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At the most basic level, populism is a political ideology that holds that the common person is oppressed by an elite in society, which exists only to serve its own interests, and
therefore, the instruments of the State need to be grasped from this self-serving elite
and instead used for the benefit and advancement of the oppressed masses as a whole. A populist reaches out to ordinary people,
talking about their economic and other concerns. Individual Populists have variously promised to "stand up to corporations" and "put people first."
History of Populism
Populism has been a strong component of North American and Latin American political history. In Latin America several charismatic leaders emerged, while in the United States, the
formation of such political parties during the late 1800s and early 1900s as the Populist Party, the
United States Greenback Party, the
Single Tax movement of Henry
George, the United States Progressive
Party, the Farmer-Labor Party, the Share Our Wealth movement of Huey Long, and the Union Party. Some early left-wing populist parties directly fed into the later emergence of the Socialist movement, while other populist parties have taken on a more right-wing character and fed the careers of people widely viewed as demagogues, such as
Father Charles Coughlin.
Modern populism, of all political hues
Populism is still alive and well in various countries around the world. Examples of populists in the modern era include
Pauline Hanson in Australia, Winston Peters in New Zealand, Jean-Marie
Le Pen in France, Carl I.
Hagen in Norway, William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, Paul Wellstone, Howard Dean
and John Edwards in the United States, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma/Myanmar, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Lula in Brazil and Preston Manning in Canada.
Populism continues to be a force in modern American politics. The 1992 and 1996
third-party Presidential campaigns of Ross Perot, the Presidential campaign in
the 1992 Democratic primary of Jerry Brown, the
2003 California gubernatorial campaign of Arnold
Schwarzenegger, and the 2004 Presidential campaign of former Vermont governor
Howard Dean, are all widely seen as modern manifestations of the populist
phenomenon.
Populist Methods
Populism is characterized by a sometimes radical critique of the status quo, but
on the whole does not have a strong political identity as either a left-wing or
right-wing movement. Populism has taken both left-wing and right-wing forms. In
recent years, conservative politicians have increasingly begun adopting
populist rhetoric; for example, promising to "get big government off your backs", or to stand up to "the powerful trial lawyer
lobby", "the liberal elite", or "the Hollywood elite". Populism has also at times been adopted as a vehicle for extreme radicals; in 1984 the Populist Party name was revived
but was used in 1988 as a vehicle for the Presidential campaign of former Ku Klux Klan leader David
Duke.
Enlightened populism
The word populism is derived from the Latin word populus, which means people in English (in the sense of "I
will govern for the people", not in the sense of "There are people visiting us today"). Therefore, populism espouses
government by the people as a whole (that is to say, the masses). This is in contrast to elitism or aristocracy, both of which are ideologies which
espouse government by a small, privileged group above the masses.
Populism has been a common political phenomenon throughout history. Spartacus
could be considered a famous example of a populist leader of ancient times through his slave rebellion against the rulers of
Ancient Rome. In more recent times, the French Revolution, though led by wealthy intellectuals, could also be described as a manifestation
of populist sentiment against the elitist excesses and privileges of the régime ancien. Abraham Lincoln could not have summed up the populist ideology better when, in his famous Gettysburg Address, he advocated "... government of the people, by
the people, for the people."
Descent into demagoguery
A demagogue is a leader who obtains power by appealing to the gut feelings of the public, usually by
powerful use of rhetoric and propaganda. H. L. Mencken defined a demagogue as "one
who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." The word is nowadays mostly used as a political
insult: political opponents are described as demagogues, but people we approve of are "men of the people", or great
speechmakers.
In the twentieth century populism gained an altogether more
ominous character when dictators such as Juan Peron and Adolf Hitler used demagogery and populist rhetoric to achieve their privileged
leadership positions. It could be argued that none of these men were genuine populists because they usually saw the masses as not
fit to govern for themselves and therefore their elitist and privileged style of leadership was needed to govern and regulate the
behaviour of the masses. Indeed, Adolf Hitler's contempt for the masses was profound; his Mein Kampf is replete with sentiments such as "the masses are inherently stupid", not to mention his hatred
for democracy and adoration of Social Darwinism.
