Left-wing populism: Come for the rent caps, stay for the conspiracy theories

When most people think about populism, they think about right-wing policies. But populism is not just associated with right-wing politics. Left-wing populism is on the rise around the world and in Australia, too.

Here, it can be seen in niche media outlets with almost exclusively left-leaning readers. There, articles panning prime minister Albanese’s perceived vanilla-slice centrism receive as much acclaim as articles deriding supposedly democracy-destroying Peter Dutton. Despite hating Dutton more, micro-bloggers on Elon’s platform X have also become increasingly Albollergic. Polls show the Labor Party’s primary vote slipping away to its left. According to a recent YouGov poll, the Greens are now the preferred party of 15 per cent of voters.

Micro-bloggers on Elon’s platform X have also become increasingly Albollergic.Credit: Twitter

Populism is the idea that there are two groups at odds with each other: the “elites” – however they are caricatured by the leaders of the populist movement – and “the people”, who are exploited or mistreated by the elites.

That’s why left and right populism can be hard to tell apart. Their issues are often the same: the elites have a stranglehold on power, which is why the people have none. The elites possess the resources, such as housing or capital, and use them to exploit the people. The elites control national borders and let immigrants in, even when the people don’t want any more here.

In Australia right now, some people are doing it much tougher than others. The tight housing market is squeezing renters, rising interest rates are causing mortgage holders pain, the cost of living hurts anyone on a budget, and the job market is perceptibly slackening for young people. And yes, there is a group of people – let’s call them the elites – who are taking decisions that exacerbate the challenges. In an environment like this one, voters can be attracted to the easy answers provided by the political fringes.

Ideas like capping rents to help make them more affordable, a centrepiece policy of the Australian Greens, have obvious appeal. Evidence from around the world shows that any benefits from rent caps quickly evaporate. In countries that use them, rent-capped properties are sublet to others or sometimes even passed down like heirlooms, so they don’t actually benefit the people who need an affordable roof over their heads. But most people don’t know that. Populism isn’t appealing because it has the best evidence; it’s appealing because it promises utopia to people experiencing duress and distress.

The problem with populism? Voters come for the get-fixed-quick schemes and stay for the conspiracy theories.

Research into the connection between populism and conspiracy theories, conducted as part of the ongoing YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project, has found that people who are attracted to populism are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than others.

Two recent conversations made me think about this link between populism and conspiracy. One was with an evangelical Trumpist. The other was with a couple of Socialist Alliance students selling pamphlets at a pro-Palestine protest.

The Trumpist took exception when I expressed concern over the upcoming US elections. I find Trump’s lack of respect for democratic processes troubling. I won’t go into the detail of the berating I received from the Aussie Trump fan. In summary, he argued the American system is rigged and Donald Trump has been misrepresented by “the swamp” of vested interests and the deep state. Trump, it seems, is the only one who can restore democracy because he’s seen the system for what it really is. The Trumpist started rolling out the type of minute detail indulged in by people whose life work has become to find evidence that the moon landing was faked.

Are the birds on top of this Birds Aren’t Real sign in Memphis real or drones?Credit: Peter McIndoe

My conversation with the university students from Socialist Alliance began when I asked them what they had read on the Middle East conflict that had led them to their position. Apparently “smarter people” than they had read the books quoted in the pamphlets they were selling. So they hadn’t bothered to read any books on the topic themselves. Twenty minutes into our conversation, they claimed it was the Israeli Defence Force, not Hamas terrorists, which had murdered young Israelis at the Supernova music festival on October 7.

This, they said, had been reported in the credible Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Dear reader, it wasn’t. Haaretz had reported that some festival goers may have been struck by the IDF as they shot at the terrorists. The students had picked up a narrative that sought to deliberately distort the events of that day.

The students might have read it in a Green Left article that had distorted reporting on a Facebook post that misinterpreted the events of that day. It was just a hop, skip and a jump from the Socialist Alliance’s long-held objection to capitalist Zionism, via a short detour of concern for the people of Gaza, into the murky world of conspiracy theories.

The Globalism Project, which surveyed more than 25,000 people across almost two dozen countries, found in 2019 that about 15 per cent of Australians held populist views. In 2021, nearly 30 per cent of Australians subscribed to the view that “regardless of who is officially in charge of governments and other organisations, there is a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together”. That same year, 12 per cent of Australians said that the Nazi Holocaust is “a lie” and agreed that “the number of Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II has been exaggerated on purpose”.

One day you’re voting for rental caps, the next you’re peddling the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fraudulent document claiming that Jewish people secretly control events and rule the world together. Despite being debunked, this narrative continues to provide a bridge for the gullible from (neo)liberalism to antisemitism. Of course, it’s an unfortunate truth that there are organisations and individuals who will find ways to profiteer in any political system.

In democracies, “the swamp” they operate in tends to be the accumulated sludge of the populist decisions politicians have made over time in an attempt to buy votes. It’s populism that creates the swamp in which swamp creatures thrive, and that’s not a conspiracy.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director strategy and policy at award-winning campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.