Identifying populism: minimal criteria

As we have seen, both ideational and discursive approaches seem to converge on a certain core as far as the definition of populism is concerned. Apart from their clarity and salience, these two perspectives are chosen because they stress the dimension of meaning production, focusing on ideology (ideational approach) or meaningful practices more generally (discursive approach). Within this context, two basic questions could be put forward to guide our analysis of a concrete phenomenon, for example, the political meanings articulated by a populist leader. First, do we encounter a priority given to ‘the people’, to the construction of an underdog collective subject as the main agent that registers grievances and is credited with voicing them publicly and pushing forward social change? Second, is this prioritisation of popular empowerment seen as taking place within an antagonistic, polarised representation of the social–political field, within the frame of a politicised division between ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘us’ being the people and ‘them’ being the establishment, the power bloc, the 1%?

We can then understand (political) populism primarily as a specific type of discourse, which claims to express popular interests and to represent associated identities and demands (most often articulated as the ‘will of the people’) against an ‘establishment’ or elite, which is seen as undermining them and frustrating their satisfaction. Accordingly, populist discursive representations typically articulate a dynamic and polarised framing of the socio-political field in a bid to inspire and mobilise frustrated/excluded social groups. The latter are called to develop links of tentative unity, which will enable them to potentially challenge the established power structure and influence decision-making. In this sense, the main criteria highlighted by a discursive approach – and also shared, more or less, by ideational scholars – to facilitate a minimal definition, are people-centrism and anti-elitism. The first notion considers ‘the people’ typically as a nodal point around which other peripheral and often antithetical signifiers and ideas can become articulated; the second identifies a split representation of the socio-political field between us (the marginalised, the underdog, the people) and them (the establishment, the 1%, the elite) (Stavrakakis Reference Stavrakakis2017, pp. 527–8).

Codifying such criteria, De Cleen and Stavrakakis have defined populism as:

Most importantly, forming part of broader hegemonic struggles, populist calls and mobilisations are not restricted to the political level narrowly defined. In the words of Margaret Canovan, populism targets ‘both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values of the society’ (Canovan Reference Canovan1999, p. 3).

Performative and socio-cultural aspects of populist discourse

Against the background of this minimal definitional consensus, one needs to highlight two further inter-related aspects particularly relevant to our inquiry, the performative status of populism, and its strong socio-cultural dimensions. Arguably, the production of ‘the people’ as a unified (but not necessarily ‘pure’ or homogeneous) political agent is the outcome of particular appeals facilitating an (always partial) unification process and does not refer to the coherence of a pre-existing social category. For Laclau, the basic unit in the analysis of populism, the pre-existing material processed by populist hegemonic operations, is not ‘the people’ as a fixed sociological locus (a particular group or population) but the notion of demand. Populist discourse articulates unsatisfied grievances and demands in relations of equivalence against a power holder that is regarded as unwilling or unable to fulfil them. It is only when this strategy proves successful that ‘the people’ emerges as a powerful historical force to antagonise the established order. Hence, populism invariably involves constructing a potentially hegemonic popular identity out of a plurality of demands (Laclau Reference Laclau2005, p. 95). In that sense, ‘the people’ is always something retroactively constructed, an empty signifier that needs to be invoked (Panizza and Stavrakakis Reference Panizza, Stavrakakis, Ostiguy, Panizza and Moffitt2021), a performative call that creates what it is supposed to be expressing:

At what level is this performative operation taking place? If hegemony, as Judith Butler observes, ‘emphasizes the ways in which power operates to form our everyday understanding of social relations, and to orchestrate the ways in which we consent to (and reproduce) those tacit and covert relations of power’; and if ‘[p]ower is not stable or static, but is remade at various junctures within everyday life; [if] it constitutes our tenuous sense of common sense, and is ensconced as the prevailing epistemes of a culture’ (Butler in Butler et al. Reference Butler, Laclau and Zizek2000, p. 14), then the employment of populist (or anti-populist) discursive patterns may operate as a distinct dynamic shaping sociality on a multitude of levels. Consistent with Gramsci's take on hegemony, this play is never limited within a strictly defined terrain of political institutions, but encompasses social and cultural life on many levels. The crucial question here is whether ‘the people’, even ‘before entering the stage, might begin to be constituted offstage’ (Feinberg Reference Feinberg2021, p. 106) or rather, on another stage. For example, researching the role of populism beyond politics, Feinberg observes that popular culture research has already identified ‘otherwise unmarked or denigrated modes of expression’ (Feinberg Reference Feinberg2021, p. 107) that demonstrate the operations marking the production of a popular subjectivity outside the registered field of political institutions.

