For the past few years, rather disturbing tendencies take place in the world. Unfortunately, the ghost of communism and other radical currents continue wandering around Europe in the form of populism and new political-social slogans, which offer quick solutions, based on the people’s stupidity. Populism is transformed from one ideology into another ideology, searching for weak features of the human personality and manipulating the human consciousness.

On the one hand, for many sober-minded people, who know a bit of history or political studies, it is rather weird that in the XXI century in the years 2014-2018, we have similar moods as they were in the years 1914-1918, though, on the other hand, if we analyze the same processes in the society from the scientific point of view, nothing is surprising.

Thus, what is the paradox, that very often educated nations elect idiots-populists to power? Especially, at first we can see it on the example of the Eastern European countries, and, later, also in the Western European countries at the last parliament elections.

An example of populism – is the Soviet Union and its assignee Russia, which occupied the entire Eastern Europe within the period of the years 1944-1990, and it stopped economical and social development of the occupied countries. So why do the Hungarians at the presidential level elect the Russophile president, who is a skeptic about Europe, and proclaims a closer approach to Russia, which has not provided any investment or assistance since the mid-nineteenth century, but, on the contrary, sent out royal troops to conquer Hungarian aristocracy, exterminated the Hungarians during the Second World War, subsequently establishing their regime of puppets, and shot Hungarians who wanted freedom and democracy in Budapest in 1956?

Why do the glorious people of the Czech Republic elect the president, who is also coming to rapprochement with Russia, forgetting about occupations, arrests, Gulags, evictions and death of the freedom-loving Czechs during the Prague Spring in 1968, when their freedom, as well as in Budapest in 1956, was abolished by the Soviet-Russian tanks T-34, and, with the assistance of secret services the whole generation of reformers was poisoned or destroyed in car accidents?

Why are there among Italians, Germans or French so many skeptics regarding Ukraine, which is getting freed in the hard struggle against the negative influence of Russia and against the Post-Soviet business mafia? And why do Europeans make up myths about “Grande Russia”, criticize Ukraine and the Baltic countries, though many of these critics are not able to find Ukraine or the Baltic countries on the geographical map, not mentioning the fact, they should know the general facts of their history.

In the European media, Euromaidan and the Ukraine’s revolution of Dignity are often presented as a certain parade of some radicals, rather than the aspirations of Ukrainians for European civilization. Unfortunately, different parades with smoke sticks in Ukraine gather more representatives of the foreign media, than scientific conferences of Ukrainian expert-reformers, that are forming a thinking citizen and a civil society in Ukraine. Different radicals gained only 1.5 percent of votes at the elections to the Ukrainian parliament, but the European media are talking much more about them, rather than about new democratic generation, which is reforming Ukraine in a hard, but steady way.

Populism is coming back to Europe, as not many people have understood the ideas of the European Union and have forgotten the ruins of the Second World War. As the ancient Romans said, the state is not created to build a paradise here, but, at least, not to turn the life here into hell. Unfortunately, instead of developing the democratic Europe and leading all the potentials of people to its development, many people think at the level of the imperial past of their nations, at the level of the Middle Ages. All the radical currents, Nazism or communism, originated from populism. The war was the result. The populist type of thinking carries great danger for all the citizens of Europe. In the event of a war, an anthropogenic catastrophe can occur in the presence of nuclear power plants, chemical plants and enterprises. Many people want to play "imperial ambitions" as soon as they see problems in neighboring nations.

Due to media and television, many people are manipulated, as they do not understand the reasons for war in Ukraine. That is why, many Europeans support the policy of the modern Russian government headed by Putin, which is the result of populist world outlook of its citizens. Many Eastern-European politicians, who promote intolerance towards Ukraine and support the policy of Putin, have not got rid of the syndrome of inferiority: they are creeping before the stronger states that have invested the money for their economy, but have not got rid of the supremacy over other nations, whose territories they managed to control for some period of time. Most of them are sick with "imperial bacilli" as a form of populism, that is to come to the land of others and seize it by force of the army and police against the civil population. Many politicians in the Eastern Europe wiped their hands when the war on the Donbas began, with the hope that Ukraine would be completely weakened, and they would be able to tear the young state into pieces, although they imitated friendship with Ukraine. But everything went the other way: the Ukrainians managed to stand through. The majority of the Eastern European states also had the radical policy, but simply had less opportunities to master other nations throughout their history. Because radicalism is the formation of a strategy for solving their problems or plans at the expense of weaker, unprotected or simply unarmed states, mainly at the expense of the civil population of other nations who were experiencing difficult periods of history.

