Communication Culture & Critique ISSN 1753-9129

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Why Populism is Troubling for Democratic

Communication
Silvio Waisbord
School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University, Washington DC, USA

In this article, I argue that populism has a troubling relationship with democratic com-
munication. As illustrated by contemporary Latin American cases, populism’s illiberal-
ism is contrary to the existence of the communication commons—a public space
characterized by diversity, tolerance, reason, and facts. It is grounded in a binary, ago-
nistic view of politics; an understanding of “the people” as a unified subject; and
espousal of post-truth politics. With its brand of divisive politics, populism is unfit to
address central communicative challenges of contemporary multicultural democracies.
Critical communication scholarship needs to engage both with the rise of populism as
well as the challenges for progressive communication amid a toxic atmosphere of intol-
erance and the balkanization of the public sphere.

Keywords: Populism, Democratic Communication, Latin America, Progressivism.

doi:10.1093/ccc/tcx005

Introduction

The recent ascent of populism in the United States and Europe has renewed schol-
arly interest in populism, communication, and democracy in the global North
(Aalberg, Esser, Reinemann, Stromback, & De Vreese, 2016; Krämer, 2014). Five
lines of inquiry concerned with different questions in communication studies can be
identified. First, media effects studies are interested in the appeal of populist mes-
sages on political and ideological attitudes (Hameleers & Schmuck, 2017). Second,
studies have explored the affinity between “populist” news (e.g., tabloid, personality-
centered, conflict-driven news, and conservative editorial positions) and political
populism (Deacon & Wring, 2016; Mazzoleni, 2008). Third, studies have examined
unique attributes of populist rhetoric, namely its vision of politics as neatly divided
between “the people” and “the elite” (Block & Negrine, 2017; Bos & Brants, 2014).
Fourth, researchers have examined whether major changes in contemporary media
ecologies, such as fragmentation, multilayered gatekeeping, polarization, and

Corresponding author: Silvio Waisbord; e-mail: waisbord@gwu.edu

Communication Culture & Critique 11 (2018) 21–34 © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press 21
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commercialization, are conducive to populist politics (Kellner, 2017). Fifth, scholars

have examined whether social media and digital mobilization are conducive to pop-
ulist styles of communication (Engesser, Ernst, Esser, & Büchel, 2016; Enli, 2017).
In this article, I am interested in a different theme—the relationship between
populism and democratic communication. Although this topic has received sub-
stantial attention in Latin America given the region’s populist tradition (Dussel,
2007; Edwards, 2012), it remains understudied in the global North. By democratic
communication, I understand institutional conditions and practices anchored in the
principles of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to communication,
tolerance and solidarity, fact-based reasoning, and truth-searching. The analysis
focuses on contemporary “left-wing” populism in Latin America and draws exam-
ples from Chavismo in Venezuela and Rafael Correa’s government in Ecuador.
Putting “left-wing” populism in quotation marks is deliberately intended to inter-
rogate populism’s claim to represent emancipatory causes and subaltern actors
historically associated with the left, as Laclau (2005) notably envisioned. The ten-
dency of “left-wing” populism toward anti-democratic positions on media gover-
nance do not only contradict its progressive rhetoric. It also blurs distinctions
between “left-wing” and “right-wing” populism on issues related to media and
public communication. No question, ideological versions of populism differ in
several respects. Right-wing populism’s toxic brew of nativism, racism, xenopho-
bia, and misogyny is not characteristic of left-wing populism; instead, the latter
generally features anti-imperialist, social justice, and participatory rhetoric as well
as social distributionist policies.
Notwithstanding ideological differences, various populisms share a political ontol-
ogy that is troubling for democratic communication. Populism is ideologically “thin-
centered” and cannot be pegged to standard left/right ideologies (Mudde & Kaltwasser,
2017). Trying to pin down populism to conventional ideologies is like nailing Jell-O to
the wall. Populism is ideologically gooey, sinewy, contradictory. It takes multiple ideo-
logical forms—socialism and conservatism, nationalism and workerism, nativism and
indigenism. It applies to quite strange ideological bedfellows—latter-day nationalists,
anti-imperialist socialists, anti-globalists, xenophobes, and racists. Without concern for
ideological purity, populism swings from positions generally associated with the Left,
such as the denunciation of elite interests, socio-economic disparities, globalism and
imperialism, and the Right, such as anti-immigration, xenophobia, and naked capital-
ism. Recent experiences in Latin America attest to populism’s ideological plasticity.
Contemporary populism has included governments that spoke of “the common man”
yet defended corporate interests; praised socialist equality and grass-roots participation
yet demanded absolute personal loyalty to the leader; championed the “forgotten
masses” but shut out dissidents; embraced human rights discourse but fostered human
misery perpetuated by corporate agribusiness and extractive industries; pushed social
welfare programs but staunchly opposed reproductive rights; condemned Yankee impe-
rialism but eagerly embraced Chinese turbo-charged neo-imperialism (de la Torre,
2015). No wonder populism remains ideologically confusing.

