Metadata
- Author: Joseph Heath
- Full Title:: Populism Fast and Slow
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- URL:: https://josephheath.substack.com/p/populism-fast-and-slow?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
- Read date:: 2025-11-06
Highlights
a person who is both concerned by the rise of right-wing populism and possessed of a bookish disposition might turn to the academic political science literature in search of a better understanding of the phenomenon. Such a person is likely to be disappointed. (View Highlight)
New highlights added 2025-11-07
if populism is a political ideology, it’s a strange sort of ideology, because it doesn’t seem to exclude other views in the way that a conventional ideology does. (View Highlight)
If populism is merely a strategy, not an ideology, then why are certain ideas seemingly present in all populist movements (such as the hostility to foreigners, or the distrust of central banking)? (View Highlight)
Furthermore, reading the definition, it would seem as though the left should be able to get significant mileage out of populism, and yet throughout Europe the rise of populism has almost uniformly benefited the right. (View Highlight)
Because we tend to punish unusually bad behaviour and to reward unusually good behaviour, regression to the mean dictates that punishment will more often be followed by better behaviour and reward by worse behaviour. This generates the impression that, not only was the punishment effective, but the reward was counterproductiv (View Highlight)
The expert view on punishment tends to percolate out, influencing the behaviour of educational elites (and others who are inclined to defer to expert opinion). This gives rise to a set of views and practices among those elites, such as permissive parenting, abolition of corporal punishment in schools, a less punitive approach to crime, and opposition to capital punishment, which are basically out of sync with the views of the majority. This in turn leads the broader public to think that certain persistent social problems, such as juvenile delinquency or urban disorder, are a consequence of various institutions (not just the criminal justice system, but schools and parents as well) having become insufficiently punitive. (View Highlight)
In specific domains, however, a very durable elite consensus has developed. This is strongest in areas where common sense is simply wrong, and so anyone who studies the evidence, or is willing to engage in analytical reasoning, winds up sharing the elite view. In these areas, the people find it practically impossible to find allies among the cognitive elite. This generates anger and resentment, which grows over time. This reservoir of discontent creates the opportunity that is exploited by populist politicians. (View Highlight)
What is noteworthy about populists is that they do not champion all of the interests of the people, but instead focus on the specific issues where there is the greatest divergence between common sense and elite opinion, in order to champion the views of the people on these issues. (View Highlight)
a central feature of intuitive cognition is that it is “fast,” while analytical reasoning is “slow.” This means that an acceleration in the pace of communication favours intuitive over analytical thinking. Populists will always have the best 30-second TV commercials. (View Highlight)
Working through the consequences of this, it is not difficult to see why the left has been unable to get much traction out of these changes, especially in developed countries. People are not rebelling against economic elites, but rather against cognitive elites. Narrowly construed, it is a rebellion against executive function. More generally, it is a rebellion against modern society, which requires the ceaseless exercise of cognitive inhibition and control, in order to evade exploitation, marginalization, addiction, and stigma. (View Highlight)
The left, to the extent that it favours progress, is essentially committed to intensifying the features of the modern world that impose the greatest burdens of self-inhibition on individuals. (View Highlight)
it easier to understand why people get so worked up over seemingly minor issues, like language policing. The problem with demanding political correctness in speech, and punishing or ostracizing those who fail, is that it turns every conversation into a Stroop test, allowing elites the opportunity to exhibit conspicuous self-control. (View Highlight)
Elites are not just insensitive, but positively dismissive of the burdens that this imposes on many people. As a result, by performing the cognitive operation with such fluidity, they are not only demonstrating their superiority, they are rubbing other people’s faces in it. (View Highlight)
This analysis explains why populism, despite being a mere strategy, also winds up having a characteristic ideological tone and content. The key is to see it as a political strategy that privileges a particular style of cognition. (View Highlight)
Communication style. A very prominent feature of populist politicians is their speaking style, which has an unscripted, stream-of-consciousness quality (e.g. see Hugo Chavez’s Aló Presidente TV show, which one could also, totally imagine Trump doing). This is important precisely because it is the opposite of the self-controlled, calculated speaking style favored by mainstream politicians (which the French have the perfect term for: langue de bois). This is why populist politicians are perceived, by a large segment of the population, as being more “honest,” even when everything that comes out of their mouth is a lie. (View Highlight)