In order to understand the following situation, an additional analysis of the European policy is needed.

What did the European Union bring to the Eastern Europe? It gave money for the infrastructure development, updated plants, modernized science, financed education and medicine, developed the agriculture, invested social and cultural projects. It implemented the reform of decentralization, allowing local communities to develop. The main fact: life expectancy of an Eastern-European increased from 64 to 82 years, high pensions, insurance, quality service and so on. We can continue the list. Emigrants from other world countries wish to go to Europe, as they see high standards of life, because the mankind has not created anything better. One question arises: why should the skepticism towards the European Union grow? Why are pro-Russian politics elected, not remembering that Russia had never done anything good for them, except for tanks, arrests, destroy of leaders and having stopped the development of these countries for 40 years behind the Western neighbors.

Why don’t we put a question another way: the European Union, founded in the Western Europe, has made a great contribution to the Eastern Europe development. And what has the Eastern Europe done for the European Union, apart from increase in number of skeptics and populists at the state authority?

Why is the policy of Ukraine, which wants to build real democracy and join the European family of nations, perceived as weakness, but the aggressive strategy of Russia, which consists in the annexation of the Crimea, the occupation and the war on the Donbas, gains respect? Many people still perceive the human right to participate in politics as weakness and chaos. A person who has a high level of culture and education, aspires from the state the guarantees of freedom and law. A less educated person wants various programs of state patronage and institutions that ought to do for her the things he is able and capable to do. The Ukrainians are conscious that nowadays it is impossible to build peace and wealth in a separate state. They were the only nation who voluntarily refused from the nuclear weapons in 1994, and in return they received guarantees of the Western authorities regarding the security and inviolability of the borders, but these conditions were not fulfilled in the face of the real aggression of Russia.

Unfortunately, many Europeans have not still understood the aggressive policy of Russia for 300 years already, and in particular, in the XX century, when all the countries - neighbors were attacked from Finland to Ukraine. For the Russian government not nations or states are the major danger: on the one hand, there is a constant search for the interior enemy (it can be the USA, Europe, Georgia or Ukraine), but the important task is to do their best to prevent its own people from becoming more intelligent. Because the real enemy for Russian criminal governments is to do everything possible so that the people do not realize: the poverty of most Russians is not caused by external enemies, but by their own political corrupted criminal pseudo-elites. Different types of conflicts – is a professional distraction from the true causes of Russian poverty and the ability to withdraw capital into offshore companies and "shadow schemes". In addition, it is worth mentioning, that over Nazism, which killed about 40 million people during the war, was held the Nuremberg trial, and over the Russian communism, which killed 60 million of civil citizens, due to terror in the inter-war period, the trial did not take place. For that reason, the majority of people still do not condemn the aggressive policies of various political maniacs that unleash war in the XXI century.

So we can make the first conclusion: the aggressive policy of Russia means to do everything possible, that life in the neighboring countries will be worse than that in Russia. Besides, it is important to destroy safety of the European countries. The Russian political “elite” is robbing its own citizens more effectively than any outside conquerors. And for them the biggest enemy is its own sober-minded Russian intelligentsia, which is being destroyed or replaced by a pseudo-elite who is able to distort the ethical principles of the existence and creation of a state. And also the state conservative church hierarchy promotes the plunder of its own nation and helps to “preserve” the right of a certain clan to rule. Because having done the substitution of the concepts, one can present lie and foolishness as a public good and norm: how else it is possible to explain why people do not ask themselves: are real religious leaders those who call for modesty and rationality, but use an automobile for half a million dollars in value, owning yachts and villas at a price of several million euros?

