Psychopolitics: SadoPopulism

Continuing this series on ‘psychopolitics’, I’m linking a blog post by Teri Kanefield, a lawyer and author, on the political panics and how they feed the SadoPopulist dynamic, as defined by Timothy Snyder:

Panic contributes to the spectacle

Timothy Snyder, in his book The Road to Unfreedom, explains that creating crisis and spectacle is the way modern oligarchs gain and maintain power. They do outrageous things to keep everyone spinning and lurching from one drama to another. The public is kept off balance, facts get lost in the noise, and eventually people wear out and stop paying attention.

Democratic leaders, when they go to work, try to implement policies that help their constituents. Oligarchs and would-be oligarchs can’t do that because the policies they implement benefit the oligarchs and hurt the common people. So instead of promising to improve the lives of the people, they promise to protect them from enemies.

Snyder calls it sadopopulism and it goes like this:

• Enact policies that create pain in their own supporters
• Identify an “enemy”
• Blame the pain on the “enemies”
• Present themselves as the strongman who can defeat the enemies.

Mark Fisher calls it “nihiliberalism”; the authoritarian governance of those who have lost all sense of constructive agency and resort to turning on a vague and mythological “enemy,” Others who are not like me. (Fisher, “Remember who the Enemy is”.

Modern oligarchs figured out that the safest enemies are invented ones. Real enemies might drop bombs on them. But if the enemy is a poor migrant immigrant, [or Black or trans] they’re safe. (Teri Kanefield, author of this blogpost.)

No Time to Panic

The problem for Republican candidates for president is that Trump is a master spectacle-creator who outshines the others. Nobody does crisis and spectacle like Trump. He’s a natural.

Hardcore Trump supporters love the show. A CNN poll showed that 43% of Republicans were more likely to vote for Trump after he made the “poisoning the blood” comment, and 23% less likely. In fact, they’re there for the show. The day-to-day business of governing is dull but landing blows on the enemy is thrilling.

When you panic, you are performing your part in the play. The play has four acts:

1. The fascist or would-be fascist says or does something completely outrageous.
2. The outrageous action or comment becomes the “news.” Dull things like government policies are pushed off stage.
3. As a result of the latest outrage, the autocrat’s enemies have panic meltdowns.
4. The autocrat’s supporters cheer to see their enemies having meltdowns.

It also works like this:

• Trump says, “I will go after your enemies!”
• Trump files a ludicrous court filing.
• Democrats have panic meltdowns. “What if the Supreme Court agrees that Trump has absolute criminal immunity??!!!”
• Trump’s supporters see the Democrats having meltdowns.
• Trump’s supporters cheer because powerful Trump is terrifying his enemies 

aka Mark Fisher’s “nihiliberalism.”

As Buddhists, we can take a different approach, and it has nothing to do with saying “the quiet part out loud” politely. We can stop over-reacting to every outrage that’s posted on social media. As Snyder and Kanefield make clear, outrage just feeds the Fascist Machine. As Kalle Lasn said this year in his Manifesto for a World Revolution: “Go deep or go home.” We have to do politics from the depths of our understanding of life and human nature, traversing right/left ideologies, into a ‘third way’—the way of wisdom, of ‘deep time’ and universal compassion.