ResearchPod
ResearchPod
Populism on a plate
Changing political tides across the globe are inextricably linked to the use of social media and internet based messaging. But something as simple as a photo of your lunch can't be part of the same spin... Right?
Dr Sara Garcia Santa Maria from the University of Bristol joins us to discuss her research into diet, culture and social media among populist politicians.
Read the original article: https://doi.org/10.51698/tripodos.2020.49p129-149
Posing with the People: Food Porn and the Far-Right in a Post-Truth Era. In Contois, E. and Kish, X. (Eds.). #Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=58mye9fd9780252044465
00:00:05 Will Mountford
Hello, I'm Will Mountford. Welcome to research pod.
00:00:09 Will Mountford
Changing political tides across the globe are inextricably linked to the use of social media and Internet based messaging from fringe forum theories, giving rise to the Q Anon conspiracy to WhatsApp rumours fuelling mob violence at lightning speed. But those whisper networks are by their very nature built on inference and suggestion and surely something like a
00:00:30 Will Mountford
Photo of your lunch on a sunny day can't be part of the same psychological spin machine.
00:00:36 Will Mountford
Right?
00:00:37 Will Mountford
Today we're joined by Doctor Sarah Garcia Santamaria from the University of Bristol, whose research into social media content takes the notion of subscribing to a political feed to a new dimension.
00:00:51 Will Mountford
And joining me from the University of Bristol is Doctor Sarah Garcia Santamaria. Hello there.
00:00:55 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Hello will how are you doing?
00:00:57 Will Mountford
I'm very well enjoying the spring sun and how are you?
00:01:00 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
I'm fine. I'm ready to talk about populism on a plate.
00:01:05 Will Mountford
Yes, it's something which I regret. How timely it is.
00:01:09 Will Mountford
It is a shame that it has come around to such severity again, but this is the world we are in. So to set some of the stage about the world we are in and your research, could you tell me a bit about you as a person? What led you to researching populism, social media? Why this out of anything in the world to think about?
00:01:29 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Well, like a lot of things, it was a pandemic.
00:01:33 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
I had not eaten during the pandemic and I had lots of free time and I started following populist leaders from all over the world on Instagram. And you know, at that time politicians were at home, we were at home and they were at home as well. And they were showing us interesting glimpses.
00:01:53 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
About their daily lives, their homes, their hobbies and also what they cooked. And I started realizing a.
00:02:00 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Lot of them.
00:02:01 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Across the ideological spectrum were posting about food, what they cooked that day. They were even sharing family recipes or teaching you how to make a cocktail.
00:02:12 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Ohh, and I thought. Well, that makes sense. You know, foodporn is very popular. It is definitely engaging. But I wanted to understand it better. Why are they posting about food? What is it that is so interesting about it? And I guess I made an effort to contextualize.
00:02:33 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
And give it an analytical framework.
00:02:36 Will Mountford
And before we go any further, it's worth, I think setting some terms. Make sure that everyone's on board when we talk about things like far right populist and social media. What are the networks you're looking at and how would you define populism for the sake of your research and this conversation?
00:02:52 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Well, we live in a in an era of a populist hype, it looks like every politician we dislike is a populist, but not all far right leaders are populists, and we also have different types of populism. We have far left populism. We have far right populism. So I just want to make sure that you understand that I'm talking about.
00:03:13 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Far right populism.
00:03:14 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Why am I focusing on far right populism? Because it seems like it is the far right that is mobilizing food as a cultural anchor in its cultural words. It's not something the left has really picked up on yet, so there is not much interesting I could say from the left.
00:03:35 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
When we talk about populism, we immediately think about two things. People, centrism and anti elitism. As Ernesto a cloud put it many years ago, populism is about the people versus power, contradiction. So when we think of a politician as being populist, we think, OK, this politician is against the political class.
00:03:56 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Since the state school and it's siding with the people it is siding with the people discursively but also performatively.