This possibility is reinforced by the fact that Laclau's take on populism is predominantly formal, it concerns the particular framing and energising of representation(s) and not their particular subject matter (content), or the sphere in which they are articulated (parliament, culture, etc.): ‘The concept of populism that I am proposing is a strictly formal one, for all its defining features are exclusively related to a specific mode of articulation – the prevalence of the equivalential over the differential logic – independently of the actual contents that are articulated’ (Laclau 2005b, p. 44). At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe have repeatedly stressed, hegemonic struggles (and populist articulations within them) are both linguistic and material, simultaneously symbolic and affective. In their work, the term ‘discourse’ does not refer merely to words and ideas, but denotes all ‘systems of meaningful practices that form the identities of subjects and objects’ through the construction of antagonisms and the drawing of frontiers (Howarth and Stavrakakis Reference Howarth, Stavrakakis, Howarth, Norval and Stavrakakis2000, pp. 3–4).

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that populism operates in a performative way, something initially highlighted by Laclau and then further developed by Benjamin Moffitt and others (Moffitt Reference Moffitt2016). Most crucially, performativity, together with the (counter)hegemonic, formal constitution of populist representations arguably allows one to study cultural instances like music from the point of view of populism research. Indeed, the socio-cultural approach to populism initiated by Pierre Ostiguy further suggests that political struggle never takes place in isolation from the broader socio-cultural terrain. As Raymond Williams had already observed in his Keywords, the word ‘populism’ embodies – adding a political dimension – many variations that pertain to the word ‘popular’ directly associated with ‘popular culture’ (Williams Reference Williams1983, p. 179). In Ostiguy's perspective:

Along these lines, and drawing on many empirical examples, Ostiguy sees populism as a ‘transgressive’ performance articulated on the basis of materials emanating from the socio-cultural distributions between ‘high’ and ‘low’: a transgression ‘of the “proper” way of doing politics, of proper public behaviour, or of what can or “should” be publicly said’. In that sense, ‘[p]opulism claims to speak on behalf of a “truth” or a “reality” that is not accepted in the more official, larger circles of the world. If there is not thus some kind of “scandal”, […] then one is not really looking at a case of populism. When it has the wind in its sails, populism is the celebratory desecration of the “high”’ (Ostiguy Reference Ostiguy, Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo and Ostiguy2017, p. 76).

The ‘high–low’ axis, in Ostiguy's sense, is ‘cultural’ and very concrete: ‘High and low have to do with ways of relating to people. […] They certainly include issues of accent, levels of language, body language, gestures, and ways of dressing’ (Ostiguy Reference Ostiguy, Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo and Ostiguy2017, p. 77). Hence ‘[o]n the low, people frequently use a language that includes slang or folksy expressions and metaphors, are more demonstrative in their bodily or facial expressions as well as in their demeanor, and display more raw, culturally popular tastes’ (Ostiguy Reference Ostiguy, Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo and Ostiguy2017, p. 78). Such patterns can certainly be adopted and reproduced by populist politicians in order to broaden their direct political appeal and increase their embeddedness within particular social (usually plebeian) sectors. Nevertheless, they could also be observed in cultural production (popular music) that purports to have political effects or encompasses political dimensions. The frontiers between politics, society and culture are porous and involve continuous two-way movements, which highlights the importance of ‘researching the articulation of politics in popular culture’ (Papović and Pejović Reference Papanicolaou and Rigakos2015, p. 114). At any rate, as Canovan observes, ‘[p]opulist appeals to the people [whether in politics or in the socio-cultural field] are characteristically couched in a style that is ‘democratic’ in the sense of being aimed at ordinary people. […] they pride themselves on simplicity and directness’ (Canovan Reference Canovan1999, p. 5).

