Exploring the populism/anti-populism cleavage during the Greek referendum

Exploring the populism/anti-populism cleavage during the Greek referendum Antonis Galanopoulos1 *Paper presented in the international conference “Media, Polis, Agora: Journalism & Communication in the Digital Era”. (Thessaloniki, 27-29 September 2018)* Abstract Many researchers have demonstrated the emergence and consolidation during the crisis period in Greece of the populism/anti-populism cleavage. As elections and referenda are moments of polarization and acute political tensions, it is reasonable that the 2015 referendum in Greece constitutes a high point of the populism/antipopulism dichotomy. What is more interesting in this case is that the referendum itself was presented by the anti-populist camp as an irrational populist political choice. Using qualitative methods and particularly the theoretical and methodological tools of Essex School of Discourse Analysis, this paper will highlight how this dichotomy was constructed and what forms it took in the political and the journalistic discourse during the referendum in Greece. Furthermore, it will focus on the ways in which the populist/anti-populist dichotomy intersects with the rational/irrational dichotomy, as mainstream political and media figures presented populism as an irrational, emotional and ultimately abnormal political phenomenon. 1 PhD candidate, School of Political Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Email: antonisgal@gmail.com Introduction: Populism in Greece Populism moved the last two decades from the margins into the mainstream of political sciences scholarship. It has re-emerged as central to political debates across the world, from Latin America to southern Europe, from the U.S. to the U.K. Since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008, populism has come back to the fore and its presence expands increasingly each year. Almost every major political phenomenon of our age has been connected with, or interpreted through, the notion of populism. Two prominent examples were the U.S. presidential elections and Britain’s EU referendum. In the vernacular use of the term, populism is employed by politicians and opinion makers in a polemic way, as a pejorative concept used to undermine political causes or discredit political opponents. As Albertazzi & McDonnell have claimed “the epithet ‘populist’ is often used in public debate to denigrate statements and measures by parties and politicians which commentators or other politicians oppose” (Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2008: 2). In Greece, populism re-appeared in everyday public discourse with the first protests against the memorandum with IMF, EU and ECB and its concomitant austerity policies. Every articulation of a popular demand is denounced by the predominant power block as a populist one. All collective practices are stigmatized as populist and stripped of their specific political meaning. Everyone who distances himself—even a minimum—from the dominant neoliberal discourse is dismissed as a populist. Many analysts believe that populism is an endemic feature of the Greek political culture, an enduring characteristic of Greek politics. Richard Clogg characterized the decade of 1980s as the ‘populist decade’ (Clogg 1993), Takis Pappas argued that in Greece emerged a populist democracy, a democratic subtype in which both the party in office and the major opposition party are populist (Pappas, 2013: 1). He also claimed that “ever since Pasok rose to power in 1981, Greek politics has developed as an incessant struggle between liberalism and populism, with the latter always the winner” (Pappas, 2013: 14). This depiction of Greek politics as an eternal battle between two political elements, leads us to the influential concept of cultural dualism that Nikiforos Diamandouros (1994) introduced. He claimed that Greek political landscape is divided into two antagonistic political cultures, the reformist one and the underdog one, which is anachronistic and populist. Diamandouros himself at the postscript that he wrote to the book The Greek crisis and European modernity asserts that “the cultural dualism continues to provide a useful analytical tool that maintains the explanatory power in relation to the events which led to the current situation and maybe offers some additional ideas that make easier to understand some of the most enigmatic appearances of the current crisis in terms of social behavior and reactions” (Diamantouros, 2013, p. 211). All in all, most scholars of populism, despite their disagreements regarding the definition of populism, they agree that populism has a long history in Greece. While populism is well studied across the globe and in the case of Greece in particular, the opposite phenomenon, namely anti-populism, is understudied (Ostiguy, 2017, p. 75). Following researchers who stress the need to study anti-populism as a phenomenon, as a political logic (DeCleen, Glynos & Mondon, 2018, p. 655) and argue to study