Low Style the High Way:Rhetorical Mainstreaming of Populism

To understand the workings of populist discourse and be able to react constructively we must be able to recognize its constituent elements. This paper hones in on one commonly accepted element of populist discourse: appeals to the gap between ‘the People’ and ‘the Elite’ and examines how scapegoating as a rhetorical strategy creating division between ‘them’ and ‘us’ works as an attractive way of presenting a situation where the causes are complicated and/or when the community does not want to hold those responsible to account. The key text for analysis is a debate book written by a relatively unknown Danish politician. In his 2017 book “The Tyranny of the Learned Class – How The Creative Class Creates Inequality and Undermines the World’s Best Society” [De lærdes tyranni – Hvordan den kreative klasse skaber ulighed og undergraver verdens bedste samfund] Social Democrat Kaare Dybvad criticized the so-called creative class for pulling Denmark in a direction at odds with the wishes of ‘the people’. With what can be characterized as an anti-intellectual scapegoating tactic Dybvad identified the creative elite as responsible for tricking (with their “eloquence” and “high ideals”) the people into promoting policies that ultimately work to the detriment of the common people. This paper focuses on the how of the populist elements in the book: How does the author of the book (who holds a MS in Geography) present himself as a credible spokesperson for ‘the people’, how does he constitute his readership as ‘the people’, and how does he argue his case that the problems besetting Denmark are caused by an intellectual elite placed both inside the Social Democratic party and outside? The paper pursues these questions primarily through close textual analysis employing contemporary rhetorical theory and critical methods including the 2nd persona, iconicity, constitutive rhetoric, and the scapegoat mechanism. In so doing the paper responds specifically to the cfp’s
The chapter presents a rhetorical analysis of a political newsletter from the Danish People’s Party. Drawing on Ostiguy’s “high/low” distinction, Moffitt and Tormey’s conceptualisation of populism as a political style, Saurette and Gunster’s notion of epistemoloigcal populism and the rhetorical concepts second persona, constitutive rhetoric, and iconicity the chapter brings together insights from political science and rhetoric to show how the text attains its rhetorical power by performing the “low” in a “high” manner, i.e. promoting typical populist themes in a pseudo- rational style undergirded by an author persona as a reasonable person simply representing common sense. Analysis of the implied audience reveals how the text appeals to several audiences united by resentment against various “elite” groups. While Ostiguy and Moffitt’s gradational approaches are found highly useful, the article suggests that their key distinctions are challenged by this kind of mainstream populism.