Turning points

When “The People” Becomes a Political Fiction

Few phrases have been invoked—and abused—more often by those in or seeking power than “the people.”

From left to right, from revolutionary movements to authoritarian regimes, the term has been stretched, emptied, and weaponized until it often means anything but real people.

In Politics and the English Language, George Orwell warned that political language exists “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” He found evidence of language abuse at the heart of the most oppressive political systems: from fascism to communism, from British imperialism to heartless capitalism

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Take the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, perhaps the most undemocratic state on Earth. Or Angola’s so-called People’s Movement for the Liberation, better known for liberating the nation’s wealth into private offshore accounts. The pattern is almost comical, if it weren’t so deadly serious.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Orwell argued that tyrants made murder sound respectable by their use of euphemisms, a language veil that can be thrown over any reality you don’t want people to see. Political battles are often fought with verbal weapons such as euphemism.

Think of the difference between “illegal aliens,” which sounds like an invasion of Martians, and “undocumented workers,” which sounds like a clerical error.

Orwell offers evidence of the power of euphemism to blind us to what is really happening:

Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.

Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers.

And, according to politicians, it was all done for people’s sake.

Do you remember the worldwide famous protest song from Chile “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido”? (“The people united will never be defeated.”) It became a global cry for justice. But in today’s politics, the “voice of the people” and “popular sovereignty” are invoked, but ignored.

Right-wing populists, in particular, claim to speak directly for the people—the “real” people—against an unresponsive elite. At first glance, this sounds like a defense of democracy. Populists present themselves as guardians of constitutional principles, the true vox populi.

But the populist critique is less about expanding democracy than about redefining who counts as the people in the first place. Populism thrives on the idea that the nation’s authentic community has been betrayed. It channels the growing disillusionment with democratic institutions—often accurately diagnosed—into attacks on those very institutions.

When populists gain power, their promise to “empower the people” regularly switches into practices that undermine democratic accountability. This is not unintended: populism is not a set of policies but a style of politics built on confrontation, exclusion, and a perpetual sense of crisis.

Nowhere is this more visible than in debates on immigration and borders.

Immigrants become existential threats to the wellbeing or even to the very existence of the country; refugees become invaders. Crime, cultural decay, and national decline are linked to immigrants.

The “people” are cast as a besieged community, held together not by civic principles but by fear of outsiders. Borders become symbolic weapons. The harder the line, the stronger the populist claim to protect “our people.”

This emotionally charged sense of unity—we, the betrayed; they, the corrupt elite and dangerous outsiders—has become one of the most powerful political tools of the nationalist right.

“People.” “Popolo.” “Pueblo.” A Hollowed-Out Word.

Once the foundation of democratic legitimacy, the word has been hollowed out by populist rhetoric and corrupt politics. It has become flexible enough to fit any agenda and empty enough to hide the interests of those who claim to defend it.

Meanwhile, the real pueblo rarely appears.

“The people united will never be defeated” remains a beautiful idea. But in the hands of modern politics, “the people” become a mere tool to mobilize voters, prioritizing political maneuvering over collective will.