General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What is the "hard left"? [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And "populism" is not a synonym for demagoguery, bigotry, or evil.(
It can sometimes simply mean listening to the people, ALL of the people, and working for what they want.
Jim Hightower and Jesse Jackson can be called populists-neither deserves to be lumped in with Trump or Nigel Farage or the all-but-fascist governments of Hungary and Poland.
I'm not personally a populist, but I think we need to be a little more precise in how that term is used.
Left-populism is not the same as right-populism.
And I'm not sure what you would posit as the alternative to populism. It's not as though we're better off keeping the people at a remove from power and letting disinterested, dismissive "experts" have most of the say. There needs to be some sort of a real form a democratic accountability unmediated by money.