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In principle, ideological differences could not be more apparent. In Latin

America, left-wing populism denounced the power of white oligarchies and U.S.
imperialism and expanded welfare policies. Instead, right-wing populism in the
United States and Europe unabashedly stands for white racism, nativism, xeno-
phobia, and isolationism. The similarities between right-wing and left-wing pop-
ulism are not immediately obvious. Can the Hugo Chavez be compared to
Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and their ilk of racists and xenophobes? Can
Argentina’s Kirchners, who enabled the reopening of trials of military officers
accused of human rights violations in the 1970s, be legitimately put in the same
group with Turkey’s Erdogan, a notorious abuser of human rights, and
Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński who have trampled
constitutional rights?
Despite obvious ideological and policy differences (Samet & Schiller, 2017), con-
temporary right-wing and left-wing populisms are comparable in terms of their
illiberal positions about the structure and the dynamics of public communication
(de la Torre, 2016a; Kellam & Stein, 2016). This is why it is legitimate to consider
both ideological versions of populism as sides of the same political phenomenon in
terms of their standing on public communication. This position is anchored in three
distinctive components of populism: an agonistic view of politics, the understanding
of “the people” as a unified political subject, and the espousal of post-truth politics.
Populism’s binary, conflictive view of politics is anathema to the “communication
commons” as a public space for discussion and negotiation across social and power
differences. Its vision of the “people-as-one” ignores the plurality of identity forma-
tion and political action. The belief in partisan truths negates the possibility and the
complexity of truth-searching as a common public endeavor. These three traits are
contrary to communicative principles of democratic life—civility, diversity, tolerance,
reason, and truth. Cultivating these principles is vital for addressing the multifaceted
dimensions of public communication as well as current challenges—concentrated
power, social inequalities, and hyper-commercialized media.

Politics as permanent conflict

Populism views politics in binary terms as a permanent conflict between irreconcil-

able actors. It conceives politics in Manichean terms divided between actors defined
by class, nation, and/or social interests. No commonality is possible given that
essential differences are constitutive of political formations.
On the populist Left, politics is understood as starkly divided between “the peo-
ple” (Laclau, 2005; Ranciere, 2006) or “the multitude” (Hardt & Negri, 2004) and
dominant powers called global capital, corporations, political elites, imperialism,
and oligarchies. Politics is theorized as the constant and dynamic opposition
between hegemonic and counterhegemonic actors. The specific lines of conflict vary
across versions of this argument. In the broad spectrum of the radical Left, argu-
ments have been made to conceive core divisions in terms of class, race, ethnicity,