populism and anti-populism together and incorporate the inquiry of anti-populism into the study of populism (Stavrakakis, 2018, p. 35), this paper will focus on the mainstream, anti-populist, pro-memorandum discourse regarding the Greek referendum of 2015. The paper is structured in four sections. At the first section, a brief background regarding the rise of SYRIZA and the events that led to the 2015 referendum will be provided. Then, we will discuss the emergence of the populism/anti-populism cleavage during the Greek crisis and the specific features of the mainstream political discourse. At the third section, which constitutes the empirical part of the paper, we will focus on the Greek referendum, in better words on discourses regarding the Greek referendum during the six-month period that led to the referendum and especially during the pre-election week since the announcement of the referendum. We will also include in the analysis future readings and interpretations of the referendum, because as the referendum was a historic moment with great symbolic value, it continues to play an important role in the political confrontation. The referendum, perceived as a populist act, is considered to be the highest point of SYRIZA’s populism. Finally, at the last part of the paper, we will deal with one of the main criticisms against populism, namely its affective dimension. Is there a clear distinction between rational politics and emotional politics? And more importantly, the affective dimension is something unique in populism or is it present in politics in general? Background: The rise of SYRIZA and the road to the referendum The new cycle of Greek populism is connected with the debt crisis that hit the country in 2010 onwards and led to the imposition of a strict austerity program under the supervision of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Crisis is considered as a trigger or a precondition of populist mobilization and in any case is believed to have a positive connection with populism. This is something that has been noted by Ernesto Laclau, one of the most systematic scholars of populism, in his first book where he argued that “the emergence of populism is historically linked to a crisis of the dominant ideological discourse, which in turn is part of a more general crisis” (Laclau, 2011, p. 175). A recent elaboration of the connection between populism and crisis was offered by Benjamin Moffit. He claimed that “we should move from a conception of crisis as something that is purely external to populism, to one that acknowledges the performance of crisis as an internal feature of populism” (Moffitt, 2015, p. 191). The Greek crisis, apart from the economic impacts, has also brought major political changes, expressed through the precipitation of the two major parties that have traditionally shared power. The imposition of the memorandum can be considered as a moment of dislocation, a moment when the established social and political relations and identities were dismantled and populist discourses emerged in order to articulate and promote new popular political identities. Μany scholars of populism has argued that the crisis of representation and the dislocation of previously hegemonic discourses can be found at the root of populist outbursts (as cited in Moffitt, 2015, p. 191). In the case of Greece, the aforementioned crisis of representation made its presence visible since the double elections of 2012, as the crisis provoked a serious fracture and significant reconfiguration of the existing party system (Teperoglou & Tsatsanis, 2014, p. 224). In May-June 2012, the country was forced to hold double elections which fully reflected the collapse of the post-dictatorship two-party political system. These two elections consists a watershed in the political history of Greece and mark a process of de-alignment of the political system (Teperoglou & Tsatsanis, 2014). This period of de-alignment followed by a period of gradual stabilization and realignment (Tsatsanis & Teperoglou, 2016, p. 19) that led to the win of SYRIZA in the general elections of 2015. The European election in May 2014 was the first move towards the stabilization of the political system and marked the first time in the post-authoritarian period that a party other than PASOK or New Democracy won a nationwide contest (Tsatsanis & Teperoglou, 2016, p. 5). After the failure of parliament to elect new president, snap general elections held on January 2015. During the pre-election campaign Alexis Tsipras managed to build, in the terms of Ernesto Laclau, a long chain of equivalence among numerous social groups who had been hurt by the implementation of the memorandum and strict austerity policies. He also managed to express their demands by condensing them in the empty signifier of hope. The main campaign slogan was “Hope is coming”. These historic elections brought SYRIZA into power, forming a coalition government with Independent Greeks, a small right-wing populist party. SYRIZA started a negotiation