Music, oppositional politics, and populism

In this article, we utilise this conceptual framework to account for certain cultural performances in the field of rap music. In general, in agreement with Chantal Mouffe, we see politics and aesthetic practices as two inter-related fields:

Music, especially, has interacted with politics closely, starting from classical music and all the way to the British punk and post-punk movements, the DIY scene, the European Nazi punk scene and the Boneheads, or the rap scene. Often, this is a conscious strategy, but this is not always the case: ‘the arts can function as political mediators without intention or conscious effort, as unintended consequence, or even despite the intentions of their creators or producers’ (Eyerman Reference Eyerman2002, p. 445). Interestingly enough, Eyerman describes the political input of music in a way that is relevant to the creation of an oppositional collective subjectivity characteristic of populist politics as they have been described up to now:

Interaction between the two fields has been particularly crucial in the Greek case where, echoing past traditions, popular music has operated as a multiplier of the force of emancipatory politics in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and then throughout the post-authoritarian era (post-1974). The case of Mikis Theodorakis is instructive, both through his own personal trajectory – from communist political prisoner to political activist to minister – and through the impact of his popular music of which certain songs operated as ‘a symbol of the struggle of the Left’ and then of resistance during the junta of the colonels (1967–1974; Tambakaki Reference Tambakaki and Tragaki2019, p. 58). Of course, music is not an a priori privileged outlet merely for left-wing sensibilities. On the contrary, it can be channelled in a multitude of antithetical political orientations. In Eyerman's aforementioned study, the role of music within the American Civil Rights movement is studied together with far right White Power (Vit Makt) music in Sweden (Eyerman Reference Eyerman2002). Likewise, in the contemporary Greek context, music has not been the exclusive privilege of a left-wing imaginary; certainly, ‘one could hardly describe “Greek popular music” as a unified field of study’ (Tragaki Reference Tragaki and Tragaki2019, p. 4). For example, an elected MP of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn (later to be convicted as a criminal organisation by Greek courts), Kaiadas, was a member of a fairly well-known black metal band.

Populist sensibilities in rap music: us/them and ‘the people’

In that sense, a certain part of rap music is no stranger to a politicised discourse, often exhibiting the characteristics of a proto-populist poetic representation: ‘hip hop music may function as a powerful vehicle for the articulation of political sentiments and opinions’ (Naerland Reference Naerland2016, p. 99). It often operates as a vehicle of politicisation by putting forward antagonism and opposition to a status quo, which is perceived as establishing and reproducing exclusion and injustice. As Alexs Pate notes:

This oppositional sensibility can obviously take many forms, often contradictory, even when ‘populism’ is invoked (see, in this respect, Papović and Pejović Reference Papović and Pejović2015; Naerland Reference Naerland2016). What seems to remain constant is the idea of someone ‘speaking truth to power’ and thus giving voice to the unseen and unheard; the pattern of the ‘truth-teller’ is a very powerful cultural and political tool. In rap's case, this tool has been used against the perceived status quo, again and again.

Indeed, the concept of a politicised music genre was partly re-invigorated in the US during the time that the Black Lives Matter movement broke out, in 2012, making its waves felt in other countries within the post-2008 crisis landscape (which also triggered mobilisations throughout the world). In many cases, the already existing rap scene has quickly incorporated these new political overtones, contextualising them in a way that fits each respective country. And so, capitalising on a long tradition of anti-racism and anti-elitism in rap music (external and internal), rappers in the UK started rapping about police brutality and their anti-Boris sentiment, rappers in France articulated new demands about systemic racism and exclusion in the French suburbs and so on (Lanre Reference Lanre2020; Oliver Reference Oliver2020).

Such politicising tendencies were already evident even in the early days of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, when they spread ‘The Message’, rapping about social realism: about poverty, racism and systemic inequalities (Dyson Reference Dyson, Forman and Neal2004, p. 61–2). In addition, the populist connection also became evident in 2016, when A Tribe Called Quest, talking on behalf of ‘the people’ in a song characteristically entitled ‘We the People’, rapped as representatives of ‘we the people’ who ‘eat the same fucking food’ and ‘don't need you’ (‘You in the killing-off-good-young nigga mood’).

