decades we have seen a steady increase
of support for extreme or not so extreme
right-wing populist parties such as FD
in Germany which is rather recent but we
have other players who are around for
much longer time such as Swan Asuna in
France and in anger where we have Viktor
Orban and in Poland we have the pissed
party in Kachinsky and in the
Netherlands we have yet builders with
the PVV and in Austria we have the F P
and as probably all of you know in 2016
Western liberal society got a double
whammy of first brexit and then Trump
and I felt a bit like this lady here
it’s going to be along for years and
maybe even along eight years you never
know now 7:03 and the question was how
come this can be so successful and I
think what I realized over the past one
of those years is there are too many
reasons and the first one is their real
problems so their real problems that our
governance model based on nation-states
large elimination states has
increasingly been unable to solve such
as the rise in immigration or terrorism
or the rise in inequality or massive tax
evasion and so on and so on and what has
happened is that while the economy has
been globalized our governance models
have not so they are state national and
so they are increasingly incapable of
addressing those globalized problems and
that leads to frustration and anger and
then people fall for demagogues who
promise something better but the second
reason is communication and many
successful populist are great
communicators and it’s a bit like this
we feel like
they tell it like it is and so I was and
I work as a communications concerned
right now and so this really bothered me
I was like ah how can this be Donald
Trump is like insulting everyone from
his opponents to the media to the court
to women to minorities and he according
to a test by the Boston Globe has only
fourth great English in his features and
and of course he was lying constantly or
let’s say had a free relationship with
the truth and so I was like ah what does
it mean like is he good speaker I’d
always like used Obama as a great
example of public speaking and rhetoric
and here we have Trump and obviously
he’s also very effective as a speaker
and so I wanted to understand so what is
this all about and so I took a deep dive
into populism its roots and its
narrative and the communication approach
of its figureheads and also tried
eventually to come up with some
solutions to it so some effective
countermeasures and this is what I would
like to share with you today
but if research and done in the past
when I have years one heads up when I
say talk like Trump I don’t mean talk
like this so use the same words or be
aggressive or insult everyone or or so
on and lie and what I mean more is
understand what makes Trump another
populist and effective speaker and then
use those weapons against them and it
also means to understand that like Obama
Trump is a great storyteller and he
appears very effectively to emotions
very different emotion from Obama but
still emotions in order to deal with
populism at the level of communication
we first need to understand its
narrative and there are three key
aspects or three differences of how
populist talk and how Wow who is a
person who’s actually not a populist
well I would say liberals classic
liberalism or globalists or the best way
of come to describe it is Friends of the
open society talk so those three
differences are populist look very
differently at the future they look very
differently at second and at how the
world works and they look very
differently at third how society works
compared to the friends of the open
society so let’s start em liberals on
globalists the classic liberal narrative
is one that goes like this
the future will always be better than
the past and the present and it’s in
narrative that people have believed for
very long time you and your kids will be
better off in the future and we can all
work together to make this happen so
this is kind of the basic vision of the
basic promise now if we look at Trump’s
campaign slogan make America great again
you already see the difference and if we
look at for example McKinley Penn’s
statement here the quote only the Faunus
who now plans to give back to France
those essential weapons such as control
of its national budget and borders and
so on and so on and you see this
basically is the attempt to take us back
to the past the vision of the future of
the populist is the return to an
idealized path it’s a we could say a
nostalgic vision you people have lost
something of value and I’m going to give
it back to you and this has been
surprisingly successful in the past
years and decades but maybe not so
surprisingly because people feel
sometimes the future has become like a
black wall it’s like we don’t know where
we are going there’s high degree of
uncertainty and so what you do when
you’re uncertain well you go back to a
time or place when you still knew your
way around the second difference between
populist and liberals lies in how they
see the world so the classic liberal
idea is that we should try to get away
from short-term thinking from intuition
from gut feeling and so on to something
larger like universal values universal
principles maybe universal human rights
to scientific reasoning knowledge was
ever greater reach and liberals also