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global power relations, gender, and sexual identities, as well as in inclusive, counter-
hegemonic blocs that articulate heterogeneous subaltern interests in contemporary
capitalism. On the Right, populism is similarly conceived as the antithetical opposi-
tion between actors articulated by nationality, religion, and/or morality. For example,
Schmitt’s (1932) classic formulation of friend and enemy advances a conflict-centered
view of politics.
For populism, public communication is the expression and the confrontation of
social interests driven by power dynamics. Just like politics at large, communication
is essentially conflict. It is about the crystallization of the agonistic nature of politics
and the formation of “the people” in opposition to political enemies. For populism,
the constitution of popular subjects and their oppressors as the essential moment of
politics is a communicative process. This notion is illustrated by Laclau’s (2007)
influential work. Building from his early work on Argentina’s Peronism, Laclau
(1978) advanced a communicative perspective of populism grounded in a theoreti-
cal blend of Althusserian insights, structural linguistics, and Lacanian psychoanaly-
sis. For him, populism is the political logic that articulates “the popular” by unifying
demands against the existing order. Populism produces the existence of “the peo-
ple”—the basis of democratic politics, by interpellating “the popular.” Populism is
fundamentally a language and political strategy that brings out the essence of poli-
tics by giving entity to political identities articulated as “the people” and “the elite”
in its different manifestations.
The view of communication as the articulation of political identities is embed-
ded in Laclau’s argument that the construction of “the people” is central to radical
politics (Simons, 2011). “The people” as such does not exist; rather, it needs to be
made through the unification of popular demands against hegemonic interests. This
communicative operation is conflictive, unpredictable, and contested. It is moment
of political rupture that signals the activation of truly democratic politics, and the
constitution of classes and individuals as “the popular.” This argument for leftist
human emancipation shares with Schmitt, the “crown jurist” of the Nazi regime,
the belief that the establishment of political distinctions is central to the politics of
emancipation and that democratic notions of toleration and public speech are just
ideological constructs in the service of the forces of domination. By affirming differ-
ence and separating actors, political identities come into being.1
For a conception of politics as pure agonism, the notion of the “communicative
commons” has no value. It is antithetical to its belligerent, conflict-centered view of
politics. With its zeal for confrontation, populism has nothing but contempt for the
public sphere as envisioned by progressive theorists of democratic communication
as spaces for expression, consultation, deliberation, and compromise. Who needs
reasoned deliberation across difference when politics is about enacting conflict and
decisionism to cause systemic ruptures by political leaders? A common space is not
only superfluous; it is also impossible when politics is nothing but agonistic dynam-
ics and actors engaged in permanent battles.

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This explains why populists inevitably view any criticism, such as negative news
coverage as unquestionable evidence of the alliance between media organizations
and dominant elites, as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and
other populist presidents constantly claimed. Berating media corporations is a
trademark trope of populist rhetoric. Correa constantly denounced the “mercantilist
press,” Chavez raged against the “media oligarchy” during his battles with news
organizations, and Argentina’s Néstor and Cristina Kirchners accused “multimedia
generals” of conspiring against the government (Waisbord, 2013). Populists charac-
terize the media as a single, unified institution in support of established powers that
silences and distorts “the voice of the people.” Left-wing populism blames structural
factors for the media’s anti-popular positions. Concentrated media ownership, the
conservative sympathies of media owners, and intertwined business interests with
large companies explain the media’s opposition to popular demands and move-
ments. In contrast, right-wing populism singles out the personal ideological sympa-
thies of media workers (from leftism to multiculturalism) and the multiple ties
between media organizations and elites (economic, political, intellectual, ethnic, reli-
gious) as the reason for why the media stand against the people.
Although the rhetoric of left-wing populism resonates with the progressive cri-
tique of the media, it is embedded in a political sensibility that rejects canonical
principles of democracy—the watchdog role of the press, the division of powers,
minority rights, and constitutional protection of public speech. As Arditi (2010) elo-
quently puts it, populism stands on the “edge” of democracy. Populism’s grandiose
promise to transcend the imperfections of liberal democracy and bring about a rev-
olution is constantly on the verge of trampling the central tenets of democratic com-
munication and turning into authoritarianism.
Populism offers a partial view of media pluralism. The case of Latin America is
particularly illustrative. In countries with high levels of media concentration, popu-
lism claimed it intended to diversify public communication through a series of policy
reforms, such as legislation, to curb media ownership and to bolster community
media. These policies met with different responses from the Left. While some
applauded policies aimed at curbing the power of corporate media and bolstering
community media (Fernandes, 2010; Kitzberger, 2016; Schiller, 2013), others con-
cluded that they strengthened official communication and silenced critical voices
more than fostering autonomous and critical grass-roots voices (Bautista de Alemán,
2014; Frajaman, 2014; Fuentes-Bautista & Gil-Egui, 2011). In fact, the record of
Chavismo and the Correa government shows that reforms resulted in the strengthen-
ing of the communication power of the presidency more than in the promotion of
popular voices and critical citizenship. They favored sycophantic media (both govern-
ment and private), curbed the power of selected oppositional media through legal and
economic means, and undermined legal protections for public speech (Cañizalez,
2013; Waisbord, 2013). “Left-wing” populisms implemented decisions contrary to
international legislation on public speech, and discriminated against media organiza-
tions unwilling to fall into lockstep with governments. Progressive critiques from