process with the international creditors of the country, namely with the European institutions and the International Monetary Fund, aiming to end or at least relax the austerity. The negotiations went on for five months, when late at night of 27 th June 2015 prime minister Tsipras announced his decision to hold a referendum regarding the latest proposal by the EU/IMF lenders. My fellow Greeks, we are now burdened with the historic responsibility, (in homage to) to the struggles of the Hellenic people, to enshrine democracy and our national sovereignty. It is a responsibility to the future of our country. And that responsibility compels us to answer to this ultimatum based on the will of the Greek people. A while ago I convened the cabinet, where I suggested a referendum for the Greek people to decide in sovereignty. (…) I call upon you all to take the decisions worthy of us. For us, for future generations, for the history of Greeks. For the sovereignty and dignity of our people (Tsipras, 2015). Since January there was a strong possibility that a referendum will take place. Tsipas himself has signaled on different occasions that if he found himself in a difficult position, faced with a choice that exceeds his electoral mandate, the Greek people will be called to decide. He understood the Greek people as a possible ally during the hard process of negotiation with the European institutions. The people were asked to vote on two documents entitled ‘Reforms for the Completion of the Current Programme and Beyond’ and ‘Preliminary Debt Sustainability Analysis’, the two possible answers being ‘Not approved/No’ and ‘Accepted/Yes’. Tsipras called the Greek people to vote “No”. Despite the image that the opinion polls presented, the result was resounding in favor of the “No” vote; 61.3 per cent of the voters voted against the agreement and 38.7 per cent in favor of it. However the very next day of the referendum the course of events changed dramatically. Eight days after the referendum the government reached a new bail out agreement with the European Union and signed the third consecutive memorandum of understanding with the international lenders since 2010. On 20 September the government called snap elections, just eight months since the first elections that brought SYRIZA into power. The results were almost identical with the results of the January elections and SYRIZA formed again a coalition government with the party of Independent Greeks. The populism/anti-populism cleavage in Greece As it has been argued elsewhere (see Stavrakakis & Galanopoulos, in press) the implementation of the memorandum/austerity program is pivotally connected with the call to make Greece a “normal country” in accordance with the European standards. Greece was presented as the dysfunctional member that deviated from the European model of normality. Populism is directly implicated in this function as it emerged in Greece as the condensation of everything pathological in Greek politics: irresponsibility, demagogy, immorality, corruption, irrationalism, statism. Schematically, crisis was a result of Greece’s abnormality, of a multilayered economic, political, cultural failure and the main source of this abnormality was populism; populism as a political practice and populism as a generalized political spirit or political culture that is supposedly dominant in Greece. Populism is described as a pure negativity; it is another name of abnormality. In a way, we can argue that anti-populism is an expression of political normality and that discourses about (ab)normality an instrument of anti-populism. During the crisis period in Greece, the polarization at the base of the populism/antipopulism dichotomy has been exacerbated on both a social and a political/ideological level. Many researchers have demonstrated adequately the emergence and consolidation during the crisis period in Greece of the populism/anti-populism cleavage (see Stavrakakis et al., 2017; Stavrakakis & Katsambekis, 2017). The populist discourse promoted by SYRIZA that tried to speak on behalf of the people, blamed for the crisis the political and economic establishment, the representatives of the interests of the oligarchy and of corruption and expressed the will to represent and protect the low and middle social strata, the poor and the unemployed faced an anti-populist reaction constructing its own crisis narrative and criticizing harshly populism. Treating populist politicians and voters as silly and irrational, portraying populism as a disease and using moral categories against populist forces contribute to the establishment of a true populism vs. anti-populism cleavage. (Kaltwasser, 2017, p. 500-501) He characteristically argued that Another possible example of a democratic regime that seems to be “fighting fire with fire” is Greece. The reactions of domestic and external actors to the SYRIZA-ANEL government facilitated the formation of a populism vs. antipopulism cleavage. (Kaltwasser, 2017, p. 502). In a thorough analysis of this cleavage