00:04:05 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
And what do I mean by that? I follow what we call the social, cultural approach to populism that's been studied by osteoid, morphite, panita and all these scholars. So according to that point of view, populism is also a way of relating to the people how a leader relates to the people.
00:04:26 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
And it's also a way of being and acting in politics. How am I presenting myself in front of the people? Who am I siding with?
00:04:34 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So from the point of view with viewer sighting, we the people, if you're presenting yourself as an ordinary person, not as a politician but as a political outsider who has the same taste, the same routines, the same lifestyle as ordinary people, the common people, then you are presenting yourself performatively.
00:04:54 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Ask the popular.
00:04:56 Will Mountford
And in terms of the social media networks use, it's an ever changing landscape in terms of which ones are in favor or not. If you're recording this 10 years ago would probably be a very different conversation about Facebook 20 years ago, we'd be talking about my space two years ago, probably talking about Twitter in a very different context. So what was the scope?
00:05:16 Will Mountford
The bounds that you put on the platforms you were looking at, and even if it's just anecdotally, do you feel like different ones have different fights because I'm guessing Trump's truth social media network is very different to something like blue sky.
00:05:28 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So I want to look at social networks that use images and tour videos because I was interested in doing a visual analysis. So I started looking at Instagram and most of my work has been conducted about Instagram posts. But recently we have.
00:05:48 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So and I also wanted to see if politicians were performing the same way on TikTok, and I'm just starting to look into it, but it looks like they still post about food on Instagram and.
00:06:03 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Talk. They just do it, I guess in different ways. So on TikTok, you have many more videos of, like, politicians talking to citizens as if they were their friends. I guess while on Instagram you're still more still images.
00:06:21 Will Mountford
Food. It's a common social factor. Everyone listening to this eats, but in terms of how it is within a society.
00:06:29 Will Mountford
How does food reflect not just personal values like, you know, vegan versus a hyper carnivore diet or traditional grub or take away food that is going to be a?
00:06:42 Will Mountford
Part of every.
00:06:43 Will Mountford
Diet in the world. I don't know if there's a country that doesn't have a Pizza Hut. So what is in?
00:06:49 Will Mountford
Some of your research constructed our food versus their food.
00:06:54 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Well, thanks for asking me that. I actually look at food as a cultural encore and that means that it helps us and bring ourselves to specific identities, specific collective identity.
00:07:06 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
I think there are very few cultural tropes. We have music, but very few cultural tropes really that are as and trends with our identities and also capable of evoking such strong emotions as food. It really touches our gut feelings. We have this visceral connection with food.
00:07:26 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
This passionate attachment to food, I mean you put the wrong ingredient in a paella or a pasta carbonara and the whole country gets really pissed off. Why do we get so angry about food?
00:07:41 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Another example, you talked about reducing meat intake in the UK, for instance, where it is rumoured that the Labour Party was going to introduce a meat tax or in the United States also fake news about the Democrats cutting red meat intake by 90%, which meant you would only be allowed to eat 1 hamburger.
00:08:02 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
And people get so angry. It's not just ideological, but this kind of affective polarization, which is also very intersectional because it cuts across our community, the nation, ethnicity, religion, the gendering of food, social class, this battle between.
00:08:22 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Local and the global production of food.
00:08:26 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
And also food debate, they also have real world consequences. I mean, they have consequences for your health, other people's health than on human, the planet. And it even makes you wonder about anthropocentrism.
00:08:40 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
As a whole.
00:08:41 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
It is very linked as well to debate on climate change.
00:08:46 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
We are playing very specific ways of our green patriotism, patriotic ecology, but also climate change, denialism, and realism on the far right.
00:08:57 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So all these elements make food are very particular and very interesting cultural anchor as an easy issue. It is an entry point to highly political debates. It feels easy to position yourself about food. Oh, I want to eat less meat. I want to eat more meat. But what you don't?
00:09:17 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Always realize is that this can be very political or very politicized, right?
