In the U.S., enormous battles have been fought between establishment political parties and outside challengers labeled as “populists” — including Republican Donald Trump, former Democrat Robert F Kennedy, Jr. and Socialist Bernie Sanders. What you might not know is that it’s a global trend. Populism is being fueled by massive voter frustration. And it’s changing the face of politics around the world. To opponents, it’s a threat to democracy that must be stopped at any cost.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

Warsaw, Poland, in Eastern Europe is ground zero for a familiar-sounding theme. Voters rejecting establishment leaders and electing a different breed.

Polish President Andrzej Duda is frequently derided as a “populist.”

Andrzej Duda/President of Poland: If I listened to my electorate, the people who were talking to me at various rallies and meetings, and if I delivered on what I promised, does that make me a populist? I don’t think so. I think I’m a democratic politician who honestly delivers on his political mandate, I listen to what they say, I make my commitments, and then I submit myself to their assessment.

Eight years of his “Law and Justice Party’s” conservative rule have brought tough policies against illegal immigration and criticism of the European Union.

Sharyl: When I studied populism a little bit to see what it meant, I thought, why is it a negative thing? It means popular, in general, it means a popular candidate who responds to popular sentiment.

Duda: Yes. But in Poland if we speak of a populist politician, a populist, this sounds negative. A populist is someone who really relies on the most base instincts of the electorate and employs them in order to obtain some political benefits. And if so, I am not a populist. I think I’m an earnest politician who takes his role seriously.

Sharyl (on-camera): Here in Poland, and across Europe, there’s an epic battle being fought between establishment political figures— and rebels who are labelled as “populists.” Each side claiming the other is a threat to democracy.

Sharyl: In Europe do you feel as though politics is very divided?

European resident: I think it is divided because maybe in Czech Republic there are two sides, and one side don’t like each other.

Sharyl: So sounds a little bit like the U.S.

European resident: Yeah, that’s the same. Right now it’s really the same. Yeah.

Growing populist sentiment is influencing politics around the world—threatening parties that called the shots for decades leaving many citizens feeling unheard.

David Cowling: They have been caricatured very effectively by their opponents—that populism means, you know, neo-Nazis almost, or people stirring up demons from the deep and appealing to the lowest common denominator in politics. All of which in my experience is just so much rubbish, really. I think if you want to address the issues that you think populism presents, then talk to populists and don’t sneer at them.

David Cowling is a political analyst in Great Britain, a major center where populism is upending politics.

Cowling: I mean, for the past hundred years, if you add it up the Conservative, Labour, and Liberal vote, the three main parties, if you added all their votes together, what was left was about 5%. The election just gone, 28% did not vote for the three main parties. Again, absolutely unprecedented. And to me, a sign that populism is making an impact and it’s influencing people. It may not point them towards any particular party, but it’s certainly making them think about issues in a way that the established parties are getting increasingly concerned about.

Sharyl: How strong is the movement that’s called populism?

Cowling: So there has been a sort of, a bit of a political earthquake I think in the last 20 years where people have decided that there are alternatives they want to investigate because the established parties that have dominated most of the post-war, post-war period are seen as failures.

In recent UK elections, the Conservative Party suffered a brutal defeat amid simmering voter discontent.

Mark Francois is a longtime Conservative Member of Parliament.

Sharyl: Would you say your party is an establishment party?

Mark Francois: Not always. Under Margaret Thatcher, famously we won three general elections in a row by being radical. But perhaps over the last 14 years, we got too comfortable. We ducked a number of difficult decisions. We fell black, perhaps in some cases on platitudes. And when it came to the general election, people gave their opinion on that.

Francois says his Conservative Party delivered on Great Britain’s exit from the European Union, Brexit, but failed to follow through with solutions on illegal immigration, which only grew worse.

Francois: Someone once wrote that, “the most precious quality in politics is the benefit of the doubt.” And by the time we got to this general election, people were no longer giving us the benefit of the doubt.

The beneficiary, for the moment, is Great Britain’s Labour Party.

Sharyl: For an American audience, what is the Labour Party?

Neil Coyle: The Labour Party is the center left mainstream political party in the UK and we’ve just won a fantastic general election here with a whopping majority.

Neil Coyle is a Member of Parliament in the Labour Party keeping an eye on the populist sentiment nudging establishment parties like his in new directions.

Coyle: You have to consider your strategy. And the most successful populist in British politics in recent history was Boris Johnson who tacked to the far right to draw out that 80 seat majority in 2019. But it was, it was, built on sand, you know. He had no foundations. He couldn’t deliver because there aren’t solutions for these people. And he failed to deliver on a whole heap of promises because populism is false promise. It can’t deliver.

Aaron Korewa is a director of the Atlantic Council’s Warsaw, Poland office.

Aaron Korewa: The quote unquote, establishment parties just haven’t explained things well enough to the population. And that creates a mold for populist movements.

Sharyl: In the United States, my observation is if there’s populism: it’s part of both. I mean, it’s not just a Republican subgroup or a Democrat subgroup. What are your thoughts?

Korewa: I fully agree on that. Absolutely.

Where populism threatens the major political parties, they’re forming coalitions to beat it down.

In Poland, President Duda’s Law and Justice Party won more votes than any other party in last year’s elections. But three main opposition parties formed a bigger coalition, won a majority in Parliament, and appointed a Prime Minister who promised to unravel what Duda and his party have done.

Jacek Kucharczyk heads up a policy research group called Institute of Public Affairs. He’s firmly anti-populist.

Sharyl: What do you see as dangerous about the populist movement?

Jacek Kucharczyk: Well, populists not only proclaim some ideas about that they would better represent the people, but when populists— they have this very strong authoritarian streak.

President Duda says it’s the establishment figures claiming to know better than the people— who pose the true threat to democracy.

Duda: I see policies that are carried out by some politicians, and there are clearly and flagrantly in opposition to what the majority of the people want. Is it an attempt to build the world according to a new formula or some attempt to introduce by force some new models in spite of what the people want? And to my mind, if politicians do something against the public will, they act against democracy.

Sharyl: Does that have a name or a label?

Duda: To me, this is authoritarianism, this is an authoritarian regime, if someone is abusing political power, to change the world according to his own recipe.

Sharyl: We interviewed President Duda yesterday, and interestingly, the label he gave to the people that don’t support his form of government, he said he described as authoritarian, totalitarianism.

Kucharczyk: Okay.

Sharyl: Secondly, it almost sounds like, playing Devil’s advocate, the exclusionary tone that they have about everybody else is held by everybody else against them. What’s the difference?

Kucharczyk: Well, the difference is that they are authoritarian party.

As the populist wars play out, Great Britain’s Labour Party knows its honeymoon will be short and they’ll have to answer to demanding voters no longer on the sidelines.

Coyle: We’ve put in already in traction, policies that will deliver before the next election so that we can say to people, “Look, this is what we promised. This is what we’ve delivered. Trust us to continue.”

Sharyl: Do you see populism as part of a system that evolves and changes? Or do you see it as a danger?

Korewa: Well, it depends a little bit. A lot of the things that people worried about that Donald Trump was gonna do— I mean, we know what Donald Trump has already been in power for four years. I mean, it’s not like we’ve seen a complete, you know, flipping of the table or whatever you wanna call it in the United States. And that’s usually not what happens when these parties come to power. So I do think that in many ways they tend to sort of become part of the system, eventually. And whether you like it or not, they do pick up on a sentiment that exists in society.

Sharyl (on-camera): While Trump is widely called a populist, many analysts say Harris and her policies also fall under populist categories.

Watch video here.

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