during the period June 2014-May 2015 in Greece, the researchers argued that, especially during the January 2015 elections, they detected a tendency of anti-populist journalists to blame the popular will as catastrophic and immature (Nikisianins et al., 2016, p. 54). This paper will attempt to explore this tendency of disbelief towards the will of the people expressed by the mainstream anti-populism discourse regarding the referendum of July 2015, the most direct expression of popular will of the latest years in Greece. The analysis is based on material gathered mainly by two media, the website Protagon (35 posts) and the website of the free press Athens Voice (70 posts). The material includes articles of journalists and opinion makers and statements of politicians. Both media are considered as liberal media, express the views of the socalled progressive center and belong to the anti-populist side of the Greek press. Anti-populism and the Greek referendum What distinguishes the anti-populism related to the referendum is that it didn’t limit its criticism to the strategy or the campaign of SYRIZA but the mainstream, promemorandum discourse criticized the referendum itself as a populist act. The appeal to popular mandate was presented as the path of populism. Seeing the referendum as part of the populist strategy of the government lead to the connection of the stereotypical anti-populist discourse with the pro-memorandum discourse that supported the “Yes” vote. So, a columnist of Protagon claimed that the “Yes” vote will end the Metapolitefsi of Right, Center-left and Left populism (Nikolopoulos, 2015). Populism is understood as dominant in the political landscape of Greece and present in all political parties that governed the country. Populism is highlighted as the biggest enemy of the country, the “common enemy of all of us” (Stamou, 2018) which murdered the economy (Georgeles, 2015a) and leads always to defeat and the collapse of the country (Georgeles, 2016a). Some opinion makers even argued that populism is responsible for the economic crisis. Takis Pappas, who coined the notion of “populist democracy” that was mentioned earlier, claimed in an interview to Athens Voice that the cause of the current crisis can be attributed to the prevalence of populism in the country over the past decades. He did not limit, however, the responsibility only to the parties but he believes that, beyond and before the parties, society itself is still seduced by populism (Pappas, 2017). This view supports the idea of the omnipresent and omnipotent populism that guides Greek society through the years. One of the main criticisms against the populist referendum focused on its divisive nature. For example, the first announcement of PASOK after the declaration of the referendum mentioned that “We have expressed our opposition to the divisive referendum with the false dilemmas. (…). Unfortunately, the government has chosen in a populist way to proceed to the referendum, disregarding the consequences for the people and the country” (Pasok, 2015). In one article, we read that “in Sunday there will be a referendum. It is, in itself, the worst case, because it divides, it’s a white vs. black choice” (Anastasakos, 2015) while another commentator warned against the prospect of a second referendum and argued that the president of the country should intervene to prevent one more extreme and divisive choice of the government (Kovaios, 2017). This type of criticism is connected with the argument that the Greek government transferred its responsibilities to the people. We read that “We elect governments in order to take the decisions not to divide us” (Zampoukas, 2015) and “these unbelievable persons that govern us cannot take the responsibility for leading the country out of the euro, and so they shift it to the people” (Telloglou, 2015). Usually, commentators use the metaphor “throw the ball to the people”. Commentators on both media and politicians of the opposition interpreted the meaning of the referendum as a question regarding the participation of the country in the European Union, arguing that the “No” vote will lead to GREXIT, the exit of Greece from the European Union and the Eurozone. Constantinos Mitsotakis, former prime minister and father of the current leader of New Democracy, issued a statement four days before the referendum arguing that what is at stake in the referendum is the EU membership: “This is how Europe, without the help of which the country will be totally destroyed within a few weeks, interprets the vote. So the Greek people must interpret it in the same way” (Mitsotakis, C., 2015). The argument was that the European membership of the country, and other issues that shaped the identity of Greece, should not be put into question in referendums or even be subject of public contestation. Other commentators reiterating the well-known idea of Greece and the wider region of the Balkans as a region at crossroads between East and West, that is faced with the prospect of either