The ideas of founders of the European Union were not to repeat wars inside Europe. For that reason the security system was developed. The security has got three main characteristics: these are sound moral principles of a man, military security and internal political steadiness. Internal political security was to make such public institutional filters, institutions and interdependence among states, so that idiots-populists would not come to power in a separate state. Although, in the most cases, the person who can seize the power is not an idiot, but he can manipulate people and treat people as idiots. We sometimes underestimate danger of people’s silliness and stupidity. Generally, populists do not simply come to power, but build organizations and social institutions that maximize the mobilization of human stupidity and give it “strategy and tactics”. In such a way, they do not need thinking and clever people, but consumers of slogans and ideas of populists, who can interpret conscious citizens as backward fools-conservatives. Because power for populists – it is a possibility to implement their ideas at the expense of other citizens.

The aim of populists is not to simply seize the power, but also to keep it for their children and successors. Therefore, they are developing ideologies that have to justify any of their crimes for the sake of "social wealth", and creating parasitic institutions and a system in which they would not only live at the expense of citizens, but that people would be grateful for this robbery to the populists.

Why do people support populists?

This phenomenon has got several causes: philosophical-mental, colonial and economical. Especially, conservatism and belief in some saviors, who will save the nation and search for freedom not through someone’s personal initiative, but through different institutions, founded by “saviors”. Therefore, there is a paradox that often considered conservative nations are lagging behind in economic development or in political democracy because individual initiative is not endorsed at the personal level, but they believe that society is in the right direction if it adheres to certain norms and guidelines that they provide various kinds of "authority". Very often those, who robbed their own people or conquered others by troops, assault or colonization, then they only support those principles that would form such a system, so that their position was passed on to their descendants. And the conquered people were given such pseudo-ethics that they were honest with "self-proclaimed and self-legitimated robbers," who do not want people to do the same to them as they themselves did before them.

"vox populi, vox Dei' — it is important for populists that they are contenders for what they say in the name of the people and they are the voice of people. Though intelligent people are not allowed to the public tribune through different rituals, traditions, “social filters”. Populism – is the ability to defend one’s interests and the right to power, in other words to use those resources created by the society for personal purposes. But this is not the major problem. It is even worse that due to such systems the true talents of people who can not realize themselves in such "life ecosystems" are leveled. Different types of talents are given to every person, and he should implement them for the harmonious development of mankind and practical welfare. But innovations can not be realized at the authority monopolies, so any kind of philosophical, scientific or technical innovation requires the change of management and authorities. The innovation requires to be implemented by an innovator together with his intellectual team, but not by populist leaders, who understand nothing, because they have not invented the invention. An example: would there exist automobile innovations, if they were managed by a person, who owned a horse company and understood nothing about engines and electricity? His mission – is to prevent cars as competition and to do everything possible for people to ride horses and to bring income. In such a way the internal forms of neo-colonialism are formed. A big number of leaders became authorities, thanks to the already existing invaders that they elected, but not a community or people. This closed system of authorities create “casts” and does not need intellectual and educated citizens and organized communities for the simple reason: educated believers or citizens would demand that the elite work on itself in all directions, study and improve. And this would demand transparent rules of management, finance usage and responsibility for power. Very often a decay of religions, parties or civilization was not caused by the fact they were not needed in the society, but for the reason their leaders did not wish to work on themselves be surrounded by strong intellectual personalities, but they preferred all sorts of bastards who would comfort their personal ego. Thus, populists would build a system of constant obedience, that has nothing in common with real freedom, rights and obligations and the harmonized discipline of free citizens who build such a system of relations in which a person is creatively developed and implemented, benefits both himself and others. A very important tool becomes propaganda through the mass media, which disseminates as much as possible negative information (from murders, catastrophes to wars) and present human defects as a priority (fraud, crime, manipulations). Thus, a person despises that he can change anything in his life and waits for the “magician-populist”. The state constitution declares that people are the source of power, but, practically, those people, who “privatized” authority institutions own real power.

