Donald Trump could not have made it clearer that he is a threat to democracy. Listening to his inauguration speech, one could be forgiven for thinking that the US had just been liberated from a foreign power. The president announced that the people ruled again, after the overthrow of a hated alien “establishment” which had occupied Washington. Has Trump revealed that he wants to govern as a populist?
All populists oppose “the people” to a corrupt, self-serving elite the way Trump did. But not everyone who criticizes the powerful is a populist. What really distinguishes the populist is his claim that he and only he represents the real people. As Trump explained, because he now controls the executive, the people control the government. By implication, all opposition is illegitimate – if you oppose Trump, you oppose the people.
It is a deeply authoritarian pattern familiar from leaders such as Hugo Chávez, the self-declared illiberal Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and Turkish president Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan. Trump could not have made it clearer to the world just how dangerous for democracy he is.
Chávez was fond of the slogan “With Chávez the people rule.” Ironically, this equation of the people and its one faithful representative means that the populist ultimately does not assume any political responsibility. Trump pretends to be just the chief executive of the people’s authentic will. In the same manner, Erdoğan this past summer reacted to all criticisms of his plan to reintroduce the death penalty with the claim: “What counts is what my people say.”
Never mind that he had told “his people” what to say in the first place and remains the people’s voice only legitimate interpreter. By definition, then, dissent is undemocratic. And all checks and balances – which are completely normal in a system of divided powers – are simply obstacles to realizing the people’s will.
Some liberals have naively been hoping that Trump would at last signal an intention to “unite” and “heal” a divided country. After the election Trump tweeted messages such as “We will unite and we will win, win, win!;” in his inauguration speech, he again invoked a “united” and “unstoppable” America. In fact, all populists constantly talk about “unifying the people”.
But it is always unification on the people’s terms – or else. As Trump already put in a little-noticed campaign speech in May: “The only important thing is the unification of the people – because the other people don’t mean anything.” In other words, even those who like real citizens might have their status as properly belonging to the people put into doubt, if they do not share the populist’s vision of how exactly the people should come together.
Every populist will try to unite his people – the only authentic people – by keeping up confrontations with those who are seen as not being part of the “real America”, the “real Turkey” and so on. Polarization is not a problem for populists; it is a means of securing power. Hence it is exceedingly naive to think that sooner or later a populist politician will “reach out to the other side”.
It is actually in Trump’s interest to see clashes on America’s streets; it is in his interest to face stiff opposition, as long as he can successfully portray the latter as “un-American” to his supporters. For Trump, “the people” is only a homogeneous Trump people. Divisiveness will continue, since populists rule by dividing. American democracy faces a true threat.