The core populist ideas (strong socio-political division and the need to represent the popular side, which shares a certain predicament) are presented here in a performative (musical) way. A Tribe Called Quest identify as part of the people, the majority, the wretched. At the same time they also challenge the Other, the authorities, and claim that the majority does not need them anymore. The days when the regular folk used to sit silently in the back of the bus (actually and figuratively), before the time of the Civil Rights Movement have now passed and resistance can be quite vocal about it. ‘The people’ have nothing to fight over among themselves since they are in the same boat. When they get hungry they eat the same food, arguably meaning that the common folk share the hardships of being poor and oppressed. The status quo, on the other hand, are actively trying to silence ‘the people’. It is here, in these lyrics, that we find the articulation of populist-style demands, from the many to the few, from the people to the elite. In these few lines, A Tribe Called Quest are not only ostensibly operating as part of ‘the people’, but as an incarnation of the will of the people, and they are demanding that they are given back their rights and their dignity.

These political formulations overdetermining certain instances of rap music seem to partly emanate from the conditions that created it. Although certainly not all rappers feel part of the ‘below/low’, some of them seem to position themselves as members of the working class, even members of the lumpen proletariat, themselves victims of police brutality or the mass incarceration phenomenon. Often, they do not act as outsiders, as some sort of detached artist/intellectual in an ivory tower, looking down towards the lower masses with a condescending gaze. Arguably, some of them feel the need to identify with the marginalised multitudes, shaping them as ‘a people’ in order to represent their demands as loud as possible, becoming the cry, ‘the voice of the people’.

As Matthew Oware notes:

A certain current within rap music, then, ostensibly functions both as an art form and a politicised discourse, greatly influenced by a populist sensibility, with the division between us and them, those above (high) and those below (low), playing a central role. Surely, the general idea of Oware, that rap music, as a cultural product of society, refracts and reflects certain belief systems, ideologies, power structures and relationships, must be relevant not only in the US but in any place where rap music (or similar artistic movements) exists. If this seems to be the case in the US, is it also the case in Greece?

The Greek case

In Greece, the idea of the rapper as either part of the majority or as the voice of the majority itself, demanding recognition and criticising the establishment, has been evident almost from the start. Overall, rap music has at least a 30-year-long history in the country. Hip hop in Greece began as a subculture in the 1980s with modest commercial success and recognition starting from 2003 onwards, especially with the adoption of Greek lyrics, melodies and instrumentation (Elafros Reference Elafros2013, pp. 83–4). To be precise, Greek rap music started as a very niche musical genre, with F.F.C. (Fortified Concept), the first hip hop band, performing for very small audiences and releasing tracks on tapes in a DIY fashion. At the start of the 1990s, other bands emerged and, slowly but steadily, hip hop became a youthful subculture that thrived in major Greek cities like Athens and Thessaloniki. During the 1990s, a multitude of bands and acts started to emerge, many of them influenced in different ways, mainly by their North American counterparts.

Currently, rap is modestly influential in Greece (both mainstream and underground). It is possible to distinguish at least three ideal-typical currents/waves from the 1990s up until today. There was originally the current influenced by gangsta rap, hardcore battle rap and boom bap sounds, which is now considered ‘old school’. Parts of this ‘old school’ legacy continue up until today, with some aesthetic differences from their 1990s roots. There is a smaller current within the scene, which is located on the consciously political side of rap music (influenced by earlier boom bap sounds like Onyx or Psycho Realm). This trend always had ties to the younger generation of activists, anarchists and anti-authoritarians in general, with political movements and sectors critical of the status quo. Finally, there is the ‘new school’ wave, which developed in the early 2010s and mostly shares the now standard, over the top consumerist, sometimes overtly sexist and masculinist, ‘trap’ aesthetics that is dominating this music scene in many countries (France, UK, US, etc.). Of course, these categories are not strict and can overlap.

