Across the United States, socially conservative policies that coalesce around the notion of protecting children have been increasingly proposed and established. From banning books to banning gender-affirming care for trans children, the rise of such policies and the surrounding rhetoric are built upon and promoted through a populist logic. Politicians position themselves as representing the real people and the people’s infallible will of protecting children while delegitimizing their opponents and any criticism in the process. 

What makes someone or something populist is a hotly debated topic, but here I predominantly understand populism through the lens provided by Jan-Werner Muller: populism is an antipluralist, “moralistic imagination of politics” that divides the world between the authentic morally pure people—for whom the populist politician is the exclusive legitimate representative—and their opponents who are positioned as the elite, immoral, enemies of the people. Populist logic therefore requires some sort of distinguishing characteristic between the moral and the immoral, the real people and the rest.[1] Currently, in the United States, this characteristic is the impetus to protect children. 

For instance, in Florida, which is leading the nation in book bans, Governor Ron DeSantis has justified removing hundreds of books from public libraries and classrooms under the guise of protecting children from “pornographic and inappropriate materials.” Meanwhile, in 2020, Idaho became the first state to ban transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams in school. Since then, 25 states have enacted similar restrictions, arguing that, plain and simply, this is “all about girls and protecting them.” Further, at least 26 states have passed bans on gender-affirming care for minors, such as hormone replacement therapy, claiming that children must be “protected from harmful, experimental medical and surgical treatments.” By centering around the rhetoric of child protection, all of these policies are carefully crafted and choreographed to incite voter support and delegitimate the opposition, regardless of strong evidence that children actually experience more harm than protection by said policies. 

There is a moral sheen to all political discourse, but the populist’s claim stands almost entirely on a moral, rather than empirical, foundation. In this manner, it becomes infallible—opposition is just immorality. DeSantis has sought to make his book ban policies infallible by employing just such populist logic. An official Florida Governor webpage entitled “Exposing the Book Ban Hoax” proclaims that “pornographic” materials have been “snuck into our classrooms and libraries to sexualize our students.” Anyone who protests the book bans are therefore immediately poised for accusations of exposing children to pornography and sexualization. The DeSantis administration goes so far as to call book bans a “hoax” by leftists pushing “woke indoctrination in schools.” It is important to note here that the ‘woke left’ is a common pejorative term for those associated with, or assumed to be, “liberal elites.” Criticism of book bans is therefore not just delegitimized as immoral but as an attempt by the elite to silence the will of the people. 

Further, right-wing populist logic frequently accuses the elite of maintaining a “symbiotic relationship” with the social outgroup in which their interests are placed before—and at the expense of—the interests of the real people.[2] This logic is particularly evident in the discourse surrounding Texas’ ban on gender-affirming care for minors which claims to protect kids from medical providers (the elite) who “capitalize” on transgender (the outgroup) “social contagion” to deceive good parents and push dangerous surgeries on children (the moral populus). 

The populist represents the general will of the people, or so he will claim. For the populist, the collective will—meaning the people’s collective interest—is both “singular” and  “absolute.”[3] In other words, anyone who does not support them is against both them and the people. This is one of the core claims of populism: those who do not support the populist party are not part of the authentic people in the first place.[4] Such claims are particularly evident in the rhetoric surrounding book bans. One of the largest actors in the movement to ban books is the political organization Moms For Liberty which frames its mission as being “dedicated to fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.” Similarly, its founders are stated as having “united parents who are ready to fight those that stand in the way of liberty.” The clear implication is that Moms For Liberty unites real Americans to fight for their survival and liberty against the corrupt and inauthentic elite. Indeed the three tenets of Moms For Liberty embody each of the aforementioned logics of populism. By proudly proclaiming “We are Moms/Dads/Grandparents. We Believe Power belongs to the People. We Fight for our Children” they declare that the movement to enact the people’s will—protecting children—lies exclusively with them, the real people. 

One may seek to argue that book bans or conservative attacks on trans children reveal an upsurge in identity politics and demagoguery, but that they are not in and of themselves populist. It is certainly true that Ron DeSantis and many of the right-wing politicians who espouse rhetoric of child protection fit the criterion of a demagogue—that is a leader who appeals to the “passions and prejudices” of the people to gain and maintain power. DeSantis, Moms For Liberty, and other leaders of the far right may even be characterized as dangerous demagogues who wield “weaponized communication” to gain compliance, avoid accountability, and influence with indifference to truth.[5] I am necessarily not opposed to categorizing such politicians as dangerous demagogues, however, the argument that the right-wing politics of child protection is demagoguery and not populism fails to consider the interdependence of dangerous demagoguery and populist logic. For instance, Mercieca (2019) argues that a demagogue is dangerous if and when his discourse becomes a tool to avoid being questioned or having to provide empirical reason. As I have previously outlined, making one’s platform infallible through a moral over empirical foundation is central to populist logic. Similarly, as with populists, the dangerous demagogue denies the legitimacy of their opponents by rhetorically positioning them as a threat to the nation and people. 

 To be clear, I am not arguing that every right-wing politician who boasts of book bans or espouses anti-trans rhetoric is a populist, but rather that populist logic is the backbone of recent right-wing policies and demagoguery. Through the logic of populism, right-wing politicians exploit the notion of protecting children to make their policies infallible and to differentiate between their supporters—the moral and authentic people—and their opponents, who become immoral, and by rhetorically excluding them from the populus, un-American. 

[1]Müller, J.-W. (2016) What is populism? London: Penguin Books. 
[2] Müller, J.-W. (2016) What is populism? London: Penguin Books. 
[3]  Mudde, C. and Kaltwasser, C.R. (2013) ‘Populism’, Oxford Handbooks Online [Preprint]. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.0026.
[4]  Müller, J.-W. (2016) What is populism? London: Penguin Books. 
[5]  Mercieca, J.R. (2019) ‘Dangerous demagogues and weaponized communication’, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 49(3), pp. 264–279. doi:10.1080/02773945.2019.1610640.