For that reason more and more people become victims of political populists, and really, these voters have such a life position, values and world outlook that they themselves want to become victims. Political populists do not wish to have conscious initiative citizens, but more a herd of obedient sheep, which can be "cut" as much as it is desirable for everyday well-being and for financial savings for their descendants. During the pre-election period, voters are offered quick solutions in the style of “fairy-tale miracles”. The majority of people is “deceived” as they want to be “deceived”, as they do not want to think their heads and have effective laws to realize themselves through labor. It is much easier to search for excuses for your own passivity than to work on yourself and strive for excellence.

Political populists demand trust to their “miraculous ideas and ideologies” and do not like opponents. For them opponents are educated people, who wish to soberly analyze processes or their offers. For that reason, having gained authority, political populists, first of all destroy educational system, giving such a distorted world outlook to children and adolescents in order to have manipulated future citizens. These facts can be immediately seen at state funding, when the state finds billions of dollars for building football stadiums, where one can get the crowd's emotions and drink beer, but it closes village schools and does not have cheap loans for talented youth and their innovative start-ups. The populist system wishes to substitute principles and mission of a family and influence sexual education of children from young age.

Populists are professional manipulators of people’s trust, and wish to gain it, as they possess a criminal way of thinking: a trusted voter is a fool for them. Political populists are very often wise and sober-minded people, although their behavior resembles clowns because they are able to feel the basic instincts of the crowd and react to them. That is why, scientists who tell the truth, needed by every person, always lose elections, as they try to follow the law and norms of ethics. But populists are able to ridicule any scholars and true leaders to show that living fairly, adhering to the law and norms is to live poorly. It is necessary to destroy the existing norms, and to implement only those, required by populists. In addition, political populists offer fairy-tale ideologies to people, fakes, in modern words, which are more believed by a crowd of people, as it does not want to think his head, but the head of authority. This is the aim of political populists: to possess an unthinking herd of elective sheep. This is very well described by George Orwell in the book “1984”, although this author also "fell ill" on the ideas of the left parties, but was timely reckoned when he learnt them from the inside.

The political schizophrenia is one of the characteristic features of people, who support populists. “The political-schizophrenic people” is a diagnosis for psychiatrists, when voters are ready to justify any evil of their populist leaders for some future bizarre purposes. The political ideas become a religion for them. The example of communism is evident: Lenin and Stalin would not be able to destroy millions of innocent people if they did not have support groups and united political insane people into different organizations that could calmly look at the death of hungry children during the period of Holodomor and repressions. When Russian communists organized the artificial hunger in Ukraine and for six months had taken all food from people and destroyed 7 million of Ukrainians in the years 1932-33, many communists laughed at dead people, and many people are still justifying and supporting Stalin and his criminal political bandits. The political schizophrenics should be cured or isolated from the society.

This arrangement of "ideological patients" transmits its result through generations, when their descendants are ready to repeat the same crimes even after a hundred years, as we see it in the example of the modern war in Ukraine in 2014-2018. Non-repugnance, irresponsibility of voters and the absence of litigation leads to a repetition of crimes against humanity, especially when we see that even some church "canonical hierarchs" in Russia help to justify Russia's war against Ukraine through religion.

Another characteristic of political populists, though of all other populists as well: they very skillfully use quotations and names of people, who had important influence in history, that what they are doing today is a continuation of a big deal of other people.

The characteristic feature of all populists is financial machination. They do not adhere to their obligations and are able to avoid financial obligations. They rarely pay their debts and manipulate facts and agreements. Populists know how to get to the financial aim: in particular, to live at someone’s expense. You can see a simple mathematics: the higher is the level of populism, the bigger is the corruption.

For that reason, for populists it is important to develop Euroscepticism, in other words, to destroy the security system on the basis of international institutions.

There are a couple of types of grounds for Euroscepticism development.

1. Institutional-ideological.

Socialism and Communism were based on state patronage, that is their basis – is the centralized state management and planning, social payments and warranties. Generally,economical growth was defined by state bureaucracy through different institutions. Actually, the political nomenclature provided public funds to their close acquaintances who used public goods at their discretion. This became the source for organized corruption and mafia establishment based on the military institutions.

