Why The Populist Story Is Failing... and What's Next

As a story, populism is a simple one. It promises that all the complexities of life can be evaded by simple, straightforward talking leaders. The type of strong leader that 'gets things done'. It's easy to see its appeal. Yet looking at the graveyard of failed ideological politics in our times, even populism has now added its tombstone. So today, mostly from a storytelling point of view, we'll discuss how and why populism has failed. And then we'll paint a picture for humanity to create a completely new story from its ashes.

(The Dictator - credits - Sacha Baron Cohen)

Morality is about reality

In a vast ocean of indecisive and often corrupt bureaucratic institutions in governments worldwide, it should have been easy for modern-day populism to succeed. We envision a Churchill-like attitude, with strong leaders who bang their fists on the table to force matters unstuck, which is exactly the story people wish to see and hear in the complex, challenging and oft-frightening world of today. As a result, we've seen the rise of populist leaders worldwide in recent times. Yet we've also - often immediately - seen them fail miserably. Why?

The answer is: because they did not accept reality.

The thing with Churchill? He was a strong, even autocratic leader. Yet he led from a place where he had accepted reality, in a stoic philosophy manner: the ability to recognize, acknowledge and separate one's emotions from the actual, real situation.

The end result was that Churchill was able to make banging-fists-on-the-table-like decisions that were always the right decisions. And what we need to do today is explain again to ourselves what that word 'right' means. What is the right decision as opposed to the wrong one? What determines right or wrong in the first place?

The answer to that may surprise you: morality is about reality.

Truth isn't moral. It's a survival mechanism.

Our concept of what is 'good or bad' and 'right or wrong' is based on our survival mechanisms. The morally good/right decision is equal to the decision that allows us to better survive and thrive. The bad/wrong decision is equal to the decision that endangers our survival chances.

Good or bad are therefore not moral, but primal. In effect, it's about how well you can accept the real, objective truth in front of you.

If you 'live in your mind' and look at uncomfortable and perilous situations subjectively - as in 'from your own truth' - you are more likely to become the victim of these situations. If you can recognize your emotions and 'your own truth' and can separate them from the real, objective situation, you are more likely to make the right survival decisions.

In essence, it's all about the story you tell yourself, and whether that's based on real, tangible, objective truth.

Let's use an example. Say, a fire erupts in the house. The first person to accept this objective fact - regardless of their feelings - are the first to make the right survival decisions, such as running away, letting the dog escape the house first, or grabbing a blanket to quell the fire, or going for the fire extinguisher. In storytelling terms they have accepted or embraced the conflict or friction, rather than avoid it.

The last to accept this objective truth - usually overcome with emotions such as panic - is the one who has the lowest chances of survival, with 'bad' decision making such as the freeze-response or running away too quickly while the fire can still be quelled.

Acceptance vs Denial in Storytelling

We call this 'denial of reality'. And it is a normal, human response that under the right (or is it wrong?) circumstances can happen to anyone. We can however train our minds through practices such as stoicism and meditation, but also military training or martial arts and yoga to separate fact from emotions. Through them we train our minds to deal with uncomfortable situations such as standing in a painful pose for a long time, or dealing with punches coming towards you.

These practices train your mind that despite your fear-based emotional response, you can accept reality 'as is' and react accordingly. In effect, it's about reducing stress and anxiety levels. Both in the long term as in the immediate moment. If you have long-term lower stress-levels, your response to danger will likely be more reality-based, since you live less in a 'fearful mind' and are more connected with your surroundings. If you've also trained yourself to deal with uncomfortable situations in some way, then your response in the moment will be calmer and more effective.

In storytelling this becomes even more interesting. Stories are equipment for living, conveying information in a compelling way, teaching us lessons to better survive and thrive. All in the safe space of a story, as opposed to a real perilous situation. In effect we prepare ourselves through emotional experiences in stories on how best to respond to all kinds of situations - from love to war to sports to politics and everything in between - by training the mind beforehand with a story.

In storytelling this 'acceptance versus denial' mechanic is often translated in the 'good guy vs bad guy' dynamic. The bad guy in this case is the man, woman or persona who does not acknowledge reality. Who is in denial of objective truth.