staying there or being recognized as “western” by acquiring the appropriate credentials (Skopetea, 2003, p. 175), claimed that the true dividing line is whether Greece is a country belonging to the West or to the East. This approach concern, as already stated, not only Greece but all the Balkans nations. However, it is characteristic of the European gaze that approaches Greece as a country outside the European model of normality and constitutes a form of intra-European orientalism (Lambropoulos, 2003, p. 265). The notion of “Europe” became the nodal point of the mainstream ani-populist discourse, transformed to a symbol of the progressive course of the country towards the future and the horizon of modernization (Nikisianis et al. , 2016 p. 66). The relationship of Greece with Europe and modernity is a widely-debated issue in the academic and political sphere. In 2013 the editors of the volume The Greek crisis and European Modernity posed in the Introduction of the book the question “Is Greece a modern European country?”. There they explored the arguments that the current crisis was to be expected due to the fact that Greece did not modernize enough, exhibits strong elements of backward political culture, clientelism, and institutionalized corruption traced back to the formation of the Greek nation state (Triandafyllidou, Gropas & Kouki, 2013). Two years later, Liakos and Kouki in their analysis of discourses on the Greek crisis referred to a promemorandum discourse propagated by the political establishment and mainstream media which attribute the crisis to Greece’s failed transition to postwar European modernity due to the domination of the traditional –over the modern- political culture (Liakos & Kouki, 2015, p. 50). The choice between West and East was presented in two articles in Athens Voice and Protagon as one of the true dividing lines of Greek society (Fyssas, 2015) and as a conflict that lasts for centuries and a fundamental question for the Greek nation. (Polyzoidis, 2015). In general, both media used extremely negative and intense characterizations when they referred to the referendum. To state just some of them, the referendum was a “political cunning” of Prime Minister Tsipras (Kousoulis, 2015), the “highest stage of national-populism” (Hadjibiros, 2016), a “perversion of democracy” (Tzimeros, 2016), “a small coup in the name of the people” (Theodoropoulos, 2015), “the biggest political scam of the country's post-dictatorship history” (Papadopoulos, 2018). On the occasion of one year from the referendum the spokesman of New Democracy called the referendum a parody, a monument of irresponsibility and a crime against the people (Koumoutsakos, 2016). Prime Minister Tsipras, on the contrary, during his speech in the conference of SYRIZA that took place on October 2016, he referred to the referendum as “the greatest moment of the modern history and of the struggles of our people” (Tsipras, 2016). This contrast shows that the referendum and its interpretations continue to be an important issue in the political confrontation. This has to do with the role of the people as collective subjects; essentially with the value of popular will and popular sovereignty. Even this year, the day of the third anniversary of the Greek referendum, Adonis Georgiadis, vice-president of New Democracy commented on his Twitter account that today are completed “three years after the biggest nonsense of all times; an unnecessary and damaging referendum in which Tsipras lured the Greek people” (Georgiadis, 2018). Emotional populism versus rational politics The most important common pattern that was detected from the analysis of these one hundred posts was the contrast between an emotional populism and a rational proEuropeanism, which, as already argued, is one of the key pillars of the mainstream anti-populist discourse in Greece. The referendum was framed as a struggle between populism and rationalism, a struggle that populism unfortunately won. According to the mainstream anti-populist discourse, populism is connected with emotional discourses, lies, demagogy and irrationality in general while anti-populist discourse is connected with rational thinking, politics based on facts and expert knowledge, common sense and so on and so forth. One commentator argued that at the referendum the illusory came in conflict with the rational (Vasilias, 2015). Evangelos Venizelos, former president of PASOK and vicepresident of the coalition government of New Demcoracy and PASOK during 20122014, commenting Tsipras’ speech claimed that “the only true question in the referendum is: yes or no to the European course of Greece, to euro, to common sense” (Venizelos, 2015). The articles published in both media contend that rationality says “yes” and foolishness says “No”. Τhe famous historian Mark Mazower maintained that “Rationality could prevail and a “Yes” vote could lead to the formation of a national unity government” (Mazower, 2015). Finally, a commentator in Protagon contended that the “No” vote is still