At any rate, Greek rap music never escaped its ‘marginalized’ status and always remained relatively ‘alternative’ or ‘independent’ (Elafros Reference Elafros2013, p. 85) within Greek popular music. No wonder that, intervening from such an alternative position, groups like Terror X Crew, Active Member, Παρεμβολές [Interferences] and many others have steadily, since almost day one, been giving political connotations to their music, presenting themselves as part of the suffering majority, as the collective mind of the oppressed: ‘In Greece, a generalized discourse against forms of central power – such as police, government and mainstream media – has been present in the lyrics of rappers from the very first moment’ (Efthymiou and Stavrakakis Reference Efthymiou and Stavrakakis2018, p. 208).

This is evident, for example, in the song ‘Να τους δω να τρέχουν’ [‘See them running’] from the group Terror X Crew, released in 1995, where the group declares that they ‘don't want to be a part of their system, [they] won't be their servant, or slave’; instead, ‘all [they] want to do is to see them running’. The pronoun ‘them’ reveals an antagonistic spirit (presumably against the elite, the government officials, the ideological state apparatus). The rap duo makes consistent use of the first person narrative, in both singular and plural forms, and at the same time constantly creates the image of an adversary, through the use of ‘them/they’. This identification arguably concerns many agents identified with the power structure. Ultimately, ‘they’ are the few, the corrupt, the ones who seek to uphold the status quo, in the eyes of the rap duo.

From 2013 onwards, after the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, a young rapper, activist and syndicalist, by the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn (which eventually led to its downfall and criminal conviction), rap music attained somewhat of a heightened acclaim within the broader public sphere. This also made rap music – and the oppositional culture within hip hop in particular – increasingly relevant to public political discourse, because obviously other – less politically conscious – currents within the genre (for example, trap) had already gained relative prominence and continue to enjoy recognition. Fyssas was the first notable native victim of Golden Dawn, and, shortly after his assassination, became a symbol for various political movements in Greece as well as a symbol of anti-fascism within the rap scene itself (strengthening the anti-racist echo of its origins in the US) (Strickland Reference Strickland2017). Since then, ‘anti-fascist discourse has held a prominent place in Greek rap music of the recent years and has been a common point of reference for rappers of various political positionings’ (Efthymiou and Stavrakakis Reference Efthymiou and Stavrakakis2018, p. 208).

Indeed, Pavlos Fyssas gained a significant posthumous legacy as rapper and anti-fascist. These two identities, the identity of the anti-fascist activist and the identity of the rapper/mc became intertwined after his death, resulting in the attribution of a martyr-like status. Accordingly, his songs were gradually acknowledged as the voice of the anti-fascist struggle from 2013 onwards, with most of them averaging at around 1 million views on YouTube and some breaking into 2 or 3 million views. In addition, there is now a special day (18 September) dedicated to him as a symbol of anti-fascist struggle. Thus, his example had a significant and multi-level impact on the Greek public sphere, facilitating the creation of an anti-fascist movement, which is still strong today, almost 10 years later. Last but not least, today an annual rap music festival is held in his memory and the exact location where he was murdered has now been renamed to Pavlos Fyssas Street.

‘A Better Tomorrow’ by Dodekatos Pithikos [The 12^th Monkey] (2021)

In April 2021, Δωδέκατος πίθηκος [Dodekatos Pithikos – The 12th Monkey], a rapper from Thessaloniki, released a song entitled ‘A Better Tomorrow (protest)’ in response to the government's handling of the pandemic. In general, Dodekatos Pithikos seems to belong to a group of rappers that ‘address contemporary sociopolitical problems in most of their lyrics, reacting against certain forms of authority and oppression, and usually reject modes of production and promotion that are not in control of or exploit the artists and their audiences’ (Efthymiou and Stavrakakis Reference Efthymiou and Stavrakakis2018, p. 211). Here the rapper seems to show a particular interest in the construction of an ostensibly populist-type discourse not only through his song, but also with regard to the song's and its music video's general aesthetic.

