Populism and ‘the People’

Greek contemporary history offers a distinctive continuum of mass and diverse social movements, political polarisation and populist politics. Through our Lab, we have persistently advanced studies on these issues, as we are committed to fostering social psychological research that attends to the historical and political particularities of society.

Narratives of historical continuity and entitativity – the extent to which a group is perceived as a coherent whole or entity – are essential components of most national ideologies. Themes of a people's progression through centuries – sharing common ancestry and a unique cultural heritage, within a delimited territory – construct an imagined, political community of comradeship (Anderson, 2016), that seems to transcend other memberships. 

Apart from legitimising the Greek revolution (1821), Greek nationalism's narrative of a national continuum for over 3000 years, as well as the singular importance of a classic Hellenic past in the discourse of Modernity, has contributed to 'the myth of eternal Greece' (Tsoukalas, 1999).

A three-year Civil War followed World War II. After the Nazi retreat, a centralised power vacuum precipitated a political rift between the Greek national resistance movement, backed largely by the Greek Communist Party, and an exiled Greek government, upheld by British forces. The aftermath split Greek society and saw the emergence of a nationalistic, state-structured ideology, primarily organised towards eliminating leftist or liberal voices in politics. Post-civil war exclusionary ideology relied heavily on such themes, contrasting the idea of a Greek citizen loyal to the nation with the Left as an entity.

Two highly competing visions of the Greek national community emerged: the 'Nation' versus the 'People'. The first one focused almost exclusively on the importance of Greek as both the language of classical times and Christian scripture, promoting an ethnically pure and politically authoritarian national identity. The second emphasised the democratic community of a struggling, but united people of lower-class origins, tied to a land infused with historic glorious resistance.

Nevertheless, our participants in a recent qualitative study on national identity seemed less concerned with such rigid divisions. What appears to preoccupy respondents in the formation of their political community is the perceived discrepancy between the collective and the individual and a tension between reason and emotion. However community is conceived, people feel collective endeavours are undermined by increasingly individualistic tendencies, alongside a dominance of affective decision-making processes. In this sense a political community, albeit with a history of resistance to oppression, becomes ineffective. Eventually, superficial and ineffective collective action, as well as pervasive societal control, bolsters a system with ever-decreasing support.

People fighting oppression: the case of the 2015 Referendum

Systemic crises led Greece to sign the first of three overall financial bailout programs in 2010, followed by sweeping austerity and social turmoil. Within this context, we witnessed the rise of extreme right-wing ideologies and parties along with an empowered community of people demanding a say in decision-making and challenging the idea that there is only one alternative, i.e. the one proclaimed by the EU and the IMF.

The 2015 Referendum on whether to accept the bailout was a turning point. People interpreted the vote as resistance to the Troika (EU, EUB, IMF) and the ensuing NO vote by 62.31 per cent was equated by some to a desire for 'Grexit'. However, the left-wing SYRIZA-led government, that came to power promising to end the bailouts, immediately signed another memorandum that continued austerity measures.

In our research on collective action during the week of the 2015 Greek referendum among 'No' voters on whether to accept the terms of an EU bailout (Barkas 2022), we identified both the emergence of cracks in a 'unified image' of Greek kinship and those elements that could potentially constitute a different kind of community. Although surveys showed that 'No' voting rates were higher among those who felt 'nationally proud' (Public Issue, 2015), our research identified a different sense of belongingness.

Specifically, participants reported a moderate identification with other Greeks, as well as with other Europeans, while, in contrast, they showed a high identification with their social class. This variation in levels of identification – national versus social – is best interpreted by particularly high levels of perceived inequality and injustice within Greece, as well as across Europe. 

Injustice was attributed both to institutions and interests beyond Greece, as well as within the 'national community', i.e. a domestic elite and economic oligarchy, into which an individual of less advantaged social classes cannot enter, as respondents perceive intergroup boundaries closed, and generational mobility downward. The crisis and the opportunity to express oneself at a Referendum brought to the forefront another construction of people, 
as 'uprising'.

A resistance to oppression by 'ordinary' people, or by a manipulated crowd?

In the aftermath of the period officially called 'the crisis' (2010-2019), people felt disaffected. Their Referendum choices were disregarded and beliefs fostering social cohesion, including individual mobility, were not sustained. In addition, several issues highlighted a dismantling of social order and the decadence of moral values. How could people construct a political community around issues that had become central to political debates within a decadent society?

In one of our recent studies regarding populism, we explored how Greek social media users perceive and refer to the concept of the people with reference to emblematic events that have brought about protests. Results indicated a four-way conceptual partition of the term:

• The powerless

This category encompassed negative connotations, blaming the People's poor political choices for Greece's grim socio-political situation. Perceived as divided and mutually suspicious, the people are also portrayed as helpless, passive victims, abused by their leaders and government.

• Self-determined and efficacious fighters

In contrast, the second category revealed a people with strong faith in their own power, appearing ready to grasp change. The dimension of collective action is essential here, with the struggle for a better future as the driving force uniting individuals within an all-encompassing movement for social change. Powerful emotions like disappointment, anger, fear, and exhaustion functioned as a portent of collective action.