alive and the majority of Greek society is characterized by a diffused “denial of reality” which was at the highest level in the summer of 2015 when the referendum took place (Mastrogeorgiou, 2017). Fotis Georgeles, publisher of Athens Voice, dealt with the issue of the contrast between emotions and rationality in two editorial pieces. In the first he argued that “at social media, the society of emotions, populism is stronger than arguments” (Georgeles, 2016a) while at the second one he maintained that “in this period of fear, the demagogues have an audience insecure, angry, frightened, willing to hear them” adding that this toxic emotionality manages to banish rationality (Georgeles, 2016b). Very similar views have been expressed by other contributors of Athens Voice. For example, Milena Apostolaki, former MP for PASOK, commenting on the referenda that took place in Greece, Italy and the UK, argued that desperate and frightened citizens seem to be –at least the majority of them- eager to follow the obvious lies and impossible solutions that all demagogues promise them (Apostolaki, 2016). A lot of commentators attempted to create analogies between the various referenda that took place these years. Another author claimed in Athens Voice that “There is something that connects the Turkish referendum with the Greek and the Italian one, with Brexit and Trump’s electoral win: the affective dimension of politics” (Spanou, 2017). A year after the referendum, a regular columnist of Protagon attempted to explain the win of “No” in the referendum claiming that the supporters of “No” had an easy job because they aimed at the emotions of the voters and their instinctive tendency of people to vote “No” (Giannakidis, 2016). Despite their supposed disagreement with affective discourses and in general the kind of discourse that produces feelings and emotions to citizens, many commentators called the people to vote “Yes” because the “No” vote was connected with an imminent doom. Those commentators clearly aimed to cause fear to their readers, they tried to persuade the audience to vote “Yes” under the threat of a catastrophe. In an absolutely indicative statement, Spyros Danellis, MP of the party “To Potami” , wrote in an article published in Athens Voice: “Yes to the European hope, no to our transition to the Third World” (Danellis, 2015). Moreover, few can claim that the following passage is an example of a strictly rational discourse: Those who are preparing to vote NO are ready not to be able to find medicines for their elderly parents? Have they realized there will be no money for fuels and other essentials? Have they (the private employees) understood that they will not be paid again? That unemployment will rise from 30% to 80% the next day? That the pensions and the wages of the most privileged group of the country, the civil servants, will go to the bottom, with a currency that has no value? Can we think that poverty and impoverishment will no longer concern a part of society, but it will become massive and overwhelming? That all this will bring violence and conflict to the streets? That chaos will prevail? (Grous, 2015). The question that arises is why emotions and the affective dimension of populist politics came so strongly in the focus of criticisms. Anti-populism, as we saw, is framed within stark dichotomies like the rational/the irrational. In On Populist Reason, Ernesto Laclau connected the pejorative depiction of populism in the academic and political field with the denigration of the masses and the discussion concerning mass psychology. He claimed that the debate concerning mass psychology can to a large extent be seen as the history of the constitution and dissolution of a social frontier separating the normal from the pathological and that populism is presented as the simple opposite of political forms dignified with the status of full rationality (Laclau, 2005, p. 19). During the crisis period in Greece, we can clearly recognize an approach to populism in terms of abnormality. This anti-populism affects reasonably the depiction of the voters in mainstream discourse. Anti-populism creates an image of voters, essentially of a people, guided by their emotions and not by documented positions and rational views. The depiction of voters as an ignorant mass guided by emotions, passions, stereotypes and superstitions ultimately aims at the de-legitimization of voters’ choices. Yet, as Benjamin De Cleen has argued, populism is not necessarily demagogic while the equation of populism with post-truth politics and the subsequent critique of “posttruth populist politics can lead to a problematic de-legitimization of ‘the people’ as led by emotions rather than well-informed opinions. The idea, he continues, that “objective facts” should shape public opinion loses sight of the unavoidable emotional and affective elements of all kinds of politics (De Cleen, 2018, p. 270). The intellectual capacity of the people was at the center of criticism, as we will see in the two following