A key difference between populism and fascism is that, for populists, actual electoral results matter. In contrast, fascism implies permanent power, irrespective of the ballot box. Populism affirms the authoritarian idea that one person can fully personify “the people” and the nation — but it must be confirmed via electoral procedures.
Whereas
fascism has reveled in lies, populism has respected the truth of the ballot
box. This doesn’t mean it always advances democracy — indeed it frequently
manipulates it. But it still derives power and depends on the integrity of the
electoral system. That is why populist leaders have long recognized the value
of respecting electoral results, even if they came out on the losing end of the
democratic process.
But this
distinction is beginning to fade. In this sense, President Donald Trump has
been a trailblazer for global autocrats. Especially in his denial of the
election’s results and embrace the "big lie” about voter fraud, Trump
represents a historical turning point in populist politics, enabling and
inspiring others — just like fascist dictators before him.
Consider
the case of Juan Perón and Peronism, the movement he created in Argentina.
Perón
was the strongman in a military junta dictatorship that ruled from 1943 through
1946. Despite coming to power by force, in 1943, Perón encouraged and
participated in free democratic elections in 1946.
After
the global defeat of fascism at the end of the Second World War, fascism, coups
and military dictatorships had become toxic. So former fascists and militants
of dictatorships tried to regain power through democratic electoral means.
In the
early postwar period, politicians like Perón understood that elections provided
a critical source of political legitimacy. He ran on a populist ticket that put
forward a third way position beyond capitalism and communism. He won the 1946
presidential election, becoming the first populist leader in history to come to
power.
Peronist
populism borrowed elements of fascism. It was anti-liberal and created a
messianic cult of leadership. It denounced the ruling elites, thwarted independent
journalism and advanced a deep dislike for pluralism and political tolerance.
But Perón was popularly elected, and thus distinct from fascists.
Like
Perón, other Latin American populists in countries like Brazil, Venezuela and
Bolivia came to power by affirming the legitimacy of electoral results in the
late 1940s and early 1950s. Holding power depended upon winning real elections.
Perón,
like his Brazilian, Venezuelan and Bolivian populist counterparts, was popular.
When they were ousted from power, it was by coups, not elections — which their
movements kept winning.
More
recent populist leaders, like Silvio Berlusconi in Italy or Hugo Chávez in
Venezuela showed the same pattern. They avoided baseless claims of fraud
because they staked their grandiose claims of embodying popular will upon the
democratic idea that elections represented the will of the people. Berlusconi
lost elections in 1996 and 2006, while Chavez lost the 2007 Venezuelan
constitutional referendum about abolishing presidential term limits. Both
accepted the results even though they lost by extremely slim margins.
By
contrast, many autocratic losers lie their way out of actual or potential
electoral defeat. For example, fascists in the 1930s like the German Nazis saw
no value in the electoral system and only used it to claim legitimacy and
leadership when it benefited them. Then, they worked to destroy democracy from
within.
Indeed,
fascists believed that elections and patriotism were essentially opposed
because the true leader was not necessarily the one who got the most votes. As
Benito Mussolini wrote in “Doctrine of Fascism” in 1932, “Fascism is therefore
opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority,
lowering it to the level of the largest number; but it is the purest form of
democracy if the nation be considered as it should be from the point of view of
quality rather than quantity, as an idea, the mightiest because the most
ethical, the most coherent, the truest, expressing itself in a people as the conscience
and will of the few, if not, indeed, of one.”
Adolf
Hitler agreed with this logic, seeing democracy itself as a “fraud” because
fairly elected politicians could not represent the true will of the people —
which only Nazism, and Hitler himself, personified. Hitler stated in “Mein
Kampf” in 1925 that Nazis had “the right but also the duty to emphasize most
rigidly that any attempt to represent the folk idea outside of the National
Socialist German Labor Party is futile and in most cases fraudulent.”
When
fascist regimes in Italy and Germany became full dictatorships, elections were
no longer needed as a source of legitimacy because the will of the leader was
now perpetually embodied in the people.
This was
not only a European situation. In 1923, Argentine fascist Leopoldo Lugones
equated electoral procedures with demagoguery and claimed that dictatorship was
the answer to “electoralism.” The fall of Argentine democracy followed a few
years later in 1930 when Gen. Jose F. Uriburu staged a military coup. Uriburu
asked Lugones to write his regime’s founding proclamation. Similar critiques of
democratic electoral procedures and the need to override them with the will of
the leader were presented by fascists all over the world from Brazil and China
to Spain and Mexico.
In
short, fascism denied the very nature of democracy, the legitimacy of
democratic procedures and their electoral outcomes. Its proponents claimed that
votes were only legitimate when they confirmed by referendum the autocratic
will of their leader.
Populists,
in contrast, have used elections to stress their own democratic nature even
when they advanced other authoritarian trends.
These
differences matter today as Trump, and others, deny the electoral legitimacy of
their opponents. Leaders like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Benjamin Netanyahu in
Israel and Keiko Fujimori in Peru are using falsehoods about systemic deception
to create an alternative reality where they can rule, now or in the future,
without democratic procedures. Bolsonaro recently said he would not accept the
results of the country’s 2022 elections unless the voting system was changed to
involve paper ballots, and later repeating his false claims that elections
might not be “clean.” Bolsonaro even threatened not to hold them at all. Most polls
indicate Bolsonaro’s disapproval ratings are rising to an all-time high.
The more
we know about the past fascist attempts to deny the workings of democracy, the
more worried we should be about present post-fascist and populist forms.
Trump’s calls for “reinstatement” based on the legitimacy of a fake past,
namely a bizarro world in which he “won” the election, are blatant forms of
fascism that cannot be enabled or accepted.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinions-donald-trump-has-blurred-the-line-between-populism-and-fascism-in-a-dangerous-way/ar-AALXynV