Populist Bullshit: A Normative Theory of Populist Communication

Abstract Although communication scholars have extensively documented how populist actors engage in deceitful forms of speech, it remains unclear why populists so blatantly disregard truth. This article addresses that question by drawing on the works of Laclau and Mouffe to develop a normative theory of populist communication. This theory posits that, to successfully achieve their goal of uniting ‘the people’ against ‘the elite,’ populist actors should produce three distinct kinds of discourse: agonistic, articulating, and mobilizing. Against this theoretical backdrop, the article advances three claims that shed light on the relationship between populism and deception. First, while populist speech is indifferent to truth, it need not involve lies, as its functions can be fulfilled by non-lying strategies such as cherry-picking and the avoidance of falsifiable statements. Second, due to its indifference to truth, populist speech is nonetheless prone to containing lies, which are likely to increase in number as populist actors gain popularity. Third, populist speech can be conceptualized as a specific variant of what Harry Frankfurt defined as ‘bullshit,’ which I refer to as ‘populist bullshit.’ The article thus bridges political theory and empirical research, provides a novel theoretical framework for understanding populist communication, and poses a direct challenge to the acceptability of populism as a political strategy.