The music video (Δωδέκατος πίθηκος 2021) starts with an interview with Stelios Kazantzidis, a very well-known Greek popular music (laiko) singer from the 1950s and 1960s who famously charmed conservatives, progressives, working- and middle-class people alike, as well as sections of the bourgeoisie. Indeed, Kazantzidis managed to cross over cultural, class and political boundaries and gained the status of a symbol of Greekness itself. Dodekatos Pithikos seems to position himself as a (somewhat similar?) symbol that could possibly unite different social sectors – regardless of their political identities or social constituencies – against a common foe, the government. The ability to draw power from different quarters in order to create a populist-like (equivalential) assemblage of slogans and mottos is key in this example. Quickly the video cuts to an image of Dodekatos Pithikos's head being stepped on by a boot (presumably a boot belonging to a person in a position of authority?) giving flesh to the classic Orwellian quote from 1984 (‘If you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever’; Orwell [1949] Reference Orwell1990, p. 280). Despite his left-wing heritage, Orwell is a symbol that transcends political frontiers and is easily appropriated by the left as well as by parts of the right.

Dodekatos Pithikos seems to be referring to cases of aggressive policing that unfolded during the period(s) of covid-related lockdown measures in Greece, with many such occasions of police misconduct ‘leaking’ to the public sphere through amateur videos (Petsinis Reference Petsinis2021). Consistent with certain biopolitical arguments, the main idea here is that lockdown measures themselves may have been largely an excuse for the expansion of policing activities: ‘Ωραία λέξη είναι το lockdown αντί να πείτε εγκλεισμός, φυλακή καραντίνας’ [‘Lockdown might be a fancy word, instead of saying incarceration, quarantine jail’].Footnote ¹ The song also highlights the significant funding provided by the government to mass media outlets during the pandemic, an additional issue of much current debate: ‘Πόσα εκατομμύρια δώσατε στα βοθροκάναλα για τα σποτάκια; Για να σας γλύφουν τον κώλο ε’ [‘How many millions have you paid the sewage media for the spots? To kiss your ass?’]. With respect to this matter, the government has singled out this funding as necessary support in such difficult times and as essential to the communication aspect of pandemic management. Yet the opposition denounced it as an act of securing positive publicity for the government (Christopoulos Reference Christopoulos2021; AFP 2021). As a result, a special committee of the Greek Parliament has now been set up to examine the issue.

In the case of rap and, specifically, in the case of Dodekatos Pithikos, older generations – which have often adopted a very specific kind of anti-populist and anti-youth rhetoric, delegitimising calls for change as an ‘anomaly’ – are directly accused of creating the economic crisis of the late 2000s and, furthermore, of upholding the ensuing unjust and unequal status quo presently: ‘Οι προηγούμενες γενιές μας σακάτεψαν, τώρα τους πειράζει που αντιδράμε’ [‘The previous generations destroyed us, now they mind that we fight back’].

What seems to be the main idea behind the song is the clash between ‘the people’, on whose side Dodekatos Pithikos seems to position himself, and ‘the elite’, the government, which is dividing and violating ‘the people’ (‘Τον λαό να διχάζετε, τον λαό να βιάζετε’ [‘you are dividing the people, you are violating/raping the people’]): ‘Δικαιοσύνη μόνο για τον πλούσιο ξύλο, γαμήσι για τον φτωχό’ [‘Justice only for the rich, beating, fucking for the poor’]. In addition, the institutional establishment seems to be denounced for using the pandemic as an excuse to control and discipline, instead of actually and effectively combating covid-19 as a public health emergency. The rapper takes on, once more, the mantle of ‘Vox Populi’, the voice of the people, ostensibly expressing their feelings along with his own, which are presented as one and the same. Yet excessive policing on health grounds is also seen as having the indirect effect of unifying those who feel affected and energising their truth-teller, who assumes the task of performatively revealing reality as it is.