Having got accustomed to state paternalism, a lot of Eastern Europeans “smoothly” fell under the patronage of the European Union, which generously provided support through projects and funding of various programs. Owing to them, about 7 percent became entrepreneurs, but the majority still remained as workers or clerks. The proletariat very often supported populists, who offered better salaries and social support programs. Mostly it was not about saving on the cost of bureaucracy and reducing the impact of the nomenclature, but due to increase in taxes for small and medium businesses. Thus, populists were destroying their major enemy – in particular, the middle class. The aim of populists – was not to solve the society problems, but to create a constant demand in them.

Euroscepticism was strongly developed also among the citizens of the Western European countries. It was extremely promoted by the uncontrolled migration policy. Many people obtained European passports within a short period of time, but they do not acknowledge European democratic values.

That is why, ignorance – is one of the major reasons of the populists’ choice. Propaganda overcomes wisdom within a short period of time. Almost all populists lose their rating within one or two years, but achieve their aim: to receive a power mandate for 4 – 6 years. Mostly, populists who have half-friendly behavior with common sense are not foolish people; however, they are masters to use the stupidity of others. Their methodology – to obtain power due to structuring stupidity of others within the short period of time. Populists understand: 70% of voters vote not with common sense, but emotions at the last moment near voting stations.

The person, who spreads populism, often has not realized himself in science or labor (has got forged diplomas), but wants a high status in society through politics, that is, to collect taxes and distribute them at his own discretion, not only plundering, but justifying it by different ideologies.

So, in order to be elected to the authority, one should be very wise, and even more, shout very loudly. Populists – are artists of making problems or creating a problem, where there is not any. Because wisdom – is a synonym of modesty. Populist tools – are to pay attention by scandals, declarations, parades and smoke explosive stuffs. Although their real productivity in life equals to zero.

Remember one thing:

As Aristotle once said, democracy has one drawback: an intelligent and a stupid man has the same right at the elections. And everything depends not on the intellectual level of a person, but on the organization of one or another social group (either fools or sages).

2. Economical.

For sages, economics – is realization of the creativity gift of people. For idiots – it is formation of “homo consumisticus”, a person of consumption, that is not the person who is guided by expediency or usefulness when choosing a product, but he follows “the logic of desire and pleasure”, which inebriates and intoxicates the human sense. And later, when the process of sobering up comes, instead of searching for reasons inside himself or inside one’s world outlook, the mentioned populism consumer begins criticizing everything and everybody. When you ask Euroskeptists what is their economical model, there is nothing but the criticism of the European Union. Everybody wants to have quality, but nobody wants to work qualitatively. The principle “bread and sights” often wins the behaviour of masses. Populists can manipulate “the ambition of constant people’s unsatisfaction”.

3. Religious.

Under the circumstances of multi-culturalism, there appears apathy towards religions. Having lost the desire to search for truth and verity, what is the mission of philosophy and religion, it is impossible to unite and mobilize the creative spirit of nations. Having crossed out even the section that the European Union was founded mostly by Christian democrats in the sake of peace and security and based on the Christian values, in order to develop the mother-Europe together, citizens got the situation of manipulating one of the important spheres of human existence – it is religion itself. For the past few years, the manipulation itself got such form of systematization, that it became the form of religion. This can be seen at the example of spreading different kinds of fake-information, the person believes more than science.

4. Educational.

Having taken religion and philosophy from school curriculum or put pseudo-Ethics, then knowledge can be filled with everything it pleases, but not the one that needs a person shaping his world outlook. The person, who lost connection with logic and art of critical thinking, becomes manipulated by a narrow group of people controlling the distribution of social wealth in society.

5. Cultural.

People began pushing out of society a quality culture, replacing it with pop-show, subordinating it to the tastes of the market, not the ones of the society.

6. Mass-media.

The major manipulators of the people’s world outlook are modern mass media means, that act according to several principles: there is only the piece of news, which was announced via media. If something is not said, it does not exist. In addition, very often world looks at the values through the world outlook of the media founders or through the reserved information. It extremely influences those, who do not like thinking their heads and do not work on their self-education. The policy of television is especially productive in Russia, when this television reflects the level of consciousness… when instead of building a house, caring for a garden, repairing streets, it is better to take a weapon and carry his “schizophrenic ideas” to other countries, Ukraine or Syria.

