CHRONIC. The mirage of “anti-system” speeches

Clément Viktorovitch returns every week to the debates and political issues. Sunday, November 26: the election of Javier Milei in Argentina and the victory of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, two men who claim to be “anti-systems”.

Javier Milei in Argentina, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, but also Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil… Recent years have been marked by the undeniable success, everywhere, of so-called “anti-system” postures. A word whose genealogy is sometimes difficult to trace. It happens that it is put forward by the candidates themselves – this is the case, in particular, for Javier Milei. But it also seems that, in other contexts, this qualifier imposes itself in journalistic commentary, without necessarily having been used by politicians themselves.

There is, in political science, a very well-known definition, which dates back to the 1960s: that of the Italian researcher Giovanni Sartori, for whom anti-system parties are those which contest the very legitimacy of the political system in which they are part. The problem, we see immediately, is that this definition applies very poorly to the parties we are talking about, which do not seek to overthrow political regimes, but on the contrary, claim to want to take and exercise power. Today, the “anti-system” character therefore designates something else. No longer a political proposal. But, rather, a rhetorical positioning.

We find a similar theme among these different politicians: the idea that the candidate would stand against a small elite, at the same time political, economic and media, which would have organized itself to confiscate power from the hands of the people, and would have imprisoned the public debate in the leaden screed of a dominant discourse, even of a single thought.

Strategic interest and anti-system posture

From a strategic point of view, it is very clear: this positioning allows, as researcher Lucie Raymond notes, to aggregate citizens’ resentments, by pointing the finger at a responsible person who is as ghostly as he is anxiety-inducing. The problem is that once defined in this way, anti-system rhetoric is in no way limited to the candidates that we like to castigate as anti-system…

In France, we find it of course in the speech of the National Front, then of the National Rally, of which it is a signature. We can also find accents of it in Jean-Luc Mélenchon, but also in Nicolas Sarkozy, in October 2016, in the middle of the campaign for the Republican primary or even in Emmanuel Macron, in July 2016 when he launched his candidacy for the Mutualité.

But if everyone is anti-system, the word no longer really has any meaning. Take THE anti-system political leader par excellence: Donald Trump. A real estate tycoon, reality TV star, who has spent his entire life frequenting circles of economic, political and media power. If there is anything that could be called a system, this is definitely one! It’s pure posturing. A way of encompassing all its competitors behind a scarecrow word, “the system”, to claim to be alone on the side of the people.

A shelter to escape one’s responsibilities

The problem is that this rhetorical fiction has political consequences. It acts as an unfair shield, which transforms setbacks into advantages. When cases affect these candidates, instead of being the mark of their improbity, they on the contrary become the ultimate proof that they are disrupting the system! We can see this clearly at the moment with Donald Trump, whose various indictments in no way hinder his presidential campaign. Quite the contrary: they support his speech, according to which he is the target of the American “establishment”. In France, we have the example of François Fillon, who put forward an alleged “black cabinet” which would have been behind the Pénélope affair. This rhetoric not only makes it possible to manipulate the anger of citizens – sometimes legitimate anger, moreover. It also offers political leaders a very convenient shelter to try to escape their responsibilities.

Perhaps we could therefore, collectively, be a little more careful when we use this qualifier without taking the trouble to question it. As for the political leaders who cloak themselves in this rhetoric, including in France, they would do well to think a little about the emotions they stir, and the speeches they legitimize.