believed in abstract principles like
institutions and checks and balances and
so on now while this movement of the
Liberals is opening up to the world the
movement of the populace is exactly the
opposite it’s closing down for the world
and they don’t believe in universal
things in general or scientific evidence
or reasoning and so on they say we trust
only common sense our gut feeling and
what’s important is the good national
attitude and if you against the
cents or the good national attitude what
the definition you’re an enemy of the
people
so we abandon those ideals of liberalism
and we go back to something like
truthiness when something feels right it
must be right or we go to simply group
loyalty so doesn’t matter what it’s true
or not but what my tribe things and I
believe the same thing the third
difference and maybe the most important
one between the populace and the
Liberals is how they see society the
liberal narrative is inclusive everyone
can join into the story into the vision
and deep become a part of it and the us
that the Liberals define is one that can
grow over time so Obama for example said
like all of us play allegiance to the
Stars and Stripes all of us are
Americans and he tried to go away from
blue states and red states and Democrats
and Republicans and so on but of course
it’s just a first step I guess many of
you would say I’m not just a national of
Germany or of Mexico or whatever but I’m
also a European in this case or maybe
I’m a citizen of the world in the end so
the idea of liberalism is to enlarge
this identity this US this week
when I looked then at the statements of
the populace what you see is something
like this when Mexico sends its people
they’re not sending their best sending
people that have lots of problems
they’re bringing drugs they’re bringing
crime they’re rapists and so on you
might have heard their statement or in
Germany we have the AFD and someone from
their party said when we arrive we will
clean up let me clean out and politics
will be made for the people again and
only for the people because we are the
people dear friends so here we see the
classic movement of their strong enemies
right strong enemy pictures you have
those people up there the liberal elite
the corrupt establishment that has sold
other people and that’s left-wing and
right-wing populism in Whiterun populism
we have this movement to condemn the
others it’s against the others such as
immigrants or minorities or social
welfare recipients whatever so it’s
always against up there and against out
there and the US it’s very exclusive
it’s usually ethnically or culturally
homogenous and
only the populous determines if this is
if you are part of the people the real
people the hardworking Americans or not
and so then you come to a point where
everyone for example says like we are
the people who are you you don’t matter
so and there is a true danger of
populism it’s deleted
legit amazing everyone who’s not of the
same opinion and who is not part of how
they define the people so it’s anti
pluralistic and anti-democratic at its
core it’s lives from gains its energy
from exclusion and division that’s kind
of the third element of the three in
total we populist Swan to take us back
to the past they want to take us back to
the tribal closed-off and they want to
divide us and excuse people to gain
power from this influence now what can
we do about it how can we fight the
populist effectively and when I say we I
say you and me and I don’t think I don’t
know I suspect that Wonder Woman is not
in the audience today
if 101 is here please raise a hand oh we
have one Wonder Woman so I can go I
thank you so for the case is that Wonder
Woman is not around and that might be in
most places and most times I would like
to compose the following it’s the Trump
of the Trump approach that’s how you
could call it so it’s based on my
research and talking to experts and
thinking hard about the problem for the
past 1 or 1/2 years and also observing
really what has worked and what hasn’t
worked and it has three elements the
first one tell stories that are properly
framed and worded people think in
stories we think about abstract things
such as a government or political leader
leaders in terms of things we know
something like how are things and
Families our own families and Trump
really played to one of the two dominant
models the strict father model so it’s
all about top-down communication it’s
about control and the assumption is
people are bad and you need punishments
also to motivate them and to make them
better
the other main frame is the nurturer and
parent model and you might also know
this it’s kind of we meet at eye level
we empathetic fan
is very important and we generally
believe people are good and you need to
encourage and motivate them and make
them even better people so they are two
contrasting family models and now if you
are faced with someone activating one of
the frames such as we need to build a
wall we need to ban Muslims from coming
to the United States it’s very bad to
just negate the frame and to say like no
we shouldn’t do this because by negating
the frame you strengthen the frame what
you should do instead is activate your
frame with your own story now that’s one
example of doing this is tell a family
story hear the story of the black sheep
