The term seems to be increasingly used very much in the pejorative and as a diagnosis for people being misled rather than as a genuine label for social change without necessarily revolution. This might just be a reaction to recent history and intellectuals doing their usual business of tracing everything back to Rome but I do believe that the negativity of populism may be used to suppress grassroots or common societies based on delivering improvements or maintaining the common wellbeing. Left-wing populism has certainly failed to take proper root recently and the polarisation of the term may stop it ever being the case - in an American context that would certainly be welcomed by the Democratic establishment but a setback for the working class.
Under my own lens I'd label mutual organisations, unions and farmers markets as populist. Equally movements to redress imbalances of power or even just impose regulatory standards could be considered as populist - Occupy Wallstreet starting as a rage against the moral hazard of bail outs would certainly not be left-wing. It's a very dangerous and nebulous term but one that I think represents an unspoken enforcement of the social contract as people interpret it distinct from power relationships.
Anyway, I found it weird that they replaced 'Il Quarto Stato' with an Occupy Wall Street sign.
I just hit on a quote from Frank Furedi that summarises some of this perfectly:
>Political psychology has often served as a medium for diseasing the demos, and by implication democracy itself. In the nineteenth century, psychologists developed theories of the crowed, which stressed the irrational and destructive behaviour of the urban mobs.
>In the current era, citizens supporting so-called populist parties are diagnosed as possessing toxic authoritarian personalities...Psychologies contribution to the silent war against democracy has been in serving to de-politicise and medicalise the behaviour of its target. Views that inspire and motivate popular movements are dismissed as the outcome of psychological pathologies - narcissism, irrationalism, deluded fantasy - rather than legitimate political responses to public problems.
Yeah, I agree. I can sum it up more succinctly: "Populist" is now an establishmentarian dogwhistle that means "thick povvos who can't be trusted to vote how they were meant to".
The problem is, in my opinion, that both left and right wing populism tend to feature some nationalist rhetoric, whether in the form of straight up xenophobia, or just a more vague labour protectionism. As far as the establishment are concerned, that cannot be tolerated. No matter which way you slice it, the interests of the lower classes are at odds with the interests of a globalist ruling class, and a great amount of political discourse is devoted to obscuring and diverting attention away from that fundamental conflict.
"Populism", as a word, surely comes from "populus". It's populace-ism. It's people-ism. Populism is when the party that best appeals to The People(tm) winds up being elected.
In other words, it's democracy. All political parties are populist. The concept of populism is only used by those parties who were not successful.
>>92565 It actually doesn't need the democratic element. A populist movement can also mean anything serving the community in general, in the United States this used to also be a term dominant for farmers organisations circumventing rent-seeking by the wealthy that only later evolved into a loose political party.
>>92567 You see what you're doing here is submitting that words are malleable to those in power who very much hold an interest in controlling language. Populism in a pejorative sense is a term I've seen uniquely used by the mass media who have created their own distorted image in the consumers mind and thereby shaping the confines of any debate and what is possible. If all modes of social improvement outside of those sanctioned by the powerful are viewed as dangerous threats to democracy then they can close meaningful resistance in the minds of the common people and stop the emerges of any rival power structures that truly pose a threat.
Language is organic but that doesn't mean that a pedantic anorak wielder with a dictionary can't confound our current slide deeper into an aristocracy.
>>92574 >You see what you're doing here is submitting that ...
No, I was talking about slang. I am aware that various parties in the media have been doing some rather unpleasant things with terms like "do-gooder" and "violence". "Woke" arguably too but that one's a kettle of eels I can't be bothered with.
We're not talking about slang and the inherent premise of my reply was that the current use is artificial and therefore illegitimate. If as otherlad suggest the term is used by losers then it is quite correct to say 'no actually you're talking bollocks' or to resist it falling into a common definition.
>>92577 >We're not talking about slang
I was. Slang is words. Go have a conversation with yourself if you want to be in complete control of where it goes.
