, which demanded economic reforms for a more equitable distribution of wealth and privileges.

Thomas Frank argues emphatically that populism has never been an enemy of representative democracy or classical liberalism or a threat to an orderly society. On the contrary, he explains, it is a healthy democratic expression of popular demands and needs, a model of democratic governance that aims to serve the interests of the masses, in which the people are placed above the elite. The peak of her fame, according to the author, fell on the period of the Roosevelt administration and the New Deal policy.

Democratic President Roosevelt took over the leadership of the United States in 1933, during the Great Depression, an extremely difficult period economically and socio-politically. He developed and pursued a policy in favor of the workers, aimed at a radical reform of the state. The author highlights all those elements of Roosevelt’s policy, which, according to his analysis, are part of the idea of ​​populism, that is, a model of government that respects and serves the interests of a huge mass of working people.

However, in addition to presenting and analyzing the elements and socio-political history of populism as an alternative model of democratic government, the author is particularly interested in the conceptual protection of the term from misconceptions that distort its meaning – not without reason.

Thus, with great perseverance and particular detail, the author traces the historical and political development of the idea of ​​anti-populism, which, using popular rhetoric, abuses mass needs and, ultimately, the people’s will. Anti-populism dresses in the colors of populism, is a friend of the people, promises to care for the common good, while seeking to advance the interests of the few, the rich, the privileged, and is based on a complex analysis of intelligence, the opinions of experts and experts who know better how to describe world problems and propose political decisions while maintaining a proper distance from the crowd.

In this well-written political essay, Thomas Frank passionately argues with historical and political examples that until populism has clearly and distinctly acquired its socio-political and conceptual boundaries, it will be confused with anti-populism, it will continue without a clear political sign. , it will mean the same thing and at the same time the opposite, deliberately introducing political confusion. Therefore, he calls on the supporters of a modern representative democratic state to stop despising the masses and distance themselves from them, since the people are the basis of any state that respects the democratic ideal.