The Demos research on populist parties: misleading findings, worrying motives
There have been a couple of posts up at Liberal Conspiracy recently, promoting or reporting on newly published Demos research into the views of online supporters of ”populist” groups and parties in Europe. One research report covers the findings from all 11 European countries covered by the research, while another focuses on the English Defence League (RDL).
I’ve now read the reports. The Europe-wide report in particular contains assertions which are not supported by the data collected, and which actually make me wonder about the motives for the research, and in turn about Demos’s integrity as a self-avowed ‘centre-left’ think tank.
First, there is this statement:
It is clear that a significant number of Europeans are concerned about the erosion of their national culture in the face of immigration, the growth of Islam in Europe, and the blurring of national borders as a result of European integration and globalisation. (p21, Europe report)
The data provided simply doesn’t back up this assertion. Such concerns may be raised by those responding to the online survey, but they are clearly not representative of Europeans; they are affiliated to populist groups/parties, and that is how they come to be responding to the survey.
Table 4 (p.60) makes itself makes it clear that they are not representative, with 48% of BNP supporters, for example, naming immigration in their top two concerns, as opposed to just 6% in the general population. It makes no sense to jump from there to an assertion that ‘sigificant numbers’ of British people are concerned “about the erosion of their national culture in the face of immigration”, as even the 6% will not necessarily link their concerns about immigration to erosion of culture.
Then there is this statement:
Despite being referred to as ‘far-right’, many of these groups are not easily placed according to traditional political categories, often combining elements of leftwing and rightwing philosophy, mixed with populist language and rhetoric…..
On economic policy, however, the current economic climate has also heightened rhetoric beyond national cultural protection to include national economic interests, and workers’ rights — typically the language of the left. These groups are increasingly critical of the European Union, international capitalism and globalisation.
There is simply no data to back up the assertion that members of any of these groups can be readily associated with the left. Yes, parties like the BNP may add the occasional leftish statement for marketing purposes, but this is irrelevant to the study findings; both reports stress that formal party statements bear little relation to their online activists views.
Being critical of the EU and globalisation is not a specifically leftwing trait, and the paper acknowledges that only 4% have any motivations associated with economics for joining these parties/groups (Europe report p.52).
The EDL report states that 26% of EDL supporters place ‘lack of jobs’ as one of their two biggest concerns (p.21), but this is only slightly higher than the national average (19%), and is probably correlated to the fact that there are higher levels of unemployment in those surveyed than in the general population. In any event, being worried about lack of jobs does not necessarily put you on the left.
More fundamentally, to peddle the notion that any of these groups can be associated in any way with the political left is ludicrous. Left and left liberal thought is rooted, from Rousseau, through the Enlightenment and Marx to democratic socialism/liberalism, in fundamental principles of equality and respect for others.
The left has debated long and hard about how universal principles of equality square with the right to cultural distinctiveness (Charles Taylor’s Multiculturalism: the politics of recognition providing the definitive summary of the debate), and the debate is not resolved. The point, though, is that these are left-liberal concerns; while it is correct to point out the populist parties may “lay claim to the mantle of the Enlightenment, espousing support for the fundamentally liberal values of free speech, democracy and equality” (European report, p.26), it is incorrect to accept this claim at face value, because these groups’ actions on the ground show that they are NOT interested in these values.
So the question remains. What are Demos thinking, such that one of the reports’ authors offer this advice in his Liberal Conspiracy article:
This may be uncomfortable for some left-wingers. But we will not engage supporters of these groups if we do not understand their concerns.
I can’t help feeling that “understand” here actually means to “accede to”, on the basis that these groups’ concerns are shared by a large number of the population (which the data does not show), and on the basis that they have some kind of leftist legitimacy. They do not. These parties and groups are of the far-right, and need to be “engaged” with as such.
Hi,
I’d like to address a couple of your concerns regarding the report and my Liberal Conspiracy blog post. Thank for reading the report – I hope this may at least partially reduce your concerns.
On your first point, you are right that the data does not tell us about the concerns of the population of Western Europe in general, and I don’t think the report ever directly makes this inference. I still think it’s true, though, that many are unhappy about immigration and cultural erosion, and there is evidence for this – for instance, take a look at chapter 3 of Matthew Goodwin’s recent ‘Right Response’ report.
Your second point about our comment on these groups using left-wing ideas and rhetoric: this was in the background chapter and was not meant to be based on the Facebook data we received. There is evidence for this – just check out some of the groups’ websites! And we don’t claim that many of the actual online supporters use left-wing rhetoric (though a few of them did) – just the groups themselves. All the report was trying to point out was that the term ‘far right’ wouldn’t be quite appropriate for some of these groups. Particularly on economic policy, some of their views are best not described as right-wing – e.g. the True Finns.
Finally, the quote you give of my Liberal Conspiracy article: when I used the word “engage” I 100% did not mean “accede to”. My personal view is this: I don’t think these supporters should be acceded to. I think they should be challenged. But to challenge them we have to know what their views are! I know there are plenty of people who use the word “engage” as a way of legitimising people’s views or actions. But I didn’t. I fundamentally disagree with these views. I want to stop these organisations from succeeding without giving in to their demands. On this I agree with you.
Thanks,
Marley
Marley
Thanks for this constructive engagmement. i’m just finishing something and will reply around 4pm.</strong></strong>
Marley
Thanks again for the constructive engagement with what is, I acknowledge, a somewhat spikey review – often I feel this is the best way (esp as a small insignificant blogger) to get debate going, and this is such an important area.
