Why Populism is the Sugar, Salt, and Fat of Our Politics. . . with Variations: A Reflection

Abstract

Populism is hard to contain in across democracies because it is the sugar, salt, and fat of contemporary politics. I borrow from research on ultraprocessed foods to develop this metaphor. The modern food industry creates ultraprocessed foods by oversupplying naturally occurring macronutrients (sugar, salt, and fat) and recombining them to create new foods that are distortions of the real thing. These new pretend foods are both addictive and toxic. Likewise, I argue that authoritarian-populist leaders take natural tenets of democracy—for example, policies to help the voiceless (sugar), competition against opponents (salt), and reform agenda saturation (fat)—and supply them in combinations and quantities that end up distorting democracy. The result is a new regime that veers easily into authoritarianism (toxicity) while in the process generating hard-core followership (addictiveness). I also discuss the way authoritarian populists from both the left and the right have emulated each other since the 1980s, while introducing their own tweaks to their steals. In the end, despite important differences, both left and right-wing populism are far more similar to each other than they each care to recognize.