“They gagged him. Those who had no answer to his sharp rhetoric, his gripping analysis and his portrayal of the feelings of the people, us.’ This is how one of the submitted pieces that appeared shortly after the murder of Pim Fortuyn in The Telegraph, twenty years ago last spring. Sociologist Roy Kemmers of Erasmus University analyzed 120 such letters from the Fortuyn period that The Telegraph have stood.
The letter exemplifies the us-them thinking that is characteristic of populism, which took off from the rise of Fortuyn, says the 41-year-old sociologist. After ‘Pim’ came Geert Wilders, nowadays Forum for Democracy also interprets ‘the voice of the people’. Kemmers recently obtained his doctorate in Rotterdam for an analysis of populism, or political discontent, as he calls it. ‘In a nutshell: why people hate politics.’
What is unique about Kemmers’ research is that, in addition to the letter analysis, he also had hours of kitchen table conversations with people who had lost their trust in the established political parties.
What motives did you discover in the letter writers?
‘They are quite different. You have to realize that The Telegraph was the most appropriate place at the time to express your dissatisfaction with the government. Social media didn’t exist yet. There were actually three types of criticism, I saw: people found the state incompetent, alienated from the citizen, or downright corrupt. Those differences are quite relevant. An accusation of incompetence – think of the criticism of Hugo de Jonge during the corona crisis – is relatively constructive. Someone basically says: what is happening there is wrong, but if the person responsible is fired, it is all right again. Claims of alienation or corruption are a lot more systemic. Those people are harder to reach.’
Later you did eighteen in-depth interviews with PVV and non-voters. Why did you want to talk to them?
‘Because people mainly talk about them, rather than with them. Also in scientific research. That bothered me. People’s motives are therefore a blind spot.’
Why precisely PVV and non-voters?
‘The political unease was greatest within those groups, according to CBS figures, when I started my research at the end of 2012. Forum for Democracy had not yet been established, there is also great unease among their supporters. Incidentally, I did not only speak to right-wing voters, the non-voters also included anarchists, for example. I found most of them on internet forums.’
‘Hello, I’m a sociologist from the university’ – they already saw you coming.
‘Sometimes there were reactions like: it is from the left-wing church. So not to be trusted. I tried to overcome that by saying that I was interested in what moved them personally, without judging. For example, during the interviews I asked what the most important chapters in their lives were for them.’
Kemmers spoke to people in places where they felt comfortable, at home or in a cafe for example. They were nice and open conversations, he says, because he was genuinely interested. Sometimes he stayed hours longer than planned. That is easy to imagine, Kemmers is not a stereotypical academic. The sociologist is dressed casually, today in a burgundy sweater, has a long dark beard and an equally dark voice. He speaks easily, with a slightly Rotterdam accent. Someone who can easily see you moving in different social classes.
His life course helps with that, says Kemmers. From the age of 19 he worked as a forklift truck driver for five years, after HAVO and a year of college. Only then did he decide to study sociology. ‘I know what it’s like to have a working-class existence, as do many respondents. On the work floor of such a warehouse, people tell you what it is, if you make a mistake, people will quickly scold you.’ In short, a completely different experience than the university. “The worst word you hear there is ‘worrying’.”
What emerged from those interviews?
‘Especially that the common idea about populism was wrong. That is the channeling hypothesis, the idea that voting for parties like the PVV gives people satisfaction who are dissatisfied with politics. It channels their uneasiness. If you follow that line of reasoning, you would expect PVV voters to get a lot of satisfaction from their vote – because Geert is there to solve everything – while non-voters are sulking. But I also sometimes saw the opposite: PVV voters who were dissatisfied with their vote and non-voters who were actually satisfied with their choice.’
What is your explanation for that?
‘The extent to which people feel satisfied with their voting behavior appears to be strongly related to their ideas about where the real power lies in the country. On the one hand, this so-called power orientation can be traditional, by which I mean that power rests with the government and parliament. On the other hand, there is a group that thinks that other forces are really in control: multinationals, for example, or the Bilderberg Group and the New World Order.’
The conspiracy theorists, simply put?
‘I am always careful with that term, because it has a stigmatizing effect. I prefer to talk about people who give alternative explanations to events. Whether or not beliefs are right or wrong is also irrelevant in my opinion. For those people they are real and thus they influence their actions.
‘If you look at them through those glasses, it’s easier to understand their uneasiness. A PVV voter said to me: ‘I have little faith in it, I use my vote for Wilders more as a crowbar. But probably the established order makes the job impossible for him anyway.’ This is in sharp contrast to PVV voters with a traditional view of power, who do believe in the democratic system. They said: I know that Geert stands up for my interests. And non-voters who believe that power lies with a Bilderberg Group are sometimes proud that they have not used their vote. One of them had his voting pass laminated to the wall.’
Can you draw general conclusions based on eighteen interviews?
‘It was about getting a picture of the motives that lived within the group of populism supporters, not about whether the mutual relationships are representative of the entire group. Because of that approach, I discovered that the existing theory was not sufficient. In addition, I subsequently conducted extensive surveys among more than a thousand citizens.
‘It showed that the percentage of people who subscribe to an alternative worldview, such as the New World Order as real rulers, is higher among PVV and non-voters than among the rest of the electorate. It is also the highest among Forum for Democracy voters. Not surprising, Forum also regularly taps from the ‘alternative’ vessel. It is interesting to examine this group in more detail, because Forum seems to strive for a parallel society rather than political influence.’
Contrary to popular belief, trust in institutions such as politics, science or the judiciary is increasing rather than decreasing, according to CBS research. How do you see that?
‘I haven’t researched trends in trust myself. But the continuous attention paid to the uneasiness shows, in my opinion, that there is still a lot that is unclear about the exact nature of that distrust.’
What drives people who turn away from established politics?
‘It is a conscious process. Often PVV and non-voters are simply dismissed as globalization losers, passive playthings of all the great forces in the world. But that is a big misunderstanding, they are actually actively working on their beliefs.
‘That process of rejection takes place gradually, in roughly three phases. It often starts with an event that tilts someone’s worldview, such as the rise of Pim Fortuyn. As a result, politics changed from a silent film to color television, said one of my respondents. For others, for example, it’s a book or website about what you might call conspiracies that strikes a chord.
‘In the second phase, people will deepen their knowledge. A supporter of Fortuyn is going to read his books or watch speeches back. People who become fascinated by alternative websites scour forums where like-minded people can be found and new articles can be found. As a last step, people start to organize their lives according to their new conviction. Some no longer get their information from mainstream media, but only from what they themselves call independent media.’
Can you get them back?
‘I think so. By trying to understand each other. That’s where things regularly go wrong in that second phase, when people delve deeper. They regularly seek contact with media and political parties that are relatively close to them. For example, to share that they have seen something on TV that they think is incorrect. They often get zero on the bill, my respondents told me. You see, they then thought, politics, or media, are part of the problem.
‘It is important to take these critical people seriously. Now policymakers are saying: we need to explain it better. But that’s not how you keep people on board, it’s also condescending. If people don’t trust the source, then a leaflet about, say, vaccination won’t work. It would be good if civil servants receive sensitivity training, so that they learn to listen better and gain an understanding of people’s concerns.’
Are you not putting the problem too much with the institutions?
‘On both sides, people have to make an effort to see the other as an individual, let that be clear. Look at the death threats Hugo de Jonge received as a corona minister, of course that is absolutely not possible. I think that happens because people no longer see him as a person, but as a pawn in a great power game.’