or the brown sheep imagine you have five
children five sons and one of them does
something bad now would you punish all
of them no that will be observed I mean
very unfair you punish only the person
that did something bad and the same
thing is with people coming from other
countries and maybe who might be
committing crimes it would be very
unfair and American to punish all of
them based on their nationality or based
on their religion and and that you
wouldn’t want that to be done to you
either so this is an example of how you
can try to act tell a story that
activates a different frame so you’re
not just working yourself off the
proposition that might be very
outrageous or controversial of the
populist then of course when you tell
stories you need to mind your word
choice so some of you might know in the
discussion and the FDA and that is vital
a pictured here also did this we often
called about streams of refugees streams
of people coming to our country what
that does is basically you frame people
as a natural disaster and what do you do
when you’re facing the tsunami the flood
and so on well you build dams the
solution naturally flows from the frame
that is being activated so be very
careful never use those kind of words
what if instead of talking about
refugees we talked about people seeking
protection or even you comers and even
sounds nice right a new music band you
can in our country what if we talked not
about a refugee crisis but a solidarity
crisis and if we go away from this topic
if you confronted with the accusation
you have fake news and you’re a
journalist you shouldn’t say like I’m
not fake news
you should say okay let’s have a
discussion about truth and journalism so
you activate a different frame and from
the onliest better chances so if you
talk about a climate change
well change might be good even right I
mean a bit of change well here once here
and there and with warmer might live
nicer engine country like Germany so he
should instead talk clearly about the
climate catastrophe that is very
different a very different image in a
very different effect that those words
have or finally don’t talk about the
people better about some people some
citizens or many citizens and so on so
differentiate here the second thing that
I think works is to expose the flawed
logic of populism if you’re in a a
debate or in a talk show reveal openly
how the populist logic works so that
they want to take us back to a past that
never existed and that will probably
never exist that they want to divide us
and that the real enemy is not the
Chinese or the Mexicans who are taking
away our jobs but actually division
itself someone did this remarkably well
in the air was for example monomakh or
now president of France who in the
debate with McKinley Penn said the High
Priestess of fear is sitting in front of
me Madame Le Pen’s idea is that we’re
going to leave Europe because the others
can make it or we can’t in the face of
this spirit of defeat I am for this food
of conquest because France has always
succeeded so there you see how he calls
all the logic that the populace lived
from fear and anger and moves over to
his own project his own ideas and that’s
the third element that’s very important
you have to have your own project the
own vision and in Germany that has been
a big black hole in in the past years in
terms of vision but that’s what we need
and it has to have certain elements so
it needs to be inclusive in the best
tradition of liberalism it needs to
address the feelings of importance and
the feeling of loss of agency and the
insecurities that many people are
feeling and then it needs to define new
ways of participation in society so how
can you participate productively
economically politically socially and
finally also important you have to
sketch out a positive role for
technology because technology is often
like paint pictured in the in the public
discourse as a force of disruption that
will take away our jobs and that will
cause just problems and it
is very important to make a strong case
for help which positive effects
technology can have on all our lives if
it’s managed well implemented well and
if it’s if the benefits of course are
spread across the board equally in
society so this is a trumpet the trumpet
poach I hope I made a good case and I’m
personally I’m convinced that only if
the Friends of the open society start to
tell powerful strong stories again with
the good word choice and the good frames
when they expose the logic of populism
and how they live from fear and
frustration and anger and if they are
bold and courageous in their visions
again can we hope to deal effectively
with populism Culpeper one of the main
philosophers of the twentieth century
maybe the greatest he said the fight
against tyranny against authoritarianism
and for democracy for open and liberal
societies is never over needs to be
fought again and again and so it depends
I think on all of us to protect our
democratic values protect the
achievements of civilization and depends
on all of our commitment and our joint
action and ultimately of course it
depends on your communication the way
you talk so yes talk like Trump in terms
of become an expert storyteller but then
Trump on the top and with it all of
populism thank you very much
[Applause] [Music]