Think of Bond villains. They always say they are justified to use violence or take away freedoms from others because of some reason... yet they are the ones initiating the hurt on others. They did not acknowledge or accept the reality of their own fears out of pride or some other reason, and as such are in denial that their actions harm others. This denial of reality, and denial of their own fears, is deemed as morally bad, because it hurts our survival chances as a species.

Truth is important to a social species

The reason why we view those choices as immoral is because we are social animals. We rely on other members of our species to survive and thrive. Just like wolves, bees, rats, otters, elephants, chimpanzees and lions (and many others), we need to form packs - or as we'd call it 'teams' or 'societies' - to allow each individual to better survive and thrive. If an individual in the species' group is in denial of reality, this individual animal reduces the survival chances of the rest of the group.

Which brings us back to populists. A populist, strong-man-type leader can thrive if they use their banging fists to resolve challenges in reality. They will however fail if they are in denial of objective reality. The dictators of old could get away with not following objective reality. But in these days, in the postmodern world with all its media, reality always comes back to bite you up the behind. Or as Marcus Aurelius would put it, paraphrasing; real men don't hide for the truth and accept their own demons, as is a common theme in all storytelling.

Many of you will by now question the words 'objective reality' and might argue that all reality is in the eyes of the beholder. In my works and blogs I'll show (and have shown) more detailed explanations of this philosophical question, but for now, let me briefly explain how humanity in its philosophical storytelling history, handles that question. The answer is this: it comes in phases based on anxiety levels.

Objective versus subjective reality in philosophy

In times of low anxiety in human societies we often see the concept of subjective reality thrive. If people are relatively safe and are allowed to thrive, individualism starts to thrive, and in that wake we see people flock to the idea of reality being in that 'eye of the beholder' which is the most extreme form of individualism (my truth is the only relevant truth). It's the kind of moment that philosophers question if there is such a thing as objective truth if it isn't observed by the individual: "If you did not directly see the tree fall in the forest... has it really fallen?"

In more uncertain times, philosophers revert back to objective truth since it serves as humanities survival mechanism. They will say: "If you can't except the objective reality that a tree can really fall over when you're not directly looking at it, it will probably fall on your head and kill you where you stand."

You're feeling me right?

In recent decades, with the fall of The Iron Curtain and Apartheid, the advent of the internet, and Neo-liberal democracies growing worldwide, individualism has thrived. It's Post-Modernism where we can all form our own truth and our own little experience bubble. Yet now that the cracks of Neo-Liberalism start to show, with its overproduction and over-consumption leading to tension worldwide - in other words a threatening situation - we can see an immediate jolt back towards objective truth.

Or to make my point in a slightly more emotionally impactful way... While you were busy flubbering around in your little post-modern bubble, we're all busy chopping up that fallen tree you dumb-ass.

A few examples of populist failure

A great example at the time of writing is the current populist government in my small home country The Netherlands. They have formed a coalition on several promises, including the number one dossier of my country since 2019, the so-called Nitrogen Crisis. Over the past decades, mono-culture farming and non-sustainable construction have filled the soil with nitrogen. As a result, the soil has become poisoned, threatening our food supply, the health of nature, our breathable air, and our famous clean water supply. Long periods of drought due to climate change have only added to the problem.

That is the objective truth. So much so, that for instance virtually all of the big construction projects have been at a stand still since 2019.

Emotionally however, this has been a hot topic, full of protests and even violence from a subsection of farmers. Now, we have to weigh the future of farmers against the future of the other people. A result was found in a 20 billion euro investment fund that would buy-out the heaviest polluting farms and allowed all other farmers to transition into bio-agriculture multi-culture farming through subsidies.

This solution however was not accepted by a large farmer political party, who stayed in denial of the reality of the soil-poisoning. They ran a populist campaign and gained coalition power. Now however, this power has virtually evaporated in record breaking time. They have been unable to come up with a better alternative than the investment fund, have stopped all investment in the transition all together, damaging the farmers themselves, have postponed all decision-making and within a few months people - including their own farmers - have soured on them and given them a free fall in the polls.

