THE NEW NORMAL OF POPULISM: MELONI'S DISCOURSE IN THE ERA OF DEMODERNIZATION AND LIQUID MODERNITY

In her 2022 speech, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni criticized liberal democratic values, showing herself as the voice of the “real people” against corporates and intellectual elites. Her speech similar with the global rise of right-wing populism, which I'll analyze through Mudde, Touraine, and Bauman.

Cas Mudde (2004) defines populism as a thin-centered ideology that polarizing society into two opposing category: the “pure people” and the “corrupt elites.” Populists argue that large corporations and intellectuals dominate the will of the people. In return, they present themselves as the voice of the people against social engineers. Meloni’s discourse can be a good example in that situation: her “people” are those committed to tradition, and her “elites” are international institutions and progressive ideologues.

Indeed, in today’s liberal democracies, politics, while appearing on the surface as a competitive arena of struggle, has in fact turned into a political simulation—a pre-written theater stage—operating within the rules which determined by market rationality and technical governance. Behind this structure lies an ideological belief, symbolized by Fukuyama’s (1992) “end of history” thesis, that a universal and rational mind has finished politics. But, I think this explanation reduces politics from being an arena of struggle to a ground of technical compromise and to stamp conflict as irrational or outside the system.

At first look, this discourse can be seen as a call for collective belonging against neoliberal individualism, for political meaning against technocratic governance, and for identity-based commitment against consumerism. Nevertheless, when evaluated with a critical perspective, it becomes clear that this discourse, instead of liberating the individual from market domination, places them within pre-established cultural norms. Touraine says that we can’t rely on some big authority to fix today’s problems. It’s really up to us to figure out how to deal with all these global conflicts in our own lives.

This perspective is not a defense of individualism; on the contrary, it is a call to “strengthen the ability of social actors to intervene in public life” (Touraine, 2000, p. 292). Touraine, who defines this process as “demodernization,” argues that the separation of the economic and political/cultural spheres from each other creates different forms of domination over the individual. He states that individuals must become subjects to overcome this duality. The subjectified individual will be able to express their own interests, demand rights in the public sphere, and politics will be shaped not only by elites but also by the social base.

However, from a critical perspective, it can be said that this understanding of the subject does not sufficiently account for the fact that not every individual may possess such a capacity, and that this process may be limited under certain social conditions. At this point, Saba Mahmood’s approach offers an important alternative. According to Mahmood, obedience does not always mean passivity or submission to oppression; on the contrary, if the individual occupies a meaningful place within their own ethical world, this can also be a form of subjectivity (Mahmood, 2005). This can be interpreted as Touraine’s definition of the subject carrying a universalist character and bringing us closer to the Western-centered understanding of the rational individual.

The populist politics I previously described as the “new normal” can be observed today in different geographies around the world. To understand the conditions that give rise to populism and why these discourses are approved by so many people, it is possible to think within the framework of Bauman’s concept of “liquid modernity.” Bauman states that in this liquid age, where individualism and globalization are dominant, people rapidly break away from the world they know, and constant change and crises create intense fear and anxiety. This fear revealed the need for security than for freedom. The origin of this situation can be traced back to the process of breaking away from the welfare state with the global neoliberal wave after the 1980s. In the age of neoliberal policies, the individual, as a kind of homo economicus, is crushed under a serious burden, both mentally and physically. Meloni’s speech directly addresses this existential uncertainty.

By proposing an unchangeable, essential identity such as being Italian, Christian, and a mother, it offers her followers a sense of security against the shocking variability of liquid life. However, according to Bauman, the concept of community in liquid modernity often implies submission. Such structures “expect strict commitment to provide protection” (Bauman, 2001, p. 5), and this situation restricts meaningful life rather than encouraging it.

As a result, it appears that in this era of multiple crises, individuals struggle to choose between market domination and community domination. In my opinion, what needs to be done at this point is to identify the reasons behind this wave without caricaturing populism and populist actors, and to give more importance to local forms of knowledge and epistemologies, rather than producing universalist solutions to this global phenomenon.

References

Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Polity Press.

Bauman, Z. (2001). Community: Seeking safety in an insecure world. Polity Press.

Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. Free Press.

Mahmood, S. (2005). Politics of piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton University Press.

Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00135.x

Touraine, A. (2000). Can we live together? Equality and difference. Stanford University Press.