I will read the report frmo Matthew Goodwin, certainly. Having said that, I expect a credible research report to stand on its own terms. You can indeed claim that there is no direct inference about wider views, but I do think that the ‘significant number’ phrase I quote in the OP above is designed, whether consciously or not, to get readers to make the link.
On point 2, again I’d say that the research should stand on its own terms if it’s to be taken as valid (though I accept it’s up to me to read references if they are supplied). I accept also that there MAY be leftwing stances on these discussion fora, but I can’t see any that I’d recognise/accept as leftwing in the reports (either the Europe-wide or the EDL). Ive not seen the Finn report – is it available now?
But my main argument here is that some of what your analytic framework seems to conceive of as ‘leftwing’ is highly contestable as such. In fact Mulder at comment #3 here draw this out better than my clumsy attempt to do so. I do thing it’s very controversial to start ascribing EDL et al views to the Left without due rigour and proper basis for your stance, as it simply allows the argument to be picked up by the right: ‘Well Demos says the EDL are lefties’ through the increasingly well-known art of selective quotation (I happily admit to being adept at it myself, and blogging norms make it nearly impossible to avoid).
In the end, Marley, I’m interested in what happens because of this report, not the report per se. I acknowledge entirely that you know the different ways in which the words ‘engage with’ can be construed, but the unfortunate reality is this: a trawl through the Liberal Conspiracy article comments suggest that the term “engage with”, and the whole of the article, is being taken by people on the right as a legitimation by a centre-left think tank of their views, and an increasing ‘common-sensization’ of multiculturalism, for example, as an uncontested pejorative term (see one right-wing twat’s question to me which I only just noticed).
This is not to downplay the overall validity of your and Demos’s research agenda. It is important to know what makes populist parties and groups tick (and my colleague here Carl is very keen on that). But in such a politicised agenda area, where the rabid, racist right has the upper hand in the discourse struggle, presentation of findings and analysis, so as to avoid unintended consequences, is vital for the Left, and I think on balance Demos has failed here.
With your permission, Marley, I’ll suggest to Sunny that this exchange might go to LibCon for a wider airing, though how Sunny might present it, if at all (difficult stylistically) is up to him. It’d be a shame if the polite and informed discussion that you have initiated with your courteous reply to an ‘attack post’ were limited to the low-level readership of this lowly blog.
Thanks for the courteous response, Paul. I’d just like to add a couple of other points.
On point 2, have you looked at Annex 2 of the European report? This gives details of each of the groups surveyed, including the True Finns (there’s no specific report on the True Finns out though).
Also, I don’t think the reports wanted to give the impression that these groups are left-wing – I certainly wouldn’t describe the EDL as left-wing. The issue is that some of these groups (though not, as far as I know, the EDL) promote left-wing economics along with other right-wing views. My take on this is that the economic philosophy of these groups tends to be populist. By this I mean that they their economic views are in line with the instinctive ‘gut-feeling’ attitudes of (generally speaking) the country’s people – so, for instance, more left-wing in Finland and France and more right-wing in Austria.
Another important point – I think we should make sure that discussions on this issue are not too UK-centred. The BNP is a tiny threat in Britain when compared to anti-immigration populist parties in Austria, Finland, the Netherlands etc. The worrying fact is that in some countries lots of people are voting for these parties – not just a tiny fringe of society.
And please do contact Sunny about this, though I’d need to run it past others at Demos before anything went up.
There is a tendency from the right wing blogosphere (especially Conservativehome) who call the BNP “left wing” because they support economic protectionism, import tariffs, subsidies to British owned industries etc. This just shows how poor a grasp of History these Tory bloggers have. Their own party were the party of protectionism throughout the 19th century, and the issue of protectionism is what split the party (with the Peelites supporting free trade)
Moreover, some of the Tory MPs in rural seats are suspicious about free trade, because it could adversely affect some of the farmers whose votes they rely on. I read an article by George Eustace making a similar argument last year.
Don’t forget Alan Clark, who on Question Time once opposed his own government awarding a defence contract to a foreign firm.
The philosophy of Tory Protectionism has definitely weakened substantially since the 80s, but to associate Economic Nationalism with the political left is completely bogus. The Left in the UK may be opposed to free trade, but not for the same reasons that the far right are opposed to free trade. I do think that there was a time when free trade was the more progressive alternative compared to protectionism (which is why associating Adam Smith with the political right is misleading) but that time no longer exists.
I’m glad the Left in this country have enough strength in their convictions to look beyond superficial similarities between their economic views and those of the populist right. Unfortunately, I think this is less true in the US, where the leader of the Socialist Party backed Pat Buchanan because of his opposition to globalisation and free trade, overlooking the fact that the guy holds some extremely dodgy views on other subjects.
Mulder
I have referenced this very helpful comment in my response to Marley above, as it says better what I was trying to say in the OP. Thanks.
I am not altogether sure what you mean by ‘the leader of the Socialist Party backed Pat Buchanan’.
Would this be the same SPUSA that still runs candidates of its own in every presidential election?
You may well be alluding to its 2008 presidential candidate having backed Buchanan in 2000 – but Brian Moore didn’t even join the SPUSA until 2007 and has in the course of a uniformly unsuccessful political career stood as a Green, a Socialist, a Democrat and even as a Republican.
And on a slightly unrelated note, does anyone else find Yvette Cooper a bit too “authoritarian” when it comes to issues of Law and Order and also immigration? She was right to challenge May on the relaxing of border controls, but I just felt a bit uneasy the way she was linking migrants with criminals and terrorists. Perhaps I misunderstood her, but I think toning down on the language would help IMO.