All the populists have got common features. One of them means to perceive their words "to faith", that is, to trust infinitely their words. They create some kind of messianism, where your ideas have no place. This means a minimum of written agreements or legislative contracts between them and their partners or employees. Populists always need maximum deviations in interpreting their point of view or former words or arrangements, especially when they do not need former partners or people. They can build a concept of their authority, because they gain a favorable position in a society and comfort in life as a result. Mostly populists do not believe the principles they are saying to others. Though, when it comes to their interests only, they study everything very carefully, and they do not count on “the principle of verbal trust”. For that reason, it is very difficult to form joint governments or inter-parliament agreements. For them, it's important to have people who do not think their heads, but only use certain slogans of populists, because it also means financial revenues that populists can use at their discretion for the sake of the idea, without taking any responsibility. Talks about the future public wealth, a social state, about something far are beautifully composed fairy tales, because they bring welfare to them today: people come up with different five-year plans, so that they believe in the "bright future", and they themselves get privileges today.

Populists steal the basic thing from people – this is their time of life, which nobody can give back. They are skillfully postponing their promises from day to day, and making people guilty if something was not realized, motivating that they did not believe in the given ideas or that their time has not yet come, or that the costs of daily luxurious living and populist retention today – it is a public investment in the future. But their task is one thing – when people believe in their words, they are on their hook. They skillfully improve their everyday life by stealing the real daily welfare of others. Unfortunately, the majority of people like these populist fairy-tales. Ideological political populists are professional manipulators in the financial sphere. As they know how to collect money owing to the emotions of people, and also, help the finances "to evaporate like a soap bubble".

How to get out of the populist hypnosis?

Science. For instance, the Christian Church chose the way of education of peoples. There were different periods throughout history: and decay, and prosperity, but the present result of Europe, America and Australia – is a consequence of the harmony of faith and science. Almost all the universities in Europe were established by the Church. The Church has got very effective social doctrine of the Church. The social doctrine of the Church would help to heal the world outlook of the believers and defend them from different kinds of populists, especially in politics and economics. Populism creates different kinds of poverty, which main reason is – not thinking your own head, but believe in slogans of various criminal machinators.

Critical thinking. Science gives impetus to formation of critical thinking, that is to weigh for and against, explore and search for alternatives. Populists can not act where there are educated, organized and active people.

Isolation. We need to learn to get rid of populists, notwithstanding their position. Relations with them are non-productive. Any kinds of communications lead to losses, as there is no reciprocal effect from them. They are able to use the weakness of others in something and get rid of people, when they need it.

Active communities. Citizens should develop the culture of life and activity in associations and organizations. Populists do not like organized active communities. The more destroyed public life was, the easier it was to manage people there. No wonder, communists destroyed the Church, intelligentsia, the middle class, private entrepreneurs, they arrested priests and teachers, abolished them, because they taught people to think their head, to be conscious of their rights and obligations. The faster we would get rid of organizations and institutions, which make slaves of people in psychological and creative way, the faster we would have more creative people in our social life.

Accounting and reporting. There is the necessity to form a transparent system of accounting. Populists like to come to different power institutions, but do not like to take responsibility for their actions and mistakes and make reports of their work, where there are and never could be any results. There is nothing but obscure PR of some pompous events. Exclusively, the formation of an effective accounting system to the society and to the certain communities allows to restrain various social appetite of populists. Public courts and organizations must create structures for controlling populists. True democracy is based on the harmony of relations between different institutions, whose role is to restrict the power structures in controlling people.

Organization. There is a necessity to promote the culture of political leaders in associations and organizations. They help to make “filters” in order to put creative people to power, rather than unproductive populist parasites who want to live at the expense of people.

Creativity. It is very important to stop spending time presenting innovative ideas to populists. They can take them, deform, make you guilty and, afterwards, just get rid of you. If you have something interesting about what is laid out on you, then learn how to realize it individually, because nobody, except you, does not understand it and will not do it. It is much more important to guarantee people the right to freedom of business and the inviolability of private property.

Thus, there is one conclusion: to learn a man to think by his own head… but does everybody wish it?

Zinoviy Svereda,

Doctor of social economics