A book has just been released in France which is a perfect manual for orienting yourself in this “super-electoral” year, and which starts from Italian political history to talk about a contemporary phenomenon: post-populism. The author is Thibault Muzergues, a French political analyst who lives in Rome and works for the American think tank International Republican Institute. Having also worked in Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom make him one of the best experts on the political upheavals affecting Western democracies.
Post-populism was born with the end of the “revolutionary” phase of Brexit, the first Trump mandate and the Lega-M5S government, i.e. when the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine changed the trajectory of many political parties. Which maintain a series of sovereignist/populist characteristics (contrast to illegal immigration, protectionism on a commercial level and conservatism on social issues), but season them with elements that a few years earlier would have been anathema: a good relationship with the financial markets, dialogue constant with the European institutions and a solid reaffirmation of the Atlantic Alliance.
In the book, Giorgia Meloni emerges as the post-populist leader par excellence, capable of maintaining the “disruptive” spirit and at the same time maintaining international credibility and reliability. Joining her are Jimmie Åkesson in Sweden and Nikki Haley in the United States. But the phenomenon also exists on the left, although less defined: examples are the English Labor Party of Keir Starmer, who “purified” the party of Corbynist excesses and is now flying in the polls, or the Greek Syriza party, which was supposed to overwhelm the Union European Union through referendums and has become much more moderate.
AdnKronos met Muzergues to comment on his book and the current political situation. “Populism is not over, but it coexists with post-populism a bit like paganism and Christianity did for three centuries,” begins the author. “There is a game of cohabitation, competition and cooperation. In the last year we have witnessed the setbacks of Vox in Spain, of PiS in Poland, of Andrej Babis in the Czech Republic. On the other hand there are the exploits of Trump in the Republican primaries and of AfD in Germany after 15 years in which Angela Merkel it served as a ‘stopper’ for anti-system movements. We see the game between populists and their ‘antidote’ both at a national level, with Matteo Salvini governing together with Giorgia Meloni, and at a European level, with the Italian prime minister convincing the ultra-populist Orbán to vote on the aid package for Ukraine”.
Italy in Muzergues’ book is a great political laboratory, starting from Giannini’s Everyman up to the Movement founded by Grillo and Casaleggio. “Vaffa-Day 2007 precedes the shocks of Trump and Brexit by almost ten years. The populist wave has replaced the separation between left and right with the battle of the people against the elites. Today, however, Meloni and Schlein are once again clashing over immigration, economic subsidies, taxes, security: they no longer use the people/elite divide, but play on a more ‘classical’ right versus left terrain.”
Muzergues at Adnkronos also explains the unprecedented French dynamic. “Marine Le Pen aims to become post-populist, to conquer the Elysée and overcome the historic ‘cordon sanitaire’ around her family. While Macron will have ‘saved’ the country from populism twice. The first by winning the elections against Le Pen, the second when, with the end of her second mandate, she puts an end to Macronism. It is a paradox, but today he is the one waving the populist scepter, for example with the Grand national debates, assemblies between government and citizens in which the mediation of parliament is eliminated and the system of representative democracy is dismantled. Or when he changes the name of Ena, the school of grand commis, to seem like someone who fights the elite. Therefore there is also a centrist populism, like that of Renzi when he wanted to scrap the political class.”