Throughout the music video, the camera is centred around Dodekatos Pithikos, with instances of being brutalised by an obscure actor visibly dressed in some kind of official uniform. Here, he seems to be making a confession, and, at the same time, suffering for it. The personal connection with the viewer/listener is facilitated by the constant zoom-ins on the figure of the rapper. By showing the rapper repeatedly as a victim of violence, the video reaffirms that truth tellers, such as Dodekatos Pithikos, always suffer at the hands of the ruling class. This becomes especially evident in the rapper's lyrics when he claims: ‘Το μόνο έγκλημα που έχω διαπράξει ονομάζεται ελευθερία του λόγου’ [‘The only crime I have committed is called freedom of speech’]. On another note, during the entirety of the music video, the performer is surrounded by pitch-black darkness, making it seem like he is in some sort of solitary confinement. This confinement is only interrupted by instances of figures wearing helmets (arguably representing a repressive apparatus) brutalising him. This may be an example of how he views the government measures against covid-19, already indicated in the part of the lyrics where he names the lockdown as ‘incarceration, quarantine jail’.

‘So That I Don't Owe You!’ by Mithridatis (2021)

After discussing the first example from the contemporary Greek rap scene that may qualify as strongly engaging with a populist sensibility in terms of its lyrics and performance, we should also, at this point, highlight an additional dimension of much recent interest. This relates to the broader public sphere where – against the background of a predominantly anti-populist mainstream, a political and media mainstream that is always quick to denounce all references to ‘the people’ as irresponsible populism and a major threat to political normality – certain political or cultural projects (like rap) may be discussed as ‘populist’ in the pejorative sense of the word in order to vindicate the status quo threatened by such initiatives or to – consciously or unconsciously – delegitimise criticism. Whether they are themselves populist or not, the fact that such (political or cultural) projects – from particular political forces to rap music – are demonised as such brings them within the scope of the research field of populism studies, which must encompass discourses about populism in addition to populist discourses themselves. Indeed ‘[n]ot much attention has been paid to such dynamics underlying and perpetuating debates about populism’ (De Cleen and Glynos Reference De Cleen and Glynos2021, p. 188, emphasis in the original); yet such ‘meta-reflections on discourses about populism’ (De Cleen and Glynos Reference De Cleen and Glynos2021, p. 190) are crucial in illuminating the field in all its complexity and paradoxical dynamics.

As an oppositional political force, SYRIZA was targeted in this way, between 2010 and 2015, by being demonised by its political opponents, the established media and various pundits as ‘populist’ (seen here as a synecdoche of any conceivable political pathology; Stavrakakis et al. Reference Stavrakakis, Katsambekis, Kioupkiolis, Siomos and Nikisianis2017). However, following SYRIZA's term in government and its defeat in 2019 by the right-wing New Democracy, under the leadership of premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis (in power at the time of writing, September 2022), SYRIZA's opposition has not been able to draw much attention to or create significant obstacles to the implementation of the new government's agenda. Here is where the potential political impact of the Greek rap scene enters the arena. What the main opposition party did not manage to achieve was indeed attempted by rap music. First, in 2020, rapper Θύτης [Thitis – Hunter/Perpetrator] released a diss track – an ad hominem song in rap culture – against the Prime Minister himself. This was entitled ‘Έι Μητσοτάκη!’ [‘Hey Mitsotakis!’] and made use of shocking, desecrating and obscene – by public standards – language, to underline the rapper's opposition, indignation and even hatred towards the government.

Another very recent case, that of Mithridatis – a rap star from the 1990s, who resurfaced in May 2021 with ‘So That I Don't Owe You!’, a 12 minute-long song, organised as a seven-act one-man show – is even more instructive. Here, seven verses, each with its own theme, are presented as singular diss tracks. Each act has a specific theme and is colour-coded in the video. In the aforementioned song, this rapper heavily criticises the government and the ruling party on a number of subjects ranging from corruption, the management of the pandemic and the economy as well as its general political orientation. The song was successful enough to get the attention of mainstream media. Having attracted more than a million views on YouTube within a few days (Μιθριδάτης 2021), it was predominantly discussed in the public sphere in terms of its ‘populism’ and whether this was compatible with artistic merit (Kavatziklis Reference Kavatziklis2021). It was, as a result, defended by left-wing circles and media, and attacked by anti-populist mainstream pundits and media as oppositional propaganda and a poor substitute for political art proper (Sideris Reference Sideris2021; Mandravelis Reference Mandravelis2021).

