‘Get off your high horse and vote for us’: the anti-populist construction of the elite and the people

Recent research on populism has shown how anti-populist politics have served to discredit alternatives to the status quo by constructing them as threats to democracy, creating false equivalences between vastly different political projects. Yet, while the people of populism are often represented as a threat, it would be a mistake to conclude that anti-populist discourse is equivalent to faith in the elite. We explore how elites and peoples are constructed in anti-populist discourses. Left-wing voters are constructed as active agents in their political choices, even though these choices are often blamed on their youth and/or minority status and radical naivety. Supporters of the far right are instead presented as having legitimate concerns around migration and nationhood, but manipulated by a crass ‘populist’ elite. In contrast, a ‘good’ people is constructed to justify the presence and leadership of the ‘good’ elite who rules for them (if not by and of them).