警惕民粹主义 民粹主义要的是惩罚

民粹主义要的是惩罚  

I’ve been trying to understand why people vote populist so
among other things
I recently began following the Trump-supporting Breitbart News on Twitter. I had expected to encounter triumphant joy. After all
Breitbart’s man has a unique chance to remake America. But instead
Breitbart’s dominant tone is the sneer. Many of the eets mock pundits and celebrities who say anything leftie. For instance
when actor Chris Evans rants about Trump
Breitbart eets a gleeful loudly crying face emoji. Another big category of eets gloats about immigrants accused of crimes. Above a story about a “six-time deportee” Mexican in Texas arrested for drunk-driving
Breitbart breaks into song: “ Wall
wall
wall your south
gently by the Rio ”.
Much less energy is spent plugging Trump’s plans. In fact
Breitbart’s main current policy drive is to convince Republicans to keep Obamacare’s health coverage for poorer Americans.
At first I was baffled. If your guy runs the US
who cares about actors or small-time Mexican lawbreakers? But I have gradually realised that populism isn’t so much about finding solutions. It promises something different
and possibly more appealing: punishment.
起初我大惑不解。你们支持的那个人都已经执掌美国了，谁还关心那些演员或犯了法的墨西哥小人物？不过，我逐渐认识到民粹主义在乎的不是找到解决方案。它承诺的是某种不同的、也许更吸引人的东西：惩罚。
“Penal populism” has its roots in the early 1990s
explain criminologist John Pratt and legal scholar Michelle Miao. Back then
English-speaking countries got “tough on crime” by locking up more people. Liberals often retorted that this wouldn’t reduce crime. However
they misunderstood the populist impulse. Populists didn’t expect to solve crime; punishment itself was the point. Making somebody else suffer is satisfying
explains Princeton anthropologist Didier Fassin. Since the 1990s
voters’ anxiety has shifted from crime to the “mass movement of peoples”
write Pratt and Miao. In fact
this movement has bee conflated with crime: Trump equates Mexicans with rapists
and refugees with terrorists. Naturally
these people require punishment.
But “liberal elites” do too. There’s a straight line from harsher prison sentences to the Trumpist “Lock her up!” chant about Hillary Clinton.
All populist movements now offer some version of “Lock her up!”. Pim Siegers
a village councillor for the far-left Dutch Socialist Party
told me that when he tried to convince people that the populist Geert Wilders wouldn’t solve their problems
they often replied: “We know. But ‘they’ — the elite — don’t like him.” Voting populist is often simply a way to punish elites. One campaign poster during last year’s Brexit referendum urged
beneath a picture of the grinning politicians David Cameron and Gee Osborne: “Wipe the smile off their faces. Vote Leave.” No matter that voting Leave might make you worse off; at least it would hurt the elite too. Similarly
many poor Americans wanted to abolish Obamacare chiefly to punish Barack Obama.
Liberals still often delude themselves that today’s political battle is about which side has better solutions. When Trump proposes killing off the National Endowment for the Arts
liberals counter that the NEA costs taxpayers a pittance (less
for instance
than Trump’s weekend trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort). But smart policymaking isn’t the point. Trashing the NEA punishes liberals.
Populist leaders act out revenge fantasies for people who feel slighted. Hence that quintessential populist persona (which Trump incarnates): the troll. Trump being Trump
he sometimes turns the dial up to 11 and goes from punishment to sadism
as in his odes to waterboarding.
The joy of punishment goes back to the Old Testament
but Randy Newman captured it beautifully in his 1988 satirical song “I Want You To Hurt Like I Do” (“One thing we all have in mon/ And it’s something everyone can understand/ All over the world sing along… ”). Newman wrote the song as a counter to “We Are the World”
the liberal-solutions anthem.
American conservatives understand the joy of punishment. They promise to punish people who make “bad choices”. If you steal or have an abortion
conservatives want to lock you up; and if you can’t afford healthcare
they won’t let you have it.
Today’s PC college students also offer punishment. When a righing speaker es to campus
like Charles Murray visiting Middlebury College this month
they try to silence or attack him. It’s satisfying.
Leftist political parties used to try to hurt people too. The Bolsheviks put aristocrats up against the wall
and
for decades afterwards
the left promised to soak the rich. However
Tony Blair and Bill Clinton ended that in the 1990s. Nowadays liberal parties don’t do much hating. They might promise to keep out some immigrants or lock up criminals
but they do so regretfully. Mostly
they offer small
uninspiring solutions to people’s problems. But few believe liberal solutions any more.
By contrast
populist promises of punishment are credible. True
Trump cannot punish everyone he wants to: judges have blocked his “Muslim ban”
and Mexico won’t pay for the wall. Still
he is deporting poor Hispanic mothers and humiliating journalists. Anyway
his presidency itself is a daily punishment for liberals. Who needs solutions when you can make people hurt like you do?
Happily for American liberals
they have now found their own version of populist rage. They have finally identified someone they want to punish: Trump.