Left Populism

 Ever since the Democratic loss in the 2024 election (and, really, long before), we've heard periodic calls for a revitalized left-wing populism as an antidote to the right-wing racist and nationalist populism of Donald Trump. In the most simplistic form of the argument, people point to the resentment that right-wing populists currently try to foment against immigrants and minorities. They argue that, instead of seeking to counteract or subdue these political passions outright, the Left should instead seek to channel and redirect them against the working class's "true enemies": namely, the rich, and big corporations. 

Well, in the progressive social media reaction to the murder of United Health CEO Brian Thompson, the proponents of this argument essentially got what they wanted. The politics of rage, hatred, and envy were indeed stirred up and redirected against a left-wing–approved target: the CEO of a major corporation. And the results, I fear, are not pretty. Random strangers on X and Instagram celebrated the shooting death of a defenseless man—a father of two—in a public street. They heaped schadenfreude on the victim and his family before the body was cold. 

Behold: here is the left-wing populism people craved. Funny how it ended up looking just as violent, cruel, and fascist as the right-wing variety. 

Maybe, it turns out, deliberately fanning the flames of populist resentment is a dangerous game regardless of the intended target. Maybe "left-wing" populism is just as ugly as the right-wing variety, in practice: because both traffic in the destructive and futile passion of revenge. I'm reminded of Matthew Arnold's description, in his classic work of Victorian-era social criticism, Culture and Anarchy, of the "eternal spirit of the Populace." It still reads as an apt description today of populism and mob psychology in politics—the roots of which, Arnold warns, we have within us all: 

[E]very time that we snatch up a vehement opinion in ignorance and passion, every time that we long to crush an adversary by sheer violence, every time that we are envious, every time that we are brutal, every time that we adore mere power or success, every time that we add our voice to swell a blind clamour against some unpopular personage, every time that we trample savagely on the fallen, who can doubt, asks Arnold, that here, each may find in his own bosom the eternal spirit of the Populace, and that there needs only a little help from circumstances to make it triumph in him untameably?

Arnold's description of the passions of the nineteenth century mob—the vindictive posse that Elias Canetti would dub the "baiting pack"—could apply to innumerable episodes of cruelty on social media. But I find it particularly apropos with regard to the public reaction to the Thompson murder. Did anti-corporate populists on social media long to crush an adversary by sheer violence? Apparently, they did. Were they envious? Check. (Viz. "eat the rich.") Brutal? Check. Did they worship mere power and success? Check to that, too—the "successful" assassin was applauded far more than a failed one would have been. 

Did people on social media, in the wake of Thompson's assassination, add their voices to swell a blind clamour against some unpopular personage? You better believe it. How else to describe the vicious loathing that they heaped upon the victim? Did they snatch up a vehement opinion in ignorance and passion? Oh, did they ever. How many people who had never spent a day of their lives thinking about health policy before this event suddenly felt perfectly comfortable setting the worth of Thompson's life at zero, based on the shallowest and vaguest populist sloganeering they saw on social media?

Finally, did they "trample savagely on the fallen"? Indeed. Behold the endless schadenfreude that people expressed—even from such "mainstream" platforms as SNL—while Thompson's family was still grieving. Within hours of his death, people were already mocking him and celebrating the aggressor—the populist "folk-hero" who had the "courage" to shoot down an unarmed civilian in cold blood and deprive two children of a father. Here, in such cultural moment, we do indeed see the "eternal spirit of the Populace." This is what the vaunted left-wing populism looks like. And I think I'll pass on this variety as well.