{"id":9009,"date":"2024-01-04T12:10:39","date_gmt":"2024-01-04T12:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qpol.qub.ac.uk\/?p=9009"},"modified":"2024-01-04T12:10:39","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T12:10:39","slug":"us-election-how-populists-encourage-blind-mistrust-and-how-to-push-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/us-election-how-populists-encourage-blind-mistrust-and-how-to-push-back\/","title":{"rendered":"US election: how populists encourage blind mistrust \u2013 and how to push back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Populism is booming. The first US Republican primary is only weeks away and former president Donald Trump, who is a master of populist techniques, commands substantial support<\/a>. Meanwhile one in three<\/a> Europeans are now voting for populist parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My colleagues and I carried out research<\/a> of politicians and news media in the US, UK, and Australia that revealed a significant populist strategy to present \u201celites\u201d \u2013 such as opposition politicians, lawyers and civil servants \u2013 as setting out to misinform and manipulate the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the heart of liberal democracy lies the principle of pluralism, that there are diverse views on how society should work and that numerous institutions operate independently to balance competing interests<\/a>. For this principle to work, it\u2019s important that the public trust<\/a> that these diverse voices act in good faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who are \u2018elites\u2019?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

However, populists seek to chip away at this by accusing a wide variety of organisations as either being run by \u201celites\u201d<\/a>, or working as agents<\/a> of elite interests<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To continue reading click here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Article originally appeared on The Conversation blog.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The featured image<\/a> has been used courtesy of a Creative Commons license.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following Article by Dr John Shayegh originally appeared on The Conversation blog. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2660,"featured_media":9014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[482],"class_list":["post-9009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-issues","tag-donald-trump"],"mb":[],"acf":{"authors":{"simple_value_formatted":"