• Less advantaged social strata

Here, social media users depict the people with reference to their social position. They are described as impoverished and struggling and this shared experience helps an otherwise heterogenous body of citizens to assemble and unite. A perceived violation of citizens' rights, public laws, as well as the country's constitution, has created a crisis in democracy for all and an impression of relative deprivation.

• A nationally characterised people

Finally, an illustration of the people along ethno-national lines emerged. This idea conflates the people in Greece with the Greek national community and contrasts Greek nationals with minorities, immigrants and refugees. Again, the two notions of nationality and resistance emerge alongside two categories of the people, defined here by their condition (social strata) and poor political choices. 

These also suggest rhetorical devices designed to mobilise people as a homogeneous entity against elites and oppressors in a populist discourse. Nevertheless, these uphold the idea that everybody shares the same worldviews, interests, identities, and behaviours, especially at the extremes of the political spectrum.

Are we all the same?

So, what would differentiate people? As recent social-psychological evidence supports, perceptions of pre-existing social norms and regulations – subject to a social contract of individual mobility and prosperity – collapse under the weight of an economic crisis (Chryssochoou, 2018). This rupture makes for a certain disillusionment, mostly towards the political and economic systems involved.

Added to that, a system that fails to guarantee order may be perceived as corrupt, unjust and/or betraying the values it is supposed to uphold (Alper, 2023). The disrupting effects of the crises faced since 2010, after a period of consolidated progress, may have swayed parts of Greek society towards disillusionment. 

Narratives of shady politics and corrupt politicians, who serve malevolent interests that threaten the majority's wellbeing, could prove convenient for those trying to make sense of their material and symbolic social status. Discursive divisions between a moral, innocent people and greedy, evil elites are a core feature of both populist and conspiracy-driven worldviews of social conflicts (Moscovici 2006/2020; Obradovic et al, 2020).

Some of our recent findings in Greece regarding beliefs about social order, authority-related institutions, system values and declining social cohesion reveal the emergence of three different social groups in relation to understanding the social system (Dimakis, 2023): 

• the first group supports and justifies the system, i.e. the institutions of Western, liberal democracies, their economic structures, and the socio-cultural intergroup differences they produce; 
• the second group challenges the dominant system regulations, such as individualism and established intergroup power asymmetries; 
• a third group supports the system, but has lost faith in it and is disaffected by the loss of individual mobility. 

They perceive their social position in a more precarious manner than before the crisis and make comparisons with perceived outgroups, such as the elites or the immigrants. This third group appears the most susceptible to conspiracy theories framing social conflict as a battle between their own in-group and a certain elite and because of that, they are more prone to an autocratic and exclusionist social order.

It must be noted that in our research, what forms the people is not constructed by people themselves, but groups are defined through peoples' understanding of social order. Supporters and challengers of the social system, and people disaffected by it, form different categories of 'the People' some of whom are more eager to adopt a populist identity (Laclau, 2005).

Food for thought

In our research on national identity, collective action, populism, and conspiracy theories, we have sought to investigate the components that characterise the political community in a crisis-ridden Greece. Rooted in historical division objectified by the Civil War, is an opposition between a political community in ethno-national terms and one of ever-resisting people. This division appears to dominate Greek society and is fuelled by subsequent crises. In the current context, the division is defined by the disaffection people feel at the prospect of a dismantled social order.

In our study of national identity, we found people are more concerned about decisions being taken under the influence of emotions and that regretfully, there is a retreat into individual survival strategies. However, there are moments, such as the 2015 Referendum, when levels of political agency and collective effectiveness increase and, accompanied by perceptions of social inequality within the national and European community, these lead to perceptions of the people as a resistance movement against oppression. 

In these moments, identification with social class becomes more important than national and European identities. The same distinction between nation and people persisted following the signing of a new EU memorandum and the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, this distinction is accompanied by two other categorisations of people, based on social condition and poor political decisions, i.e. people are victims of social inequalities produced by 'evil elites', brought to power by those same people. 

Within a populist discourse, people are called upon to rise and defeat these elites, restoring lost social and moral order. In a grim socio-political situation, conflict is constructed between an all-encompassing group of people against so-called conspiracists, termed 'Others'.

However, when we take into consideration perceptions of social order, we find that the political community is divided between those who support the system, those who challenge it, and disaffected believers in the system that might seek its restoration. 

Overall, our studies suggest the political community is a dynamic construction rooted in national history, that is attributed meaning within the public sphere by those who act as entrepreneurs of identity (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001) and is mobilised according to movements that might be authoritarian and exclusionist.

Unfortunately, within a post-democracy (Crouch, 2006) era with its prevalence of 'TINA (There Is No Alternative)' dogma, people may not seek to change an unfair system that disadvantages them, but instead express their discontent by rejecting democracy completely.

Ioannis Ntotsikas, Antonis Dimakis, Myrto Droumpali, Dimitrios Barkas and Xenia Chryssochoou
Social and Political Psychology Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens.

References

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Barkas, D. (2022). The value of participation in social movements (civic movements) at the personal level (Doctoral dissertation). Athens, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences. dx.doi.org/10.12681/eadd/52364 (in Greek)
Chryssochoou, X. (2018). 'Betrayed Believers': The Target of Influence of Extreme Right-Wing Minorities. International Review of Social Psychology, 31(1) 
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