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grass-roots organizations, scholars, and civic society organizations were rejected on

the grounds that they favored the oligarchy and imperialism. More than stimulating
participatory citizenship and popular voices, governments demanded undivided loy-
alty to the leader and turned the media into propaganda arms.
This outcome should come to no surprise. It is not the consequence of “left-
wing” populism gone wrong. From a binary, conflict-centered view of politics, pop-
ulism has been interested in cultivating the media as a partisan instrument and
weakening inclusive, progressive, critical media spheres. It flatly dismissed the idea
of the communication commons as an abstraction, a pure utopia, a misguided fan-
tasy anchored in incorrect assumptions about politics and democracy. No space for
opinion formation and discussion across multiples differences is deemed necessary
given that politics is a fundamental conflict between two distinct camps.
Certainly, the notion of communication commons needs to be approached criti-
cally. It is originally embedded in liberal premises that ignore the yawning gap
between democratic ideals and power inequalities articulated in terms of class,
gender, race, and ethnicity in late capitalism (Fraser, 1990), particularly in Latin
America—a region with historical structures of communicative and social inequal-
ities. The pluralist vision of the communication commons fails to recognize deep
power asymmetries that perpetuate exclusionary practices. Yet populism’s counter-
offer is unsuitable, if not dangerous, to resolve deep-seated forms of social exclusion
in public communication. Its Manichean view of politics, primarily concerned with
top-down, realpolitik designs and anti-democratic bent, is incompatible with the
promotion of common spaces, the expression of multiple demands, and the recog-
nition of myriad differences.

The people as unified subject

Populism’s opposition to the communication commons is also grounded in its

vision of “the people” as a unified political subject. Populism constructs the people
as a single collective actor that brings together interests shaped by class, race, and/or
nationality. As Müller (2014, p. 487) writes, “in the populist imagination there is
only the people on the one hand and, on the other hand, the illegitimate intruders
into our politics, from both above and from below, so to speak”. Right-wing ver-
sions define “the people” as “ordinary folk,” “the nation,” and “patriots” against
the dominant elites represented by liberalism, leftist parties, the media, universi-
ties, and national and international organizations that champion globalism, cos-
mopolitanism, foreign interests, and “others” groups (from racial minorities to
immigrants). In contrast, left-wing populism generally understands “the people”
as workers, peasants, and immigrants against “the elites” represented by eco-
nomic/financial powers, the oligarchy, the media, and international capital (de la
Torre, 2015).
Appeals to “the people” are ubiquitous in contemporary populist discourse. Just
as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan affirmed “Enough is enough, sovereignty belongs