00:09:23 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
In a world that brings a lot of cultural anxieties and we have extremely threatened identities, what we look for in food, our food is the sense of like our cultural roots, the safety of home, of your Community, and the certainty that you know where you belong to.
00:09:43 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So it's very easy to mobilize food as a way of constructing our community versus foreign communities versus migrant communities in a way that strengthens kind of.
00:09:56 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Polarization and exclusionary populism.
00:09:59 Will Mountford
In terms of some of the content covered in one of your research papers, it was part about Nutella from Matteo Salvini, who is one of the political leaders in Italy. To me, Nutella is a bit of a luxury. It's a comfort food. Does the type of food and its place within that dynamic of having your daily staples your?
00:10:19 Will Mountford
Rice wheat bread pasta porridge versus an indulgence. Does that affect the perception or of the politicization of the food substance?
00:10:28 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Well.
00:10:29 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Everything is politicized, so we have very different this person is on the far right. There are different ways in which it politicizes food.
00:10:38 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So, for instance, Matteo Salvini, when he was Minister of Home Affairs and Prime Deputy minister in Italy, he posted a lot. And when I mean a.
00:10:48 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Lot.
00:10:49 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
It's really a lot like every other day he was posting about food, what kind of food he ate and he was posting, for instance, about Nutella.
00:10:58 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
He even had a Nutella award. He loved Nutella, and one day he stopped eating it. And he said, well, I'm stopping because I realized that they used Turkish.
00:11:08 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Based on us, while they should use Italian ones and then Natalia replied to him and they said we well actually. And Italy, we don't produce enough our Hazel net for making the timeline meeting world demand like OK.
00:11:22 Will Mountford
I think Nutella consumes 90% of the world's hazelnuts. Ferrero, like the parent company.
00:11:28 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Incredible. Yes, Ferrero. So what was he doing? I mean, he was linking these comfort foods also this very kind of like, childish and primitive taste. Very sweet.
00:11:40 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
It into something else, into a way of like, excluding migraines and defending the Italy first, produce right Italian farming and agriculture.
00:11:52 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
That's one way in which they use it, but there are many other ways. He was also posting sometimes with orange trees or Italian vegetables. If you look at Nigel Farage, for instance, in the UK, he also posts about British strawberries, and next day he's in a pub drinking a pint.
00:12:12 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So do you have this kind of like national?
00:12:16 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Prism what comes from my country and this kind of nativist approach to it. Do you have this idea of like I like comfort food? I like fast food and I'm just fine with that. All health experts, I'm defying climate change. I'm when I'm eating McDonald's for instance, we know.
00:12:36 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Donald Trump loves McDonald's.
00:12:38 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
What is he doing? I mean, he's defending micro farming. He's really disregarding any health advice about what kind of food you should eat. There is this kind of like this transgression right? There is also this popular ordinary side to it. I go to the pub and I drink pine or I could eat.
00:12:58 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Anything in the world because I have the money and I have access, but I choose to eat a hamburger. McDonald's is kind and hamburgers are kind of a symbol of like Americans working class. So I'm like you, I'm close to you.
00:13:14 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So you have these all these different approaches there.
00:13:17 Will Mountford
And then there was something. It's not so that I was aware of before coming to your research, but the Tuesday dates of cast his Tuesday dates series about bringing people not just to the pub or to a restaurant or to a vineyard orchard wherever, but bring them into their house to be part of their meal.
00:13:37 Will Mountford
What does that do for?
00:13:38 Will Mountford
The the humanization of the people and their politics.
00:13:42 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So when politicians are in social media, they are kind of giving you the idea that you have access to their intimate self and this has to do with the personalization of politics and even more than intimidation of politics. I want you to know me better and I'm going to open the doors of my house. You're going to have access to.
00:14:03 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Very intimate spaces of my life, so we have an example in Chile, for instance, Jose Antonio Carlos. He's the leader of the Chilean Republican Party.
