Rise of Populism?

[Darth Wedgius]

It's been mostly right-wing populism, but I don't know if we need another right vs. left thread, and I wanted to dig into the populism angle instead. And populism doesn't have to be right-wing; Occupy Wall Street is a recent example of left-wing populism

Recent UK elections are suspected of leaning this way, Australia leaned this way, and the evil, white-supremacists have even gotten India voting this way.

New global mood? Just part of the global tide and ebb as people want to "throw the bastards out" and current "the bastards" just happened to be on the left and a conservative swing is bringing in populists by accident? Or are the Russian trolls just that good?

I've had a hard time understanding what's so bad about populism in the first place. I've heard two general lines of argument:

1) Populism can give way to conspiracy theories. Fair enough, though somewhat of a slippery slope argument.

2) Populism is bad because the elites know best. "Elites" can be cultural or political. This one seems to me to be another variant of the "our way is the future, so do what we tell you to" line, though those saying it might not realize that.

Other alternatives... Populism may oppose pluralism, pluralism where you have "the people" but a lot of different (but overlapping) groups, divided by race, sex, occupation, class, hair color, whatever, and the focus is supposed to be on those groups. Some people are very invested in that; those people can be right-wing or left wing, by the way; populism isn't an one to one match for "identity politics."

For the love of Cthulhu, maybe give it a page or two before making it about conservatives vs. liberals.

[Mecha82]

Populism tends to be about using hatred and bitterness of people for advance in order to get them to they side. It always involves having some group to blame and incite violence towards from everything in order to keep people not thinking actual issues. It's basically how Nazis rose to power and managed to make holocaust happen. Allowing populists to rise to power means that it allows them to force they views on others while using propaganda and other methods like censorship to control people. It's basically what novel 1984 warned us about. So it's harmful to humanity in this already divided world were tribalism is still going strong and things like gender, race and religion are considered being good reasons to hate and kill other humans.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Philosophically speaking, populism isn't particularly the best conduit for justice. I think that does hold true across left or right.

But yeah, I kinda get the confusion a bit. Like how dare everybody vote(?)

[Yukaphile]

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump bear this out. Btw, why isn't this in news?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump bear this out. Btw, why isn't this in news?

This is admittedly anecdotal, but I've come to notice coincidentally in recent times that when I'm driving and find myself dealing with someone who doesn't seem to know how to drive considerately with the rules of traffic, if they have a bunch of bumper stickers, then it's a safe bet that "Bernie 2016" will be one of them.

This may very well be a quirk coming from the very liberal town I live in, but it is amusing as much as it can get tedious.

[Yukaphile]

Well, it's consistent with what they did in 2016.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well, it's consistent with what they did in 2016.

Only reason I'm bringing it up really .

Really though, on topic, I got a high school friend that's on city council. People accused him of garnering votes at the university in our town by campaigning to the students about his support for rent control. I get how people can have concerns, but I don't really feel the concerns of university students financial situations are that invalid.

[Yukaphile]

Politics is politics, and always will be.

[Mecha82]

That financial situation of University Students isn't getting any better nor is financial situation of any normal Americans in that matter considering all that was taken away from them so that rich can have they tax cuts.

[Yukaphile]

Very true, but it's not like Sanders could have done anything about that. His own history is having such high-minded ideas, that he gets stubborn and inflexible, and alienates those he has to work with. In 40 years, he only managed to rename two post offices. That is all.