In December Scotland's leading political publication Holyrood Magazine produced a front cover with Steve Bannon’s face and the line ‘Blue Collar Bannon’ emblazoned on it. This editorial decision was much derided, seen to be playing into exactly the image that Bannon wishes to project; that of the little man, speaking up for the hard workers in this changing world. In the Holyrood piece, he is quoted at length; given space to lay out his argument in a reasoned way, without being called up on some of his more dubious bedfellows. The week before the interview Nicola Sturgeon refused to share a platform with Bannon by boycotting a conference. This brought its own criticism as she was seen to not be engaging with ‘current ideas’ and rejecting populism.

Populism can be a nebulous term, based around the idea of ‘the people’ versus a nefarious elite it is expandable across the political spectrum. There is no denying that right-populism, in particular, is having a moment worldwide. Trump, Bolsonaro, Garage and Marie Le Pen are all capitalizing on populist movements; but where did these actors come from? How does media coverage give oxygen to these ideas, and why is right populism so, well, popular?

Each of these populist actors claims to represent an alternative to the ‘elite’. Trump promised to ‘drain the swamp’, Bolsonaro predecessor Lula da Silva was in jail for a corruption scandal, and UKIP’s rise came in the wake of the MP expenses scandal. In their respective countries, trust in politicians and the political system was at an all-time low. Not least because the consequences of the 2008 crash are still very much reverberating. It’s harder to have faith that the people in charge are doing a good job when you’re life itself feels markedly worse. The irony, of course, is that each of these actors is fully ensconced in the elite. Farage and Bannon are both ex-bankers, Le Pen is part of a political dynasty and Bolsonaro was a senior officer under a military dictatorship which he described as ‘glorious’. So what do these figures add to populism? In his interview, Bannon answers this question with his ‘theorem’: “You put a reasonable face on right-wing populism and you get elected.”

Central to populism is the seductive idea that there are simple solutions to complex questions. When these ideas are articulated from an authority figure, peripheral to the elite, but distancing themselves from it, they carry power. James Meek characterised the power of a simple story in an article about Brexit that contrasts two myths of Britishness; Robin Hood versus George and the Dragon. In Robin Hood, change comes through continuous redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. In George and the Dragon, people are terrorised by a dragon, George slays Dragon, everything is better! A much punchier narrative. Brexit succeeded in part because it was able to rally around a triumphal moment of ‘independence day’, and posit a villain who can be removed. Unfortunately, right populism is exclusionary; ‘the people’ don’t represent everyone, but an in-group, based on nationhood and race, and the ‘dragon’ is often characterised as immigration and threats to national culture. In a fast news cycle, populism has the upper hand in terms of story, and therefore press coverage, when simple, sound-bite solutions are offered to a nation’s problems. When the alternative being presented is complex, technocratic policy that even politics wonks struggle to keep on top of, news channels will pick ‘build a wall’ for the headline, even if critiquing it. The proportion of coverage Trump attain in 2016 was

Therein lies the problem. Should media interact with an ideology that is discriminatory at its heart? Is the alternative of no platforming effective or does it feed perfectly into a narrative of elites silencing ‘the people’? Holyrood Magazine interview with Bannon may have been in depth and with the very best of intentions, but by publishing a cover that equivocates Bannon and the working class, and uses pull quotes such as ‘we are on the right side of History’, his position is legitimised as part of the mainstream political dialogue. The Overton window shifts and people are emboldened to hold and act on discriminatory views.

There is real poverty in prosperous countries; 40 million Americans used food stamps under Obama. Last month the UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights declared that levels of child poverty in the UK were “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster”. The report also talked about poverty as a political choice that imposed “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous” cuts in the name of austerity. You can see why a redemption story of ‘taking back control’ or ‘making America great again’ might be tempting when life is a daily struggle. If we have learnt anything from Trump, Brexit and Le Pen, it’s that it is not enough for the press to regurgitate the sound bites of populist leaders, even if opposing them. Reporting on a story is what journalists do, but it is essential that the excitement of a simple solution and the energy it garners doesn’t simply fan the flames of right populism. Equally, it is time for those who oppose the anti-migration wave to start telling an equally compelling story, one where the ‘dragon’ is not the most vulnerable people in society.