00:14:13 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
He's not. He didn't win the elections, but he came first in the first round of elections in 2021, so he might have a chance of winning in the next elections. So he has this Tuesday dates with his wife. He calls it Martez Apollo Leo. So every Tuesday he meet with his wife. He said sometime for a family.
00:14:32 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Values and they have dinner together along food. They might go to a very modest restaurant or just eat whatever at home. Very simple food. Nothing extraordinary. Like Pizza, Taco, a salad. Sometimes he poses with some national foods, such as Motega CEO.
00:14:52 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
But what he's doing is kind of like defending family values and religion and presenting himself as an ordinary man with an unsophisticated taste, right. It's very interesting.
00:15:05 Will Mountford
And this is all then layered into how social media changes the dynamics with which people can interact with the politicians. That it's not just seeing them at their table, but you can talk to them at their table that you see them at the pub. You can respond. It's not just streaming a message out, but there is dialogue and there is tone and character that goes into all of that.
00:15:26 Will Mountford
So what does Instagram specifically being more comments and responses than TikTok has the video responses and Twitter having huge chains of replies? How does social behavior through social media change the tenor of all of those?
00:15:43 Will Mountford
Posts.
00:15:44 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Very often we see oh wow, this post has so many comments and replies and you start reading through them and a lot of them are.
00:15:51 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Insults.
00:15:53 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So for instance, you remember when a woman threw a McDonald milkshake to Nigel Farage in the lead of 2024 UK elections that same day.
00:16:04 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
He posted on his Instagram account a video calling McDonald's milkshake, and he said my milkshake brings all the people to the rally and I went through some of the comments and, for instance, one of the comments was you belong to an episode of Come Dine with me.
00:16:22 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Kind of making fun of him, but all the comments were like, oh, he's my guy. He's a normal everyday person. I would love to have a pint with you. You know, you're funny. You love your country and you enjoy a pint, that kind of reaction is also very common. And I kind of identify with a guy.
00:16:44 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Who goes to McDonald's and likes to have a pint? And it's very ordinary and unsophisticated, and it's very approachable and relatable, right?
00:16:53 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Another example Donald Trump during the electoral campaign, he was seen serving fries out of McDonald's to regular people. So Kamala Harris have said that she worked one month at McDonald's when she was at college just to pay for it.
00:17:11 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Needs and Trump was like, that's not true. He cannot cope McDonald's. McDonald's is my thing. So he went to McDonald's, he served rice and he said, I've officially work longer at McDonald's and came.
00:17:23 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
And he posted that on Tiktok, and he got over 5 million likes and 64,000 comments on that specific post. And some people were like, ohh, that is the cutest thing ever. How can you not love this man? And another person was like, he's the real.
00:17:44 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
I love his sense of humor and still another person was like, you cannot get more personable, so it is clear that they are trying to create this kind of like authentic, relatable ordinary persona and connect with people with their followers.
00:18:04 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Through cultural anchors, through food, through simple national.
00:18:08 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Food.
00:18:09 Will Mountford
How does that then sit at odds with pictures of Donald Trump sitting in his solid gold office or Nigel Farage posting about his economic insights, having spent so long working in city finance? That's where he's made all of his money. Is this something that is addressed, of having these down home food attitudes against also being?
00:18:29 Will Mountford
And fantastically wealthy.
00:18:31 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
As you said, it is more complicated than that, because I mean, they're privileged means that they can perform as being part of.
00:18:40 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Elite, but also as being political outsiders, in the sense that they have an ordinary taste. So you can be both things at the same time, and your performances can oscillate between those two personalities. But for instance, Anthony Scaramucci, who was a former White House communication director.
00:19:01 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Was asked by the BBC Tell me something about Donald Trump that is not.
00:19:05 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Lettuce and he said, well, you know, he eats cheeseburgers, his pizzas, and then you see Donald Trump on his private plane along with Elon Musk, Donald Trump junior and Robert F Kennedy posing with McDonald's, hamburger and a Coca-Cola. So there are so many contradictions.
