Trust in Attack. No need to "ride protest" if you can ride populism

Naturally, for a campaign that came at an awkward moment and caught the players unprepared, the parties split into two camps - some are afraid to promise anything (we've heard the blabbermouth: "We don't promise, we offer"), while the others promise everything and a lot of it.

The election struggle is not expressed in a competition between strategies, but is exhausted by mutual accusations, according to which one camp is that of the cowards, and the other - that of the reckless. As expected, the first camp belongs to those who have and had chances to participate in the executive branch, and the second - to those who have nothing to lose.

If there is one thing that sociologists agree on, it is the assumption that only populist parties triumphed after the protests. For the leading parties, for which sociological agencies guarantee parliamentary representation, the rating varies daily as a result of the usual pre-election waves of compromising information and scandalous statements. This dynamic does not achieve a result more certain than short-term inertia, in which the winner today may be one, and tomorrow another.

The situation is different for Ataka, however. Here are the data that clearly show its acquired lead:

According to the study, however, other nationalist parties are not growing or are declining in the polls (1.3% for NFSB, 1% - VMRO-BND, GORDa Bulgaria - 0.7%. ) This means that voters recognize only Ataka as a nationalist alternative. The reason is that Siderov's party has two advantages - 1) serious enough trust (it is relatively familiar to the electorate ,) to be represented in parliament and still be attractive to the far-right voter as a participant in Parliament and 2) it has its own justification for not fulfilling its promises - Siderov's regular argument is: "We have never been participants in the executive branch, we were not given the opportunity", and when he is asked what the reason for switching to the GERB team is, he answers: "At one point we had common demands, but then they broke their promises and betrayed us, now we have to punish them." Both justifications "ignite the passion" of almost compassion and revanchism among Ataka's sympathizers and preserve its solid electorate.

Ataka also benefited from the protest calls for a change in the political system, because it turned out to be the only authentic anti-system party with prospects for parliamentary participation. This is also the reason why, according to Alpha Research, the threat to Ataka’s rating is not the other nationalist parties, but the possible consolidated association on the street. Once again, circumstances favored Siderov’s party – the unification of the protest formations never took place. Roughly speaking, chance and social tension suddenly put all the trump cards in Ataka’s hands and allowed Siderov to “untie the horse of populism in the pre-election period.”

Here is how political scientist Kas Mude defines populist rhetoric: “Populism is used to describe opportunistic policies that aim to (quickly) please the people/voters – and thus buy their support, rather than (rationally) seeking the ‘best solution’. Examples are tax cuts just before an election, or promising financial benefits to everyone, without additional harm.”

Here is what Siderov promises:

Minimum salary of 1000 BGN.

Minimum pension of 500 BGN.

Here is the second part of Mude's definition:

"I define populism as an ideology that believes that society is ultimately divided into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, the "pure people" versus the "corrupt elite."

Here is a quote from the notorious 20-point program of the Ataka party:

"18. Conducting Operation "Clean Hands". Investigating the criminally rich and all deals involving politicians."

An important characteristic of populism, which even better facilitates the understanding of the pre-election situation in our country, is the fact that it parasitizes on an ideology emptied of concrete content. It is motivated purely emotionally, in the form of protest. Accordingly, the populist can quite easily make promises inherent in parties from the entire political spectrum, without being accused of being programless. And the “soup” of protest demands, from which nothing meaningful crystallized, facilitated this process. It is in this way that Ataka has the opportunity to capture the electorate from all parties that are progressively losing trust.

Voters must be on the alert for one thing at all costs – the most harmful weapon of populism is hatred. On a European scale, Ataka has long emerged as a “twin party” of the most harmful demagogic formations, lowering the level of political dialogue in the Union to a particularly low and dangerous level. Here are examples of hate speech that claims to identify problems, but never solutions:

“The European Union is an economic failure of mass unemployment and low growth.” – Nigel Farage, the MEP who spoke out against Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants in the UK

"The Quran is a fascist book that encourages violence. This book should be banned" - Geert Wilders, founder of the Dutch Party for Freedom, popular in our country for its anti-Bulgarian polemics.

"(...) all sorts of statements by all kinds of gay organizations, pederast-lesbian gatherings, and so on are widely and powerfully reflected. (...) - Volen Siderov

If we look at the populist polemics from Eastern Europe, we will find more Siderov “doubles”. However, the circumstances in our country replace the anti-European theme in economic terms with that of the need to catch up with Europe and to protect and promote local production. It is no coincidence that the phrases with the highest frequency of use in the vocabulary of Siderov and Viktor Orban (the Prime Minister of Hungary who has gained attention through his authoritarian nationalist actions) are “Central European” and “colonialism”.

Here are the obvious similarities in the rhetoric of the outspoken populists Viktor Orban and Volen Siderov:

"The cabinet will continue to forcibly lower the prices of public services so that they fall to the average European level" - Orban

"Every Bulgarian investor, entrepreneur and producer has an advantage over every foreigner until our standard of living is equal to the average European one." - Volen

“At least 50% of the banking sector in Hungary should be owned by Hungarians. The country has too many banks that are foreign-owned. Local companies should be freed from foreign currency loans.” – Orbán

"I propose 51% state participation and 49% that will be controlled by the people." - Volen on the energy sector

It is extremely important to increase the sensitivity of the voter to such harmful lurches towards xenophobia, protectionism, nationalization and mass search for criminal responsibility. Unfulfilled promises in an election campaign are inevitably countless, but they turn into a danger of radicalism in a time of value vacuum, lack of strategies and sham priorities, changing every day. The protests and the vulgar tone of the campaign prove that the situation in our country is exactly that.

Did you like it? Take a minute to support the EKIP on Patreon!