“The times they are a-changin’,” sang Bob Dylan half a century ago. Only a few weeks ago, it might have seemed that a sobering era awaited us. Amid the turmoil and fear caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, media around the globe were filled with materials about the potential economic effects of a pandemic, the characteristics of the new virus, and possible treatment methods. References to great literary works written by Daniel Defoe and Albert Camus abounded. Hopes were expressed for a politics of seriousness, the return of expert governments, and even, why not?, for the end of the populist era.
As the pandemic began to normalize in the collective imagination, however, mass media turned again to the characteristic mixture of entertainment and politics. The well-known phenomenon of infotainment is back, including one of its most striking kinds, produced by populist politicians on the Internet and television. Populist politicians differ greatly, in ways ranging from their political style to more substantive issues, like their geopolitical agendas. But there is at least one thing they unquestionably have in common: an understanding that politics in the post-1945 world has became a kind of entertainment to an extent not known before, and especially in the era of the new mass media.
It is often overlooked that today`s populists win not only by using radical statements, but also by providing them in an attractive form, adequate to the nature of mass media in our time. They are entertaining, not always in the sense of evoking laughter, but because they are able to gain and keep the audience’s interest and attention. This everyday populistainment is as global as the Covid-19 pandemic. It often leads its protagonists to electoral victories, and in those places where they succeed, they usually continue the media spectacle while at the same time deconstructing the basic elements of liberal democracy: the rule of law, the separation of powers, and free media. In our country, Poland, an example of this might be the spectacle of dismantling the independent judiciary that has been under way since 2015, with the national media and billboards across the country accusing judges of corruption, theft, and connections to the former communist system.