00:19:27 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
There because you are wealthier, surrounded by wealthy people, you are in a private.
00:19:32 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Plane but still. Do you have this ordinary kind of character identity that doesn't change who you are? Money hasn't changed you in the sense that you still like McDonald's. You still like simple pleasures. You are still able to connect with the people in a way that other politicians can't.
00:19:55 Will Mountford
You mentioned that a lot of the comments on some of these posts do carry negativity, that they might be insults. It is still interaction to still engagement. So I'm not going to get into the social media algorithm that is being gained there, but are there ever comments or does your research address any of the comments or conversations between commenters where someone might say?
00:20:15 Will Mountford
An insult to a politician and then they get responses off of that arguments or support from any which side.
00:20:22 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
To be fair, I mostly analyze how politicians use food in their social media performances, how they pose with food, and there are so many comments. There are literally thousands of comments that you would need, I guess a bigger team to do that kind of work. It is something very interested in doing but.
00:20:43 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
They haven't really done a thorough piece of analysis.
00:20:47 Will Mountford
It is a bit of a silly question, but is there a right wing diet or conversely a left wing?
00:20:53 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
One well, two things. First of all, is there a far right diet or a purple is far right diet? Well, it depends because it is very culturally rooted. So it depends on where you are, as you said.
00:21:07 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Mr. Salvini doesn't pose with the same type of food as Donald Trump or as Nigel Farage, right? They are different nations and different types of food. But.
00:21:17 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
What? What far right leader is? Supposedly it has to do with their cultural heritage, where they come from so you can pose with pasta, you can pose with hamburger what you can pose with a pint. Whatever really identifies the working class, the ordinary people in each nation and that varies.
00:21:38 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Right.
00:21:38 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
There are common tropes for, for instance, having a sweet tooth liking Nutella or liking McDonald's chocolate milkshakes. That is kind of defying health regulations that try to get people to consume less, less sugar. You also have the defense of comfort food and of fast food. So really.
00:21:59 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Kind of eating that links yourself to your roots, to your nation, to your territory, but also to specific social class and that also varies according to the country. But you have, I guess those three elements, right nation, social class and roots.
00:22:18 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
You also asked me if there is a far left diet right and you were talking about vegetarian vegan options or face. Well, there is a very interesting example of Barack Obama, and there's a lot of Britain about him being too fit to be president or too feminine.
00:22:39 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
To be president, a lot of people saw Obama and his healthy eating habits as really a problem for his electoral campaign.
00:22:50 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
I mean, they saw him kind of 2 letters to the heart from the common Americans, for instance, he was giving a rally in 2008 and he was like, oh, yes, you know, arugula prices in Whole Foods are so high. And he was probably trying to get in touch with the common people. You know, it's expensive, but people were like, what is arugula?
00:23:13 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Who eats arugula and who buys that Whole Foods? You're part of the elite, and you're very attached from the common people. It's kind of core is followed him throughout his electoral.
00:23:23 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
He also faced a broccoli course. There were rumors that Obama's Affordable Care Act was gonna oblige Americans to buy broccoli. And I mean, who likes broccoli? But the idea was that he was gonna advise you to buy healthy foods and vegetables and to eat healthy because the healthier you.
00:23:43 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Eat the less of a chance there is that you will become sick and it will be cheaper for the state that got so big that the district in Florida declared his Obamacare unconstitutional because you cannot advise Americans.
00:23:56 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
To eat properly.
00:23:58 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So I mean, that's the kind of thing that only happens in America or.
00:24:02 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
But there is a lot of work that looks at vegan, vegetarian men as way even climate change mitigation policies as emasculating or as feminine, while eating meat, eating a lot of protein, and being a bodybuilder right is seen as masculine and giving you.
00:24:22 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Power and privilege.