Though populism is often associated with ideologies such as nationalism
and socialism, it is not always necessarily so. Populism can be both left wing and right wing. In the above
examples, Juan Peron would be perceived as a left-wing populist; while Adolf Hitler would normally be thought of as a right-wing
populist.
Populism and nationalism
Romanticism, the anxiety against rationalism, broadened after the beginnings of the European and
Industrial Revolutions because of political insecurity to
bring about religious revival, populism and nationalism. Even though the religious revival eventually blended into political
populism and nationalism, romanticism's paradigm shift was marked by people
looking for security and community because of a strong emotional need to escape from anxiety to believe in something bigger than
themselves.
The revival of religiosity all over Europe played an important role in bringing
people to populism and nationalism. In France, Chateaubriand provided the opening shots of Catholic revivalism as he opposed enlightenment's materialism with the "mystery of life," the human need for redemption. In Germany,
Schleiermacher promoted
pietism by claiming that religion was not the institution, but a mystical piety and sentiment with Christ as the mediating figure raising the human consciousness above the mundane to God's level. In England, John Wesley's Methodism split with the Anglican
church because of its emphasis on the salvation of the masses as a key to moral reform, which Wesley saw as the answer to the social problems of the day. All of these were united by a search for
something to believe in because of the anxiety of the time.
Chateaubriand's beginning brought about TWO Catholic Revivals in France: first, a conservative revival led by Joseph de Maistre, which defended ultra-montanism, also known as the supremacy of the Pope
in the church, and second, but at the same time, a populist revival led by Felicite de Lamennais,
an excommunicated priest. This religious populism opposed ultra-montanism and emphasized a church community dependent upon all of the people, not just
the elite. Furthermore, it stressed that church authority should come from the bottom-up and that the church should alleviate
suffering, not merely accept it, both principles that gave the masses strength.
Nationalism became the secular religion of the masses; that something bigger than themselves that gave their life meaning. It
was a religion spawned of a fear of losing this meaning. Fichte began the development of nationalism by stating that people have the ethical duty to further their nation.
Herder proposed an organic nationalism that was a romantic vision of individual
communities rejecting the Industrial Revolution's model
communities, in which people acquired their meaning from the community/nation. The brothers Grimm collected German folklore to "gather the Teutonic spirit" and show that these tales
provide the common values necessary for the historical survival of a nation. Fredrick Jahn, a Lutheran Minister, a professor at the University of Berlin and the "father of gymnastics,"
introduced the Volkstum, a racial nation
that draws on the essence of a people that was lost in the Industrial Revolution. Adam Mueller went a step further by positing the state as a bigger totality than the government institution.
This paternalistic vision of aristocracy concerned with social orders had a
dark side in that the opposite force of modernity was represented by the Jews, who were
said to be eating away at the state.
In France the populist and nationalist picture was not so grim. Historian Jules Michelet fused nationalism and populism by positing the people as a
mystical unity who are the driving force of history in which the divinity finds its purpose. For Michelet, in history, that representation of the struggle
between spirit and matter, France has a special place because the French became a people through equality, liberty, and fraternity. Because of this,
the French people can never be wrong. It is important to remember that John Michelet's ideas are not socialism or
rational politics, but his populism always minimizes, or even masks, social class
differences.
Nationalism turned in the second half of the Nineteenth Century and the nationalist sentiment was altered into an elitist and conservative doctrine. Power-state theorist and multi-volume historian Heinrich von Treitschke's Politics talked about
top-down nationalism in which the state is the creator of the nation, not a result thereof. His state's power fashions political
unity because, as he asserts, the national unity was always in place. For von Treitschke, the state is artificially constructed by the elite who know that power counts, but
who also form myths such as racism for the comfort of the nationalistic masses. von Treitschke's nationalism had a dark side; in his eternal struggle of nations, the weakness of
confederated states and war as social hygiene that culminated into a
thought that all nations are egoistic, but their struggles embody morality and embrace progress. Such notions would later be
proliferated in contemporarily unpopular methods by the likes of Adolf
Hitler.
See also
Populist/Nationalist Music
Populism could be used to describe Popular culture and Popular science.
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