There are plenty more examples of populism failing in quite bizarre ways. The Brexit has backfired spectacularly. The French politician Le Pen campaigning against the EU was arrested for privately hoarding and embezzling the very thing she publicly denounced: EU money. What should have been an easy win for the all-mighty Russian army landed in the mud of Ukraine on day two of the invasion. And a sure fire win for conservatives in Canada was upended and given to a boring 'leftie' because of the fall out of America going populist.

Of course, the real elephant in the room is that example of the USA under the Trump administration. The denial of legal, immigration, climate, government, tariff and inflation realities has backfired. And its not the backfiring per sé that is notable. It is mostly the speed with which the backfiring took place.

As a result of the reality-denials they have been forced to backtrack policy on DEI, immigration, union activities, anti-law firm action, foreign student visas, national weather service, science investments such as women's health programs, university grands, tariffs, Covid testing, veteran affairs, the sale of federal buildings, and much, much more. While reinstating hundreds of thousands of government employers that were previously fired, and constantly losing in hilarious fashion in courts, with judges calling the Trump DOJ lawyers out for conduct of the average 3-year old.

Of course, there has been real damage to real people on an individual level, especially the cruel and unwarranted deportations. And there will be more damage to come for many, if not almost all Americans as the push for a fascist regime continues. Plus, America's democracy needs a system overhaul first and foremost. All those things are true. Yet on the larger scale, this US populist flood is failing, quite spectacularly, with record low approval ratings and rebukes on every legal corner.

The populist storytelling angle

Now, before you read these words with schadenfreude in mind, you may want to hold out on the champagne. I will argue here that the failure of populist political movements isn't necessarily a sign that things will get better, but rather that we still haven't found a good way to tackle today's problems. And that the last resort we always have - the proverbial populist banging on the table - has now also failed.

In essence, populist stories gained traction because we really are in a lot of peril, and people want simplifications and simpler solutions to a world that is warming up, is full of in-fighting and losing sight of the middle classes. In other words, the failures of other ideological movements that have governed these past decades, broke ground for populism to rise. Now that it has, and is immediately crumbling in such a spectacularly rapid way, the real objective truth above it all is this: we have no ideological movement in humanity today that can successfully tackle our problems.

We may have fringe movements that partially solve our challenges, but no ideology, not even populism, has been able to effectively better our reality. And with the amount of problems we have, that is very, very bad sign. No one's fist is banging on the table. So, what can we do?

The storytelling angle

Now, the storytelling angle to this truth is this: when we are lost and have no answers, humanity must go within, and we must do so collectively. And with 'we' I mean 'we the people'.

That has always been the story when leadership failed. We have faced leaderless times in human history before. We've always come out if it with new ideas on how society should work. And even though it is a natural state of a social animal to have leaders of the pack, in the end it is the structures of the many that outweigh the powers of the few.

Another reason why Churchill was successful is because he knew what he was fighting for: the people. In turn, the people instinctively knew they could count on him. The failure of the populist story today is therefore twofold. It is not only the denial of reality, it is also that despite their name derived from populus they are not truly fighting for the people. The reality is that populists have by and large been elected because we have no alternatives left in a leaderless world, and they made populist promises. Promises that are so impossible to keep, they crumble within weeks, sometimes days even.

This doesn't mean their power is gone, or that they will not achieve some short term victories in societies that have so many fearful men, such as in Hungary and Russia. It also does not mean that other parties on the ideological scale, such as those on the left, have the solutions, other than woke finger wagging that ultimately achieves nothing. The deepest fundamental objective truth under all of this is unfortunately the following: no leaders on the left nor right have the goods to lead in this era.

And that leads to only one conclusion: the next wave of leaders will come from the ordinary folk, or the common peoples, the pleo or plebs as the Etruscans called it. The populus if you will. So, maybe... after all... populism isn't crumbling. Maybe the irony is that true populism might not even have risen up just yet.

And if that turns out to be the truth that keeps us alive, I'm all for it.

Luv, as always,

Rogier van Kralingen

And check out the book The Whole Story - The Ultimate Guide to Storytelling.

The Whole Story