About

Sadopopulism is a term used to describe a government body that operates without policy and causes pain in its citizenry.

Origin

On December 2nd, 2017, historian Timothy Snyder released a video via YouTube ^[1] entitled "Timothy Snyder Speaks, ep. 4: Sadopopulism." In the video, he describes how an oligarchy, a governing body made up of very few people to rule many, stays in power using "sadopopulism." He describes the word in relation to United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Snyder refutes the idea that they are populists because they do not act towards promises to the people. Instead, he says, these two create policies that hurt the people that put them in power.

"These are policies that are deliberately designed to administer pain, to add to the total amount of pain in American society.

"If you hurt people you create a resource of pain, of anxiety and fear which you then direct against others.

"If, in the long run, the way that you govern is by hurting people who don’t mind being hurt because they think other people are hurting worse, what you will tend to do is take the vote away from people who expect more from government, what you will tend to do is try to suppress the vote and keep the vote down to the people who accept that government can do nothing except for administer pain. And then that moves you away slowly from democracy."

Spread

On April 3rd, 2018, Snyder released the book The Road to Unfreedom. In the book, he further explores the concept of Sadopopulism in relation to the world's geopolitical climate.^[2]

The following month, on May 9th, Snyder spoke to Salon^[3] about the concept. In the interview, he says:

"'Sadopopulism' is the notion that you're doing half of populism. You promise people things, but then when you get power you have no intention of even trying to implement any policy on behalf of the people. Instead, you deliberately make the suffering worse for your critical constituency. The people who got Trump into office, for example, are traditional Republican voters plus people in counties who are doing badly in terms of health care and other measures, and who need help."

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External References