Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Larry Cox's avatar

I used to be really interested in stuff like this until the findings of certain people I follow discouraged me.

From my current point of view, most political and economic ideas, even if they are based on careful research and thoughtful discussion, end up on the public stage in the form of propaganda. Most people don't have the time or patience or intellect or some combination of those to study these ideas the way their originators studied them. And that said, it seems that some ideologies were originated only for their propaganda value, as they seem largely fatuous or unworkable (Eugenics?).

Populism, in my mind, encompasses any package of messages that validates ordinary people as the backbone of society, yet does not necessarily demand any more of them. Revolution demands popular activism, if not martyrdom. Anti-populism shudders at the history of deplorable decisions that ordinary people have been persuaded to make. Yet , is that not Democracy? Conservatism, in most of its forms, demands that adults do productive work if they are able. Authoritarians may demand that people do things they do not wish to do, thus they tend to be anti-populist.

Though decisions about the day-to-day operations of groups, businesses, cities or nations can be based on ideology, they usually aren't. They are based on a mix of political calculations. Thus, I hope that managers and leaders will be sane much more than I hope they will be "liberal" "conservative" or anything else.

Any good leader, whether "populist" or not, will respect ordinary people, as they are needed to work, to reproduce, and to fight. To the extent that they are less needed for these functions, they will be less respected. But in a democracy, ordinary people are needed at voting time. So, a degree of populist rhetoric would always be expected there.

Though anti-populists scream about the shallow ideas of the populists, they seldom reflect on the unworkability of their own ideas, no matter how theoretically rigorous they might be.

On top of this, I am intrigued by how different types of populism influence how ordinary people think about life and about themselves.

In American Dream populism, a constant striving to increase one's social status seems to be expected. In America, everyone wants to send their kids to college. The fact that a world full of doctors and engineers would quickly fall apart seems to be overlooked. And are the American suburbs really the perfect form of community living?

I could respect a form of populism that would assert that all jobs are valuable (and possibly should be remunerated with that in mind), so if you do your job, I'll do mine. A "populism" that expects competence from everyone, particularly if it finds ways to enable that competence, would be an ideology worth respecting, it seems to me. A populism that expects ordinary people to sit back with their popcorn and watch the show isn't worth much. And a populism that promised everyone as much wealth and power as they dream of having would be folly.

The challenge of any leader, populist or not, is to keep the game going for his or her people. In the face of the levels of crime and insanity found on this planet, that's a very difficult challenge.

Expand full comment
Tony Ryan's avatar

In a round-about and sorta vague way, Rolo, you have defined populism.

I imagine most politicians and journalists who read this will nod and move on. They, too, use the word casually and with creative licence. But, in my not-so-humble opinon, thee effing errs. Quite uncharacteristically too, if I may say.

I have no idea how the word was used prior to the US Populist Movement and, frankly, I don't care. If it was used at all it was of insignificant import. Today, we have a tight resistance movement rallying against fascist tyranny and demanding government for the people, not just for the benefit of the elite.

The only comparable situation was the US Populist Movment that bourgened following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Now, here is where we need to pluck the naked and undecorated truth from a history written by the elite investment bankers who assassinated Lincoln. Abraham refused to fund the Civil War with private bank loans and, instead, established war bonds. He also refused to permit the same bankers to establish their own Federal Reserve Bank (they had to create their own President, Woodrow Wilson, to acheive that).

All of this was enough for the bankers to regard Lincoln as their worst enemy, but this resistance was not what they feared most. It was Lincoln's Gettysberg Address, which resonated more every day in American and even overseas minds, that terrified them. I refer, of course, to his brilliantly unambiguous and lyrical "Government of The People, by The People and for The People".

This utterly undermined the ellaborate frauds that the elite inflicted on mankind, in which we clods get to elect some jerk to impose decisions on ourselves, made by the bankers, for the bankers. Lincoln's inspired words encouraged sharp students of history and economics to realise that elections, parliaments, policies, majorities, and representatives were pure windowdresssing and theatre, to veil the oligarch within.

Thus it was that, when aware citizens understood who had executed Lincoln, and why, the Populaist Movement came spontaneously into being and lasted well into the 1880s before finally being smotherd by the banker's media. But this was the second historical popular drive for genuine democracy.

Many historians doubt that the bankers were really so fearful of democracy being so unambiguously defined but this is because they know so little of real history. The truth is, only ten years earlier, pro-democracy activists from nations as diverse as Russia, China, France, eastern Europe and even America, travelled to Australia to form the world's first democratic nation. The American bankers panicked and requested that the City of London bankers instruct the British military to crush the movement to oblivion. In Australia this is known as the 1854 'Massacre at the Eureka Stockade' and we dumb-arsed Aussies are told it was all a rebellion agaainst the high cost of gold-digging licences.

What we have today is about a direct repeat of history: the demand that autocracy and tyranny be replaced with genuine democracy. ie the Populist Movement II. In many parts of Australia, you will see the crude slogan "Eureka... unfinished business".

Expand full comment
22 more comments...

No posts