passages from articles published in Athens Voice: “Many citizens that are fascinated by the demagogues does not have the relevant education and the necessary tools in order to analyses and comprehend the true, and often complex, causes behind the different political phenomena that took place” (Stamou, 2018). “The people have the right to suicide. It suffices to offer them the weapon and urge them to use it. The referendum is such a weapon. (…)The mass does not have the analytical, technical and political tools in order to take crucial decisions. (…) The mass is susceptible to the sirens of populism and lies that can drag the country to irreversible disasters”. (…) If the people are left to decide emotionally within a climate of endless populism, then suicide is the most possible outcome” (Kastanas, 2016). In another article where the author commented the voters of Podemos, Bepe Grillo and SYRIZA alongside the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s win in the US presidential elections, he concluded that “the answer can not be other than the affect. It’s not only the lack of education. It is first and foremost lack of balance, personality and ultimately of seriousness.” (Doukas, 2017). He proceeded to a full blown psychiatrization of voters’ choices. He argued that low instincts, fanaticisms, narcissism, and the untreated sides of human nature lead voters to adopt the behavior of a child that accepts easily all the lies that satisfy their psychological pursuits. There are commentators that went even further. For example Kostas Giannakidis, regular columnist to Protagon, claimed in a contribution to Athens Voice that the people made the wrong choice in the referendum, choosing according to their desires while simultaneously they were under the influence of vulgar populism. And he concluded with the phrase: “The people act as the enemy of the country, as a suffocating noose of irrationality. It’s the emotions that collide with rationality” (Giannakidis, 2018). Thus, it is created a distinction between the affective and the rational dimension of politics, between emotional politics and lies on the one hand and truth and politics based on facts and knowledge of the experts on the other. Ultimately, we are faced with the opposing pair of populism and rationality. We no longer have a confrontation between different political alternatives, but a conflict between rational, technocratic decisions and absurd, emotional, populist attitudes. The policy bearing the “quality” of rational presents itself as self-evident, it cannot be challenged. Rationality dictates a single policy choice, the rational and responsible one, which in the case of Greece will at last make our country a normal European country. This choice in the case of the Greek referendum was the “Yes” vote, as was shown earlier through the various quotes that were presented. Affect and politics The affective dimension of populism is indeed irrefutable. We would not manage to understand populism without taking into account the affective factor. To effect the symbolic unification of a group in a formation such as “the people,” an affective investment is necessary. Taking this affective dimension into account, Laclau stresses the fact that the populist discursive articulation can acquire true hegemonic appeal through processes of affective investment in which discursive form acquires its hegemonic force (Laclau, 2004, p. 326). The two main passions in politics, fear and hope, plays a major role in populist politics. It has been argued that left-wing populism mobilize the passion of hope while right-wing populism the passion of fear (Mouffe, 2014). Greece is an excellent example of the use of hope –both as a passion and as a signifier- by the left-wing populist strategy of Syriza during the 2015 elections. My thesis is that these, and many other, emotions can be used and are used constantly by non-populist political agents. As we saw earlier the emotion of fear was mobilized by the supporters of the “Yes” vote in the referendum who can not be seen as populists. Thus, we need to turn our attention from the affective dimension of populism to the affective dimension of politics. The role of affect is not restricted to populism; as Laclau argued: “something belonging to the order of affect has a primary role in discursively constructing the social” (Laclau, 2004, p. 326). Nicos Demertzis explained how the supremacy of the interest as the explaining order of political action and the dominance of the rational choice paradigm in political science departments lead to the understanding of emotions as irrational elements and consequently insignificant and not so influential factors regarding the political thinking and behavior (Demertzis, 2006, p. 103). To be emotional is, Marcus claimed vividly, to be a backward, childish and bad citizen (Marcus, 1991, p. 198). There are two examples from articles published in Athens Voice that demonstrate adequately this claim by George Marcus: It’s high time to face reality, to