The Rich Kids of Instagram of Politics

By Kevin D. Williamson

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

 

Nothing succeeds like success, says the proverb.

 

And if you don’t have the real thing, fake success can do in a pinch.

 

For a long time, it was standard practice for up-and-coming rappers or their record labels to rent exotic cars for them to be seen with. When MTV Cribs cameramen came around to film the Ferrari in young 50 Cent’s home or gawk at Bow Wow’s impressive garage, what they were seeing were really props. The illusion of success creates glamour and inspires a kind of identification and loyalty that can be exploited for personal gain. It’s not just “Fake it ’til you make it,” but faking it as the instrument of making it. Inevitably, the domination of popular culture by social media supercharged that phenomenon and expanded its frontiers. People who own private jets now can make a few bucks on the side renting them out — not to people who want to fly somewhere but to people who want to take selfies in them.

 

From 50 Cent to Rich Kids of Instagram: It’s another example of a Generation X vice mutating into a Millennial plague.

 

So, you might think of Sebastian Kurz, the disgraced Austrian chancellor and the world’s first Millennial head of government, the Rich Kids of Instagram of politics. His antics will be familiar to observers both of European right-wing activism and American right-wing populism, but they also will be familiar to those who keep up with the Kardashians, the denizens of Instagram, and all of that tribe.

 

Kurz, a member of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), began his march to the chancellery 2016 — that very interesting political year — when he was the foreign minister in a coalition government led by the Social Democrats. (A nearly powerless right-winger in a left-dominated political scene: familiar enough territory for our own Republicans.) Kurz wanted to be chancellor, which as a practical matter meant that he had to rise to the leadership of his own political party first.

 

He didn’t have anything like the political clout to do so. So, like a true child of the age, he invented some clout, commissioning a bunch of phony polls attesting to his own awesome popularity and then bribing friendly media into giving those fake polls big play. The Österreich newspaper, for example, published accounts that were literally dictated to it by Kurz’s allies, and was rewarded with advertising paid for out of state funds. At least crackpot pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell had the decency to use his own money when he wanted to buy himself a position as a public figure by channeling advertising dollars to friendly right-wing media. But the Europeans have always been a little more comfortable comingling private and public funds for purposes both legitimate and corrupt.

 

Kurz’s shenanigans are practically made for dramatization: Cynical critics have taken to calling the saga “House of Kurz.” His behind-the-scenes machinations are, in my view, a little pathetic. But there are people who admire that sort of thing — people who enjoy being lied to if the liars are skillful. In the 1990s, Democrats rejoiced in Bill Clinton’s half-clever dissembling, and “Slick Willie” was as much a term of endearment to them as one of reproach. Donald Trump’s most slavish cheerleaders in the conservative-media world admire him for his lies rather than in spite of them — “counterpunching,” they call it.

 

But there is more to it than that. As in Trump’s case, Kurz’s phony aura of success allowed him to build a fanatically dedicated personality cult in the service of his personal ambitions — “praetorians,” they called themselves. From the New York Times:

 

The subterranean tool of buying rigged opinion polling and media coverage is outlined in remarkable detail in chat exchanges recovered from the cellphone of one of Mr. Kurz’s closest allies and friends, Thomas Schmid.

 

Mr. Schmid held a series of senior posts in the Finance Ministry and went hiking with Mr. Kurz. He was one of a handful of loyal supporters who called themselves the “praetorians,” after the elite guard of Roman emperors.

 

Their devotion was seemingly absolute. “YOU ARE MY HERO!” Mr. Schmid wrote to Mr. Kurz in one of their many exchanges, and in another, “I am one of your praetorians who doesn’t create problems but solves them.”

 

(Can you feel that all-caps sentiment?)

 

Trump’s lies were self-aggrandizing in a more obvious and pedestrian way — tallest building, biggest crowds, highest ratings, his ridiculous claim to be romantically involved with Carla Bruni — while Kurz’s lies were more . . . Austrian, I suppose. (If the Swiss are Germans but less so, the Austrians are Germans but more so.) But there was a great deal of overlap, too, in the proposition that the aspirant should be popular because he is popular: “Everybody else likes me — you should like me, too.” This is another unwelcome and redundant reminder that the modern democratic mind reaches its full maturity, if you can bear to call it that, in the junior-high lunchroom, and it seldom if ever rises much beyond that level.

 

Like you-know-who, Kurz was seen by his right-leaning colleagues (and not only at home but across Europe) as a man who could take conservative positions and make them seem more urgent, more emotional, less intellectual, less dusty, less restrictive — less conservative, in a word. And he enjoyed a measure of success for about five minutes. Naturally, the wheels came off, and he was exposed as a huckster and a fraud. He has resigned his office, though (as if the parallels were somehow belaboring themselves!) he will retain a prominent position within his party.

 

If the demos is easily deceived by that kind of showmanship, it is because the demos desires to be deceived. The majority of people want to believe that there is a Big Man with special gifts who can solve their problems for them, and thus relieve themselves of the terrible burden of their individuality. The fact that political movements settle into cultism is part of their attraction — a cult is a much more powerfully liberating instrument than is a mere policy platform. But cults need gods, and gods need distinctive characteristics. So, like Athena with her aegis and Poseidon with his trident, the modern celebrity demigod has his attributes: the musician with his rented Lamborghini, the real-estate heir with his inflated portfolio, the political entrepreneur with popularity that is either inflated or rented or both.

 

For years, when I was asked about some Twitter mob or social-media convulsion, I would reply: “Twitter isn’t real life.” I am starting to worry that I might have to add that to the list of things I’ve been wrong about.