Populism in an Age of Challenge, Change and Chaos from the Eyes of Educators

Bob Barrett
American Public University

Abstract

Albert II of Belgium noted “In these troubled times we live in, we should remain vigilant and see through populist arguments. Thus, who makes the arguments, leads the populist movement, as well as impacts the populace? Further, who truly represents the people – the politicians, educators, leaders, scientists, or ordinary citizens. While the Populism Movement was formed in the late 1800s in the United States, it also appeared across the globe to address the needs and concerns of the people. However, one has to wonder when new ideologies, theories, and lines of thinking start to appear – they should remain in the same framework and offer the same to all people. However, some leaders and groups change or adjust certain ways of thinking or leadership to meet their needs instead. The central theme of today’s speech is to look at how populism may have had changed its form in the context of what was meant as the “voice of the people” to perhaps to adjust to the self-serving fulfillment of needs for certain groups and/or populist leaders. Further, we will look at how there was a new “checks-and-balances” presented at the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic that started to question the way some populist leaders might have led their citizens and the world astray to a different meaning or understanding of populism, but rather to help with their own “self-fulfilling prophecy”. Consequently, the health concerns of the Pandemic outbreak caused the people to start thinking more about their leaders and governments in terms of how they handled the health concerns in terms of the availability of services, status of their economy since many people could not go to their physical work environments due to the outbreak, except for the first responders (i.e., doctors, police, emergency personnel, etc.), and educating the children to keep some semblance of normalcy in this age of chaos. The key element then and now is education – what is the true role and function of business and educational leaders during any crisis, as well as the rising of leaders who may not be the “true voice of the people.” Second, while global leaders tried to “capture the day and their own agenda”, the big downfall which became evident over time was the denial of science and prevention of services in many areas due to leadership and/or government intervention. The Council on Foreign Relations featured the writings of Mounk that provided another perspective that we should keep in mind. “In the first months of the pandemic, many observers argued that countries led by populist leaders who distrust science and deny the severity of the pandemic would suffer worse outcomes. Perhaps, they speculated, it might even slow or reverse the seemingly inexorable rise that the populists have enjoyed over the past decade.” (Mounk, 2021). Further, in this presentation, we will look at populism during the three states of the Pandemic from the onset, during, and after phases. Populism changed in different ways over the past decades, and many who believed in it started to rethink their own beliefs and value systems. Let us keep in mind what the Dalai Lama wrote “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.” Consequently, Mounk (2021) stated that “the transition from Donald Trump to Joe Biden has shown how much a competent government can, even in the late stage of the game, do to improve the situation.” However, what did we learn during this period or discover from this outbreak that Trump stated in January 2020 would not kill anyone and no more than 15 people would get sick from Covid-19? It would not be until almost 2 years later with the loss of 1 million American lives and multi-million personal losses worldwide that people would start to question whether what we knew as populism may have changed. Mounk (2021) summed up this thought in the following quote: “The price of populism has turned out to be even more deadly than we could have imagined before this terrible pandemic swept the world.” However, we need to remember the words of William Shakespeare: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Therefore, a new book has opened for the fields of business and education to write this new genre of lessons learned and best practices that were gained from the Pandemic period and to be the “true voices for the people.”

Presentation