00:24:25 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Well, there is a reason why Donald Trump is eating hamburgers and not kebabs.
00:24:29 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
You know what I mean?
00:24:32 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
The kind of fast food you choose to to pose with tells a lot to the people you're talking to with your community, right? So hamburgers represent ordinary Americans, right?
00:24:46 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
It is not a multicultural food is not a foreign food. It is a very national food.
00:24:52 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
I don't know. There's been works about these ideas of meat liberty in the United States or hot dog patriotism, so it also links with the tendering of food and how politicians politicians often opposed with meat as a way of appearing more powerful and showing strength.
00:25:13 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
We must also we need the same thing. He's posing with the pasta dishes with pizza sometimes. So using the colors of the Italian flag, basil, tomatoes and mozzarella. So you're representing your nation against other types of.
00:25:31 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Good.
00:25:32 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
In Germany, we have the radical right party Afd alternative for Deutschland, who had posters that read. I like Burgundy wine better or Islam. It does not match our kitten. Italians also did that. La Liga, which was the Salvini party also.
00:25:53 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Had posters about yes to polenta, no to good schools. I guess everybody also remembers the famous freedom fries instead of French fries.
00:26:02 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So all these are ways of naming my food as a way of representing my community against other communities against migrants, for instance, but also other communities in the sense of health experts, for instance, or environmentalists. I don't care about the environment. I'm a denialist.
00:26:22 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
And therefore, I like McDonald's. I support microfarm thing and all these.
00:26:27 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
I don't care about what health girls say. I still order at McDonald's. Two big Macs, 2 little Fish and a chocolate milkshake, which is what allegedly, Donald Trump orders every time. It's very interesting to see who is your enemy, right? Who are you defending yourself against? So you're defending yourself against cosmopolitan?
00:26:47 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Elite and intellectual progressive parties, international organizations.
00:26:53 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
But also foreigners, immigrants, religious communities and something very interesting. Is it your kind of defending yourself against leftist, communist, Marxist Killjoys? And here I want to use sadness idea of a feminist killjoys. The idea that when you are consuming certain foods, you get these.
00:27:13 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
I don't need seek pleasure that is linked to your roots, your memories, your community, to your nation, to your social class, whatever.
00:27:20 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
And when you are telling people you should eat less sugar, you should eat less red meat. You should make less for it to be healthy and protect the environment. You are kind of attacking and killing their access to pleasure their a patriarchal neoliberal but also deeply entrenched access to pleasuring.
00:27:40 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
And you mess with people's roots when you mess with people's access to small daily pleasures, that's when you got them really angry. As we were saying, right, with, with passed up with the wrong ingredients and you'll start a war.
00:27:52 Will Mountford
Crucially, I suppose, and this is something which, based on the tides of history, may have already been answered.
00:27:58 Will Mountford
But does this work? Does posing with these foods support the cause for getting these people more visibility, more influence and more political power?
00:28:08 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
While you know in social sciences it's really hard to draw direct correlations to say, oh people vote for Trump because he's hamburger is, people are now more likely to vote for a nice old garage because he likes his hint at a pub. So there is no correlation, of course, but.
00:28:28 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Was important.
00:28:29 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Needs to see how political leaders mobilize cultural and queries such as music. It can be cinema, it can be food, it can be lifestyle, it can be fashion, how they mobilize different cultural anchors as part of identity politics and cultural words, and how they are using this kind of easy innocent.
00:28:50 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Apolitical things, as a way of leading very politicized debate, right. And kind of creating in Group and out group communities.
00:29:01 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
And does that work right? Identity politics as a whole is working for them in a way. But yeah, we cannot say it's the only factor, of course to that.
00:29:11 Will Mountford
Well, it can't be the only factor, because we're going to be speaking in another episode soon. For now, let's recap a little bit on what we've covered. What would you say is the 2 minute summary about everything that we've covered in the last 39?
00:29:24 Will Mountford
Minutes.