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to the people,” Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez stated “Here I am standing. The people
should order me, I know how to obey. I am a soldier of the people, you are my
boss.” In the aftermath of Trump’s successful presidential run, Hungary’s Orban
exulted: “We are moving back to reality, which means [respecting] the views of real
people and what they think, how they approach these questions—not to educate
them, but accept them as they are, because they are the basis of democracy.”
Populism conceives “the people”—what UKIP leader Nigel Farage often described
as “ordinary, “little,” “real,” “decent” people during the 2016 “Brexit” campaign,
as the pure and noble embodiment of democratic politics, the true manifestation
of the collective soul.
The discursive construction of “the people” is inseparable from the articulation of
“the elites” and “the system”—another central trope of populist discourse. Populism
fulminates against “the system” construed in various forms—capitalism or liberal
democracy, the elites and special interests, the dominant political parties, the bour-
geoisie, the oligarchy and transnational capital, globalization, metropolitan elites, and/
or minority and immigrant populations. For example, Orban called Hungarians to
fight the failed “Brussels’ elite.” Geert Wilders declared, “Unfortunately, Dutch politi-
cal elites suffer from the fatal arrogance of thinking they know better than the people.”
In his inaugural speech, Trump said, “For too long, a small group in our nation’s cap-
ital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth.” France’s Le Pen
characterized the result of the Brexit referendum and Trump’s victory as the “awaken-
ing of the people against oligarchies.” What underpins these statements is the notion
that the political and economic elites as well as “Others” (e.g., immigrants, foreigners)
control the system for their advantage against “real” popular interests. An “illegiti-
mate,” “rigged” system does not benefit “the people” who are the “ultimate source of
legitimacy” in politics.
Yet neither “the people” nor “the elites” are defined a priori. In fact, both terms
are vague, “empty signifiers” (Laclau, 2005) open for interpretation and redefinition.
Political actors are imagined according to unique circumstances and ideological
positions. Given their vagueness and fluidity, any demand or action can be poten-
tially considered part of “the people” or “the elites.”
Populism’s discursive construction of political actors not only simplifies the
complex reality of popular demands and collective action. It also conveniently leaves
categories—who are “the people” and “the elites,” open to political calculations. In
Latin America, populist governments maintained different, difficult, and dynamic
relations with a range of subaltern actors (Becker, 2013; Collins, 2014; Prevost,
Campos, & Vanden, 2013; Dosh & Kligerman, 2009). From Argentina to Ecuador,
social movements opposed many positions taken by populist governments.
Indigenous and environmental justice movements criticized extractivist policies for
their disastrous consequences on water supplies and livelihoods, and exclusion of
citizen participation (Coryat, 2015; Svampa, 2015). Women’s groups criticized
populists for failing to promote reproductive rights and address gender-based

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violence (Cordero, 2016; Kampwirth, 2010). Peasant and farmers organizations crit-
icized populists’ collusion with domestic and transnational agricultural conglomer-
ates (Vergara-Camus & Kay, 2017). Alternative energy movements targeted
governments for perpetuating dependence on non-renewable sources and deepen-
ing the power of traditional energy corporations (Riofrancos, 2015).
These examples suggest populism’s complex and tense relations with progressive
social movements. It has not uniformly championed a range of subaltern causes.
Despite its grandiose rhetoric of championing “the people,” populism’s receptive-
ness to popular demands was contingent on realpolitik reasons rather than a solid,
undivided commitment to popular causes. Effective actions were subjected to presi-
dential designs, political timing, class and business alliances (including banking,
agricultural, and energy corporations), and political expediency.
The record challenges populism’s perennial claim that it articulates the diversity
of “the popular.” It also throws into question whether the notion of “the popular” as
a unified subject effectively brings together myriad interests and identities. The
diversity of subaltern demands and movements clashes with populism’s vision of
the “people-as-one” (de la Torre, 2016b), a rhetorical trope that disregards plural
interests and the complex processes of the formation of collective identities.
These experiences raise doubts about whether “left-wing” populism effectively
integrates various counterhegemonic social movements against different forms of
oppression. Real-world populism shows profound disparities and the limitations of a
cohesive emancipatory program. Grounded in a single sovereign subject and a binary
political vision, it disregards the heterogeneity of political representation and deep-
seated conflicts, as Stuart Hall observed (2006). Populism’s political ontology is problem-
atic, if not completely inadequate, given the permanent emergence and rearticulation of
political identities grounded by class, race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, legal status, and
religion. The multilayered character of political-cultural identities contradicts populism’s
simplistic vision of unity. Real-world populism is primarily driven to foster support for
political decisionism and a cult of personality around “infallible” leaders rather than to
weave popular demands in a common project (Panizza, 2005) or address multiple forms
of social exclusions in the public sphere.

Post-truth politics

A third element of populism’s opposition to the communication commons is the

negation of the possibility of truth-seeking as a collective goal.
A fundamental principle of democratic communication is the search for truth,
as elusive and difficult as it is. To say the obvious, this is a long-standing, complex
question in political philosophy and communication theory that cannot be covered
here in a nuanced and comprehensive manner. Suffice to say that various strands of
the “truth-is-possible” camp agree on the importance of truth and the centrality of
facts for political democracy. For realists, truth exists “out there” and can be ferreted
out by using specific, fact-producing instruments. Truth is basically understood as

