Former campaign strategist by Mark Rutte: ‘Populists such as Wilders make democracy an empty shell’

On the day that the VVD had entered a cabinet with the PVV, NSC and BBB, last spring, Campagnestrateeg Bas Erlings had canceled his VVD membership. For years he had been a campaign manager at the VVD, in the time of Mark Rutte, and also ‘Head of Strategy’. At that time he had started studying the populist methods of parties such as the PVV, he had started reading about the brain of voters and what to do to influence that. And also about leadership: what do voters want to see, hear, feel? With the aim: to win the elections of the PVV in 2017, which was still towering at the start of the campaign in the polls. And also: to never have to step into a cabinet with that party.

Because that, he writes in his book The game of the populist That it will be published this week is « the stupidest that you can do. » Because then you are ‘dragged’ and ‘across your own boundaries’.

In een café in Den Haag begint Erlings over het Tweede Kamerdebat van vorige week woensdag, over de val van het kabinet, en hoe VVD-leider Dilan Yesilgöz reageerde op Frans Timmermans van GroenLinks-PvdA: „Hij stelde haar een kritische vraag en Dilan ging hem niet uitleggen hoe het zat, ze sloeg alleen maar keihard terug, ze speelde op de man. Zoals populisten dat doen: Attack, Attack, Never Defend.  » You get that, Erlings also says, if you « bring someone like Wilders to the center of power. » « I also saw it with others in the debate, and also with Timmermans himself. They probably unknowingly take over the behavior of Wilders. »

In his book, Erlings is talking about the ‘iron hold’ of populists if you rule with them: they provoke, threaten, cause riots, sow doubts, are never consistent but come away with it, and puts people against each other. And they get you so far that you always go a small step further than you find good and responsible. According to Erlings, they want to make the democratic constitutional state « an empty shell », democracy « to Russian model. »

In his years at the VVD, Erlings investigated what does not help against populism: defending yourself with reasonable arguments, explaining why the populist story is wrong. Because that is what the part of us thinks that Erlings, according to the model of the American psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, calls ‘System 2’: rational and analytical, consciously.

People want to think of themselves that they make decisions that way, says Erlings. But it is not that way, Kahneman showed. That does ‘system 1’ in our head. « That is intuition. They are feelings, memories, how we are put together, and about 98 percent of the energy in our heads. We make about fifteen to thousand decisions all day and they are made in that system. Also the big one: with whom you want to share your life, which car you buy, who you are going to vote for. » But the strange thing about that system, says Erlings, is: « It does not incur facts. » So they don’t help if you want to bring people to a different choice than they might have planned.

In 2017, under Erlings’ leadership, the VVD campaign team showed how you might especially win elections through that knowledge about the brain elections. With the help of the research methods of the Austrian marketing strategist Grace Pardy, who knew very precisely how you create a message that touches ‘system 1’, and with the ideas about leadership of the American philosopher Frances Frei. According to Frei, people have three questions with a leader: « Do I like you? », « Do I think you can do it? » And « Do you care about me? »

The VVD became more than the largest with 33 seats in 2017, the PVV was second with 20 seats.

In The game of the populist Erlings reveals that campaign strategy, intended to touch ‘the fast brain’: through the language that Rutte used, what he looked like, by his letter ‘to all Dutch people’, in advertisements in all major newspapers, and his ‘plan for the Netherlands’ that in the Ad stood.

According to Erlings, the story was a « carefully psychologically constructed vehicle » with imagery and simple sentences that everyone immediately understood, who created a dichotomy from « go -getters » towards « the shouts on the sidelines », and who had a tone that had to feel people: the VVD understands your worries.

What does the VVD think that you expose all this?

« I let VVD people from my time read along there and most like it and also good: it had to be told. The examples I use are all aimed at explaining how your populists beat. »

How is that for those voters, you think, to read that the Rutte campaign was aimed at influencing the unconscious part of their thinking?

« I hope they think: what interesting. And I needed this to tell how populists work. That must be told, because in the end everyone tries to communicate as effectively as possible. The populists use these techniques in such a shameless way, with so many lies and without a basis of views, that you have something sincerely and hopeful about it

The populists use these techniques in such a shameless way, with so many lies and without a basis of views underneath

Did Rutte do everything you proposed without grumbling? Say ‘sorry’ for broken promises, wear a white shirt with raised sleeves, say ‘pleur on’?

« If we showed him what came from our research, and that it works: yes. And if he agreed. He thought it was magically interesting, very beautiful. »

In 2017 the VVD was the largest party for seven years, Rutte had been prime minister for seven years. You write that there is a cycle: after seven years, people get bored with you and that was also apparent from the polls. So you have known to turn?

« You always see it, even with musicians: after seven years you have to disappear. If a politician is in power for seven years, there are also people about you about you. In our campaign we started to fool with that cycle. But now I think: that was not free. »

You also say that in your book: Maybe it would have been better if the VVD had lost in 2017. Why?

« I thought it was so honest to raise that question. We won then, but I sometimes doubt: we were not working on it at the time to make the group of angry, dropped out of people smaller. »

The PVV could have become the largest in 2017 without all your efforts in that campaign?

« Yes. Or Jesse Klaver with GroenLinks. I think that really could have been and maybe that would have been pretty good for the Netherlands at the time: such a young person with big dreams, who managed to get full. Now I think: maybe we have been in the way of it. We have ignored him, and also Sybrand Buma of the CDA. »

In Ruttes ‘Letter to all Dutch people’, in January 2017, it was about ‘people who came to our country’, ‘abuse our freedom’ and ‘do not want to adjust’. There was criticism: people with a migration background felt in a corner: « You don’t behave well. » In The game of the populist It says it was « a thin line. » And: « Maybe we went over it then. »

Why do you see that differently now?

« I only saw it when I started reading the letter for my book. Perhaps also because now it is much clearer what the consequences are of polarization, and how fast it can go. It’s a bit like in a football team. You give a tackle and everyone around you: Logical. But afterwards you think: do I want to play so football? I don’t realize then the effect. »

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