00:29:24 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
OK, so I look at how politicians post on social media with food, and that seems a little bit banal. Why would you care about that? Right? As I said, food is a cultural anchor. It means that it anchors you to a specific individual and community identity.
00:29:45 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Who is what gives sense to?
00:29:46 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Who you are.
00:29:47 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Right where you're from, what you like, what your daily guilty pleasures are. Food, even if it looks like a venal issue. It is very political and it can be very.
00:30:00 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
It can be politicized in the sense of talking about vanishing traditions.
00:30:05 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So how rapid cultural change creates a lot of cultural anxiety, and you look at whatever gives you rootedness, foods that give you rootedness, that make you feel safe, comfort food, fast food, whatever makes you feel comfortable and safe at home.
00:30:20 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
In other multiculturalism migration flows, they increase the food prices. So I would like academics to pay more attention to the role of performance and aesthetics when they analyze far right politics and populism, because there are so many elements of pop culture.
00:30:42 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
The lifestyle of your everyday life that can be very easily politicized, and we haven't really paid much attention to them.
00:30:50 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
There's a lot of work about music and populism because music just is food can very easily mobilize your gut feelings and your visceral emotions, and makes you feel part of a specific community. But food has been mostly disregarded. There are some works on food, nationalism, gastronomy, journalism.
00:31:11 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Astronautics, ISM. But food populism is bigger than that. It's not just about your national route, it's also about how you position yourself in terms of social club.
00:31:22 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
And also how you perform in an excessive and transgressive way that can define what you would expect from a politician regarding policy maker is, I think this is very important because as I said, what politicians say and.
00:31:41 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Do about.
00:31:43 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
It affects everyone. It is extremely important for our health. It is extremely important for other people's health, for other people's rights, even and identity for how we treat animals, how we mitigate climate change. It has so many real world consequences that are.
00:32:03 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Overarching and if a politicians defend fast food or sugar, for instance, in Spain I remember the far right saying ohh those politicians put demos and pursue it. They want to legalize drugs and forbid sugar.
00:32:19 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
That has a real consequence on how you farm animals, where you get your ingredients for how are the transnational flows of food, what kind of diet people are going.
00:32:30 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
To have this.
00:32:31 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Has so many implications. And finally for the public, you can sympathize with.
00:32:39 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
A populist leader because you connect with them over the fact that you like having a pint or eating a hamburger. But hey, this is a strategy. This is not really who they are. And This is why we talk about performance. They are performing us being authentic as being close to you as being relatable.
00:32:56 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Ohh but it is part of a broader marketing and PR campaign that is is meant to portray them as part of the people rather than part of the elite. But this is wrong. They are part of the elite. They are some of the wealthiest, most powerful people in your country. So yes, pay attention to those.
00:33:17 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
Apparently innocent cultural symbols that mean nothing because they can be very highly politicized.
00:33:28 Will Mountford
And if people want to know more about your work, is there any web page or paper that you would like to send them to?
00:33:34 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
I've written some papers and book chapters about food and populism, so I've written a paper called the Italian Taste, which is published by Triple doors, and it talks about matters of meaning. I wrote up a chapter about posing with the people, the far right, and put purple.
00:33:54 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
It isn't a book called Food Instagram, edited by Emily Contrast and Zenia Kish, and I'm currently writing a book chapter on Jose Antonio Kast. This Italian far right leader and he's Tuesday date with his wife. It will be published in the book populism on the streets, which is edited.
00:34:13 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
By Harry Brown and Marius Franza kasulu.
00:34:16 Will Mountford
And we can put links to those in the episode description so people can head.
00:34:20 Will Mountford
To those, do you have any final thoughts, anything that you'd like to add whilst we are still on the call?
00:34:25 Dr Sara Garcia Santamaria
So just two key messages for these political so do vote with your fork.
00:34:30 Will Mountford
Well, thank you so much for your time and I look forward to speaking with you on our next episode soon.