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the correspondence between statement and facts. Instead, pragmatists believe that
intersubjective commitment to truth and facts are central to the production of truth,
a position commonly identified with Jürgen Habermas and Richard Rorty.
Both realists and pragmatists believe that agreement on facts is a fundamental
condition for truth. Whereas realists champion “the scientific method” to produce
truth, pragmatists underscore the importance of consensus on fundamental norms.
Both lines of argument share the notion that the communication commons is cen-
tral to truth-telling. For realists, democratic institutions such as parliament and the
justice system, science, and journalism are central to producing facts that should
inform public knowledge and public opinion. Communication is linked to fostering
fact-based truth. Instead, pragmatists emphasize dialogue and collective commit-
ment to truth-telling, even if consensus might be temporary as facts and truth are
endlessly open to challenges and reinterpretations.
Populism’s vision of truth is widely different from these positions. Populism
embraces the notion that truth does not exist as a common good. Truth as a collec-
tive enterprise is dismissed as a pure ideological illusion of liberalism. There is no
such a thing as shared truth-seeking enterprise because truth is always partial.
Truth is divided, partisan, and ideological; it is anchored in particular social inter-
ests. Truth-seeking politics is about reaffirming “popular” truths against “elite” lies.
Populism’s position about truth reflects its conflictive and binary conception
of politics. It is not a postmodernist swipe at liberalism. It is not embedded in
Nietzsche’s fulminations again modernity or postmodernism’s surgical dismantling
of truth-producing institutions in late capitalism. Populism is not nihilism. Instead,
it rejects the notion that “truth” exists. Truth hinges on power relations and political
divides that cannot be transcended. Conceptions of truth are inseparable from
socio-economic relations and/or cultural differences. It is constructed by particular
social actors, whether hegemonic/counterhegemonic interests (in the left-wing ver-
sion) or the nation/foreign enemies (in the right-wing version). While populism ful-
minates against the false “truths” perpetuated by elites, it embraces the notion of
“popular truth” as the innate wisdom of “the people.”
Populism approaches communication and the media as central to the battle
between popular truth and elite interests. Fact-finding, accountability institutions,
prominent in the democratic imaginary, are dismissed as ideological agents of reac-
tionary propaganda. Populism jettisons the entire “regime of truth” (Foucault,
1977) of political liberalism, not unlike post-structuralist critics. It discards the com-
munication commons as a necessary public space to produce and disseminate fac-
tual knowledge and truth. It rejects the vision of truth as a common project.
Convinced that politics is permanent conflict and neatly divided in opposite camps,
truth demands railing against institutions that challenge populism in power. For
populists, the struggle for the truth demands two-pronged actions: the denunciation
of the false beliefs propagated by the array of institutions (the media, parliament,
the judicial system, civic society organizations, universities) that are part of the

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“ruling bloc,” and the cultivation and expression of popular views ignored and dis-
torted by dominant powers.
For populism, truth-telling and politics are tied at the waist. Nothing could be
more foreign to populism than the idea that politics might compromise truth-
telling, a line of argument found in liberal-progressive theorists such as Hannah
Arendt, Richard Rorty, and Michael Walzer. Truth is essentially, inevitably a politi-
cal project. Populism has no room for the notion that speaking truth demands a
healthy distance from politics. For example, Arendt’s (2003) conviction that the
“truth-teller” can only exist “outside the political realm” is anathema to populism’s
political ontology. No one can be outside politics. Everyone is in one camp or the
other. Autonomy is false. Truth-telling is woven in the process of political emanci-
pation. It is intrinsic to the awakening of “the people” and disputing falsehoods per-
petuated by enemies.
Populism scoffs at the liberal conviction that truth is produced by neutral, dis-
passionate, fact-producing institutions or by communitarian dialogue and intersub-
jective understanding. For populism, “the truth” is produced by “the people”
without mediation or representation and by institutions that support popular
causes, such as political leaders and “national-popular” journalism, media, scientists,
unions, neighborhood organizations, and universities. Those are the real truth-
telling forces that denounce liberalism’s “façade” of truth-telling, evenhandedness
and independence.
Certainly, populism is not unique in fostering post-truth politics in late capitalism.
Neoliberalism, the system that contemporary populism so vigorously criticizes, per-
fected the system of “organized lying” and systematic deception (Arendt, 2003)—the
politics of propaganda and spin in the service of power (Miller & Dinan, 2007). Both
populism and neoliberalism are similarly opposed to the collective, public exercise of
critical reason—the pursuit of facts and truth, the disposition to unmask lies and
deception, the skepticism towards power. Whereas neoliberalism prioritizes pure
commercialism and shameless spin over public speech and human rights, populism
counteroffers an equally problematic solution—a political logic opposed to public rea-
son and truth searching as collective endeavors.