The lyrics are divided into seven verses and the music video into seven corresponding acts. The first verse is dedicated to the government and the party of New Democracy. The second verse concerns the party's voters, the petit bourgeois that supposedly elected the current government. The third verse stands against the mass media, whom the performer views as systemic and corrupt. The fourth verse has to do with the pandemic and the measures that were taken by the government. Earlier it was pointed out that these measures were viewed by many as overtly focused on policing and discipline. The fifth verse, the shortest of the seven, is about the faux resentment expressed by ‘social media’ activists. The sixth verse follows and builds upon the fifth verse, addressing more broadly the social media culture that has taken hold of many people, preventing them from actually mobilising, keeping them docile and harmless in a never-ending scroll down trapped within a digital simulation of real life. The seventh and final verse, concerns the artistic community, of which Mithridatis is part, and their lack of artistic and activist responses to the covid-19 measures and the country's lapse towards what Mithridatis perceives as a more or less ‘illiberal’ direction (also see, Christopoulos Reference Christopoulos2021).

The lyrics comprise, among others, the following axes. First, the oppositional tone encompasses, once more, a variety of dominant institutions and values (the elitism of the prime minister and the government, etc.), paying particular attention to the media and its much-discussed (especially during the pandemic) association with mainstream politics. Essentially, reference is made to the nepotist and ostensibly ‘aristocratic’ character of the administration and its leadership. Government elitism is explicitly and ironically addressed, with supposedly super-intelligent ‘golden boys’ sponsored by the current administration, and the latter denounced as a ‘dynasty’.

Against a strategy currently examined by the Greek Parliament and often perceived in oppositional circles as a beatification avalanche involving handouts to particular media in order to paint a prettier – often idealised – picture for the government and the Prime Minister, Mithridatis seems to aim at creating the exact opposite, speaking on behalf of a people (painted with, more or less, plebeian ‘colours’) trapped within a dystopian reality: ‘ένας λαός σε δυστοπία κι ομηρία’ [‘A people in dystopia, kept hostage’]. In the third act he raps about the media, which are seen as sustaining and constituting the hegemony the government now enjoys. Full of ‘propaganda’ and ‘fake news’, journalism is accused of promoting ‘του καθεστώτος [την] αγιογραφία’ [‘the regime's hagiography’].

Distrust of the media has been a major issue in the country's public discourse, especially since the Greek austerity crisis, from 2012 onwards. The media is often denounced as the extension of a corrupt political elite; in this type of representation, they are seen as distorting what is at stake in social and political life. Distrust towards the media constitutes a central theme in hip hop culture as well – affecting many rappers and fans alike. Advancing the claim that rap music itself is the original truth-teller and not the media, the attack on mainstream institutions and values associated with populism seems to encounter an almost ideal vehicle in rap music, which obviously shares this oppositional attitude and manages to articulate it using a ‘low’ grammar that highlights the socio-cultural references of an arguably populist dynamic in the making.

The emphasis that, as with Dodekatos Pithikos, is placed around the covid-19 measures becomes strong in the fourth act and the corresponding lyrics. In it, Mithridatis raps:

Here, the performer seems to be castigating the many unexpected U-turns of the government in the management of the pandemic – trying to balance economic priorities with the public health emergency. In particular, after a very aggressive lockdown during the first phase, boosting the tourism industry assumed priority and tourists were invited to return to Greece and enjoy the sunny resorts during the summer of 2020. Rather predictably, covid-19 cases started spiking some time later, with blame often put on supposedly reckless young people. The performer also castigates the economic aspect of the pandemic management, which seems to have affected sectors of Greek society: ‘Η δυστυχία των πολλών, των λίγων η βουλιμία’ [‘The unhappinness of the many, the bulimia of the few’]. Most important, from our point of view, is the political criticism incorporated in the song. The government's insistence on restrictive measures is highlighted, with the Constitution becoming ‘ένα όνομα απλά σε μια πλατεία’ [‘just a name for a square’]. The implication here is that, as a result, rights and constitutional provisions have no meaning to people anymore and the category ‘Σύνταγμα’ [Syntagma – Constitution] itself has only one meaning left, that of naming the central square in the country's capital (Syntagma Square in Athens).