see life as adults and not as the spoiled children of history (Georgeles, 2015b). The reaction of child-voter is the self-destructive opposition. Why are we becoming, in the most developed side of the planet, more and more childish? (Doukas, 2017). The retreat of passion and the dominance of rationality lead to the formation of rigid dichotomies understood in binary and oppositional terms: rational/irrational, cognitive/emotional, and normal/abnormal. Instead of treating rational and cognitive on one hand and emotional and affective on the other as mutually exclusive dimensions, we could search for ways in which these dimensions could interact productively2. George Marcus has argued that affective and cognitive processes are interactively engaged in task performance and accordingly the good citizen will rely on both affective and cognitive processes to sustain democratic practices (Marcus, 1991, p, 218, 224). As a result, we should stop condemning emotionality in political discourses and recognize the crucial role that affects play in politics. The affective dimension is necessary for the mobilization of people to act politically, for the construction of collective will and collective identities. Chantal Mouffe claimed in her latest book that “it is when the junction between ideas and affects take place that ideas acquire power” (Mouffe, 2018, p. 75). Instead of trying to secure a public political sphere free of passions, it will be more useful to turn our efforts into creating an agonistic public arena where all views, emotions and different political projects would be expressed 2 The argument was inspired by the elaboration of the opposition between discourse and affect presented in Stavrakakis & Galanopoulos, 2018. and debated, avoiding the culmination of repressed passions that could take repulsive political forms. Conclusions Populism is considered to be dominant in Greek political culture, especially since the decade of 1980 and the rise of PASOK and its charismatic leader, Andreas Papandreou. A new populist cycle opened in Greek politics since 2010. The era of memoranda –the agreements of consecutive Greek governments with the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank- brought harsh austerity measures and neoliberal structural reforms. The implementation of these policies caused a deep crisis of representation that opened the space for the development of populist mobilizations and anti-populist reactions. The paper focused on anti-populism; the under-researched side of the emerging populim/anti-populism cleavage. Through articles of journalists, academics and politicians in two websites, Athens Voice and Protagon, we analyzed the features of anti-populist discourse regarding the Greek referendum that took place in July 2015. The analysis included articles published during the pre-election period and futture interpretations of the referendum. We chose to put under the focus of our research the referendum as not only because it was a historic moment in Greek politics, the first referendum that took place in Greece since 1974, but also because the referendum is the most direct expression of the popular will. Having described all the important patterns of the mainstream, anti-populist discourse that supported the “Yes” vote in the referendum, we isolated one key factor, namely the affective dimension of populism. The decision in the referendum transformed from a decision between two political alternatives to a decision between rationality and emotionality. Accordingly, in the final part of the paper we dealt with the relation of emotions and politics. The paper attempted to deconstruct the impermeable opposition of rational and emotional politics by highlighting the important role of affect in politics be it populist or not. The main outcome of the paper is that anti-populism express a profound distrust against the popular will. This distrust seems to extend to “the people” as a collective political subject, as the ultimate authority in democracies. This distrust is usually connected with the rise of populism and demagogues, with the emergence of fake news and post-truth, or with a criticism of irrational, emotional and uneducated masses. Whatever is the context the ultimate aim is the stripping of the dimension of popular sovereignty from the heart of democracy. We need to continue the research on anti-populism as a political phenomenon, as a specific political logic. Further research will help us codify the main features of antipopulist discourse and reach a working definition of the phenomenon and its relation to other relevant phenomena. Acknowledgments Antonis Galanopoulos’s research is currently financially supported by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) and by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) (Scholarship Code: 2552). Bibliography Albertazzi, D., & McDonnell, D. (Eds.). (2008). Twenty-first century populism: The spectre of Western European democracy. 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