The populist challenge

To recapitulate, populism opposes fundamental principles of democratic communi-

cation. Its binary, conflict-centered view of politics; notion of the people as a unified
political subject; and post-truth politics are contrary to the communication com-
mons for the formation of public will, the deliberation of common affairs, and the
expression of differences. Populism is unfit for addressing political differences and
myriad socio-cultural identities in globalized, multicultural democracies. Populism
not only reflects the fraying of the communication commons. It also thrives in a toxic
atmosphere of intolerance and impatience with diversity and criticism. It deepens
worrisome trends in contemporary politics: intolerance, aversion to fact-grounded

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and reasoned debate, misinformation, and post-truth politics. It celebrates and grows
on divisiveness and polarization. Instead, democracy requires communicative politics
that foster the affirmation of particular interests, sensitivity to and inclusion of others,
and dialogue across difference.
The resurgence of populism raises important questions for critical studies in
media and communication. The record of populism in power should prompt pro-
gressives to revisit early enthusiasm about “left-wing” populism. Many progressives
were besotted with the populist revolt against neoliberalism in Latin America in the
2000s given rhetorical gestures, participatory programs, and social policies. They
believed that the shake-up of capitalism and the promotion of radical social democ-
racy seemed possible (Lievesley & Ludlam, 2008). They lavished praise on populists’
critique of neoliberalism, rhetorical condemnation of corporate power and tradi-
tional political elites, opposition to corporate globalism and Western imperialism,
innovations in popular governance, support for economic distributionism and citi-
zen empowerment, and positions against dominant media (Ellner, 2011; Smilde &
Hellinger, 2011). Verbal pyrotechnics and superficially progressive actions, however,
could not disguise populism’s failures, as well as skepticism and straight opposition
to critical and plural communication. Populist lionizing of “the people” was shrew
pandering. The continuation of crushing poverty, massive corruption, social pro-
grams hamstrung by official discretionism and favoritism, alliances with big capital,
and questionable environmental and human rights record do not match the soaring
rhetoric about social justice and human emancipation (de la Torre, 2015; López
Maya, 2016; Rhodes-Purdy, 2015). Presidential bluster, theatrical displays, and
speeches of Tolstoyan brevity drowned out popular voices. Populism persecuted dis-
sident offline and online expression, disabled constitutional protections of speech
rights, and criticized popular demands that challenged presidential designs. This is
hardly a sparkling progressive record that matches the populist script.
Yet populism should not be seen just as troubling for democratic communica-
tion. Just as it reflects the crisis of representation in contemporary politics, it also
suggests worrisome trends that demand attention. The current “populist moment”
seems to find fertile conditions in the current chaos of public communication.
Media fragmentation and echo chambers are hospitable to the kind of polarized
politics, demagogic rhetoric and mobilization, and factless convictions that popu-
lism embodies. In such an environment, the viability of progressive aspirations for
tolerant and reasoned communication across differences and addressing patterns of
exclusion in communication commons is uncertain. The active encounter with dif-
ference, engagement with others, the recognition of communicative and social
inequalities, the politics of intersectionality, and truth-telling demand institutional
settings and dispositions that are hard to find in balkanized media spheres. In this
context, critical communication studies should engage with how progressive ideals
are effective in everyday settings shaped by power inequalities and dotted with
pockets of prejudice and hatred amid the global wave of populist politics.

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Notes
1 Certainly, the arguments developed by Laclau and Mouffe have a complex relationship
with Schmitt’s work. As Mouffe (1999, p. 6) puts it, they argue “with and against
Schmitt.” While they raised questions about the antipluralist implications and insufficient
attention to the multiple dimensions of “enemies” in Schmitt’s work, they praise his
emphasis of “conflictuality” as a core dimension of politics and the construction of
political antagonisms and found it useful to criticize “liberal complacency” in late
capitalism (Laclau, 2005; for a critique, see Arato, 2013).

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