Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[martinuzz]

thanks

[TheDarkStar]

This is an adamantine !!!*Godwin*!!!. It is covered with pictures of Hitler. He is laughing. It is covered with pictures of internet users. They are screaming.

[Elephant Parade]

I don't get why all you people use populist as a pejorative.

Donald Trump is definitely showing off the negative, Hitler-esque side of populism. He plays to people's fears and irrationalities—see his various blatant lies, like OMG OBAMA FOUNDED ISIS and AAAAH CRIME IS RISING—and frequently places blame on unpopular groups, like immigrants and Muslims. While the Hitler comparison might be a bit extreme, I can't think of a better one.

This is an adamantine !!!*Godwin*!!!. It is covered with pictures of Hitler. He is laughing. It is covered with pictures of internet users. They are screaming.

Sigged.

[Powder Miner]

I don't get why all you people use populist as a pejorative.

My reasons are twofold: A. Populist basically = demagogue in so many cases. The people we refer to as populists basically pander and play off of people's fears to get them to support something without a whole lot of actual content or realism -- hellooooo Trump.
B. Populist really, really doesn't just mean "supports the people", nor does it mean the opposite of authoritarianism -- there's a four-quadrant model I sometimes like to subscribe to that puts political ideology into one of four quadrants -- liberal, based on wanting more government involvement in economy and more progressive social policies, conservative for the direct opposites of these, libertarian for wanting less evonomic government interference and more progressive social policies... and populist for the exact opposites of that. See, that term for populist likely derives its name from the historical Populist Party which was characterized by exactly that. The party hated capitalism and wanted the government to define and change several things, but given their base (the farmers of the time, turn of the 20th century), the party and general political sector weren't exactly for racial equality and such.

So when I refer to populist, I don't mean someone who supports the people or anything, I mean someone who seems to support more restrictive government policy both economically and socially, keeping both that four-quadrant model and history in mind (Trump's following seems primarily to be rural people and lower-middle class white folks, which matches up with the demographics I tend to think of as most likely to be ideologically populist -- that's remained the case from way back in the Populist Party days), and given that I consider myself to be ideologically libertarian, I directly, completely oppose that ideology.

[Playergamer]

I don't get why all you people use populist as a pejorative.

Donald Trump is definitely showing off the negative, Hitler-esque side of populism. He plays to people's fears and irrationalities—see his various blatant lies, like OMG OBAMA FOUNDED ISIS and AAAAH CRIME IS RISING—and frequently places blame on unpopular groups, like illegal immigrants and migrants from war-torn countries who cannot be vetted. While the Hitler comparison might be a bit extreme, I can't think of a better one.

FTFY.

Powder Miner, here. I think you're against authoritarianism, not populism.

[Frumple]

... can anyone actually name a populist movement that didn't end in either collapse or copious amounts of blood? Scrounging around a bit through history stuff because one was escaping me and it's... not going well.

I guess it depends a bit on what sort of populism you're talking about. The base wikipedia version (which is more or less the one just linked above, too) isn't exactly difficult to notice where the likely problem is, ferex. On one hand, elite/other exploitation and manipulation does occur, but on the other hand the sort of rhetoric that hinges on that kind of message is... easy to exploit, itself. Very easy, and has a history of getting people to do rather incredibly stupid things. Add on the extent they tend to be cults of personality as much as anything, and it should be pretty easy to see part of the reason people are as bloody leery about them as they tend to be. Far from an exhaustive list of reasons, that, but a start. There's a hell of a lot of historical examples of why populism is maybe not what we want to be encouraging.

I'unno about y'all, but I'm pretty comfortable without caesar dissolving congress and declaring themselves emperor.

[martinuzz]

I think this is a similar case to the misunderstanding between EU people and US people about the word 'liberal', which have opposite meanings on either side of the Atlantic.

While populist movements in the US have had a tendency of being on the left, or at least the progressive side of the political spectrum (farmer's cooperatives, and the populist movement of the Great Depression for example, perhaps even Martin Luther King could be partially classified as a populist), populist movements in the EU have nearly always been centered about resentment, racism and xenophobia, with Hitler's rise to power as the classic example.

Obviously, Trump's populism is of the Hitler EU kind.

[Frumple]

Nah, there's plenty of historical right-wing examples of populism in the states, too. McCarthyism, ferex. Haven't really been able to tell if there's been much of a lean tendency for it in the states, really...

[syvarris]

-snippy snippy-

I... Can you provide sources for this information?  As an avid gun collector who has spent years trying to find factual, moral justification for his hobby (and mostly failed), I would be exceptional interested in actual sources.  Not to insult you or anything, but the vast majority of gun-positive hearsay I've fact-checked ended up being false or misrepresented, despite my biases, so I'm a tad mistrusting of your anecdotes.  :\

[smjjames]

Well, the wiki article is somewhat ambigous about it as it says that populism helped fuel the Revolutionary War, and populism has been behind many revolutions.

Lets see if Trumps plan involves more than just bomb, bomb, bombity bomb em out.

[Frumple]

"Copious amounts of blood", smj. Know some folks hold otherwise, but "tendency to lead to bloody rebellion" isn't exactly a plus point, for me, particularly at the moment and in this country.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Populism isn't inherently evil, but it is inherently irrational, since its guideline is promoting the public's biases.

[Playergamer]

-snippy snippy-

I... Can you provide sources for this information?  As an avid gun collector who has spent years trying to find factual, moral justification for his hobby (and mostly failed), I would be exceptional interested in actual sources.  Not to insult you or anything, but the vast majority of gun-positive hearsay I've fact-checked ended up being false or misrepresented, despite my biases, so I'm a tad mistrusting of your anecdotes.  :\

Here's your justification.

Gun control advocates say the government will protect you, but that's just a bald-faced lie. When the government just stands down and lets rioters rule the streets, it's a good idea to have a gun around.

[martinuzz]

Populism isn't inherently evil, but it is inherently irrational, since its guideline is promoting the public's biases.

'The majority's biases' is a better description. Although in this age of social media, it does look like this is turning more and more into 'the vocal minority's biases'.
Which is one reason that populism is incompatible with democracy, even though it rises from it. One of the things a democracy has to do to remain a democracy, is to safeguard the rights of all minority groups within it's society equally. Populism strives for exactly the opposite by promoting a we vs them atmosphere.

But yea, irrational indeed.

[Elephant Parade]

I don't get why all you people use populist as a pejorative.

Donald Trump is definitely showing off the negative, Hitler-esque side of populism. He plays to people's fears and irrationalities—see his various blatant lies, like OMG OBAMA FOUNDED ISIS and AAAAH CRIME IS RISING—and frequently places blame on unpopular groups, like illegal immigrants and migrants from war-torn countries who cannot be vetted. While the Hitler comparison might be a bit extreme, I can't think of a better one.

FTFY.

No response to him making a big deal out of nonissues and nonsense? Does that mean that you agree he does those things, then? If you do agree: How can you support a president who so blatantly lies? If you don't: What evidence do you have that Donald Trump has not made those claims, or, alternatively, what evidence do you have that A)Obama founded ISIS, and B)the crime rate is rising?

Firstly: Many of them are refugees, not migrants. I can't exactly say "most", since I don't actually know the statistics, but you can't honestly say they're all just migrants. Secondly: What do you mean they "can't be vetted"? Vetting processes do exist. I'm sure they're not 100% effective, but do you really want tens of thousands of refugees to be stuck in warzones just because a few terrorists might get through? It's not like blocking refugees will eliminate terrorism, either; plenty of terrorists are 100% American.