Talking right

These are the words of Geert Wilders, posterboy of European populism:

“We are democrats. We believe in peaceful solutions. The reason why we reject Islam is exactly Islam’s violent nature. We believe in democracy. We fight with the force of our conviction, but we never use violence. Our commitment to truth, human dignity and a just and honourable defence of the west does not allow us to use violence nor to give in to cynicism and despair.”

Wilders has reportedly endorsed such policies as taxing women who wear headscarves and banning the Koran. These policies defy the commitment to the equal freedom of every individual that is the hallmark of liberal democracy. Yet Wilders’s rhetoric is anything but illiberal or antidemocratic.

Wilders is symptomatic of a new and growing wave of European populism that combines a fervent rejection of multiculturalism and immigration with soaring defence of western civilisation and national identity. Their message is resonating with large parts of the electorate. Parties like the Swedish Democrats and True Finns have made astonishing gains in local, national and European elections over the last five years. In some countries, such as Norway, Austria and possibly even France they are the second or third largest parties. In others—the Netherlands and, until recently, Denmark—they are considered important partners in governing coalitions.

Because several of these parties have historic roots in extreme right politics, many progressive politicians and thinkers view such rights-talk as a disingenuous veneer, a cover for bigots who couldn’t care less about liberalism. This is a mistake. To see just how dangerous the populist threat is, we should recognise the sincerity—and the grain of hard truth—in their words.

The latest study from Demos, “The New Face of Digital Populism,” which was released this week, shows why. Based on a survey of over 10,000 supporters of these parties across Europe, it dispels some myths about the current crop of European populists. They are disillusioned with out-of-touch political elites, but not with democracy, which they cite as a top personal value, along with the rule of law and human rights. They overwhelmingly reject violence. One of the most significant drivers of support is a perceived threat to national identity and culture posed by immigrants, other minorities, and increasingly the European Union.

These findings undercut the myth that the populist right is no more than a petulant manifestation of economic angst, an attempt to pin the blame for hard times on immigrants. Only four per cent of respondents cited economic issues as reasons to join their organisation.

We would do well to take populists at their word. They argue, quite plausibly, from the premise that a liberal democracy aspires to establish and maintain of a system of governance that protects certain fundamental liberties. This system doesn’t run on autopilot: to be sustained it requires the enduring dedication of men and women committed to liberal values—to a “culture of freedom.”

They go on to argue that the citizens of liberal democracies have a moral duty to resist attacks on this culture of freedom. And their argument concludes with the claim that Muslims and other minorities are launching such attacks—which is the basis of the populist onslaught against them.

How should we tackle this argument? Not on the grounds that liberal democracies should not actively defend freedom, but on the grounds that the hordes are not at the gates of Vienna. It is one of the most insidious conspiracy theories of our era that Muslims are systematically plotting a takeover of liberal democracy from the inside or that they are opposed en masse to its fundamental values.

This theory rests on a basic misunderstanding of the Muslim religion as generally practised in the west—a misunderstanding whose flames are fanned by the populists’ energetic and militaristic rhetoric, which allows supporters to consider themselves soldiers tasked with saving civilization. The media’s sensationalist coverage of a small minority of Muslim extremists in the past decade has only exacerbated the misunderstanding.

Many supporters of populist parties (although of course, not all) have the definition of “civilisation”—individual freedom, democracy, equality under the law—spot on. Unfortunately, they have the facts wrong. Rather than accuse them of being closet fascists appropriating liberal language, it would be better to engage them on the factual substance of their arguments. But that strategy is impossible if they are all derided condescendingly by liberals as ignorant bigots, rather than fellow citizens with whom we share a common moral core.

Jamie Bartlett is a senior researcher at Demos. Jeff Howard is a doctoral student at the University of Oxford.