Archive Event Highlight
Panelists Discuss Rising Global Populism at the American Library in Paris
by Chad Bouchard
OPC member Vivienne Walt, a Paris correspondent for TIME and FORTUNE magazines, said during a panel on global populism at the American Library in Paris on Sept. 18 that “it’s safe to say we’re in a bit of a perilous moment, politically,” particularly in the U.S., but warned those living in Europe to be vigilant.
“We don’t have a major dominant populist figure in Europe at the moment that’s truly disruptive, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen, or that it won’t happen soon, given what’s happening across Europe.”
Walt served as moderator for the event, which was co-sponsored by the OPC.
Other panelists were: Martin Gelin, a longtime award-winning journalist on the U.S. far-right, and author of eight books on American politics; Elisabeth Zerofsky, a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine who joined remotely via video; and Thierry Arnaud, international editor for France’s BFM-TV.
The panelists highlighted the 2024 Trump campaign and success of the National Rally in June’s legislative elections in France as signs of thriving populism, but said the victory of the Labour Party in the U.K. and other election results in Eastern Europe are signs that populism could be receding in some cases.
Zerofsky said demographic changes and waves of immigration in Europe are fueling a rise in xenophobia and populism. She said cases where recent arrivals have committed crimes, while rare, have been exploited by populists, giving a “disproportionate sense of the impact of these crimes.”
She cited a recent rally she attended in Germany, in an area that hadn’t recently seen many new immigrants, where the candidate blamed nearly every problem on immigration, from housing shortages to schools strained by new students who don’t speak German.
“It was a very essentially simplistic, easy worldview to sell to her audience, that immigration is the explanation for all of our problems. And of course certainly in that part of Germany, that’s just not the case.”
Arnaud said one way for populism to lose its appeal is for voters to witness shortcomings in populist policies.
“It comes to a point where the only way out is to see them fail,” he said. “When that happens, what’s the alternative? You could argue to some extent that Labour winning the election in the UK is Boris Johnson’s brand of conservatism failing. You could make the case that Donald Tusk winning the election is Poland is a result of the populist government that was before him failing. So maybe we’ll have to come to that in France as well.”
Walt asked Gelin when he thought the “Trump fever” in the U.S. might break.
“I think nationalism will stay resilient, but what’s sometimes forgotten is that so will the unified opposition to it,” he said. “Trump got more votes in in 2020 than in 2016 but Joe Biden got 12 million more votes than Barack Obama did – not because Joe Biden is more charismatic and energized a more vibrant political movement than Obama, did but because people were really, really against Trump.”
Click the window below to watch a recording of the program.
