Why don't we hear about populism?

[Cassius23]

Here's the definition I got from wikipedia.

Populism is a political philosophy or rhetorical style that holds that the common person's interests are oppressed or hindered by the elite in society, and that the instruments of the state need to be grasped from this self-serving elite and used for the benefit and advancement of the people as a whole. Hence a populist is one who is perceived to craft their rhetoric as appeals to the economic, social, and common sense concerns of average people. Most scholarship on populism since 1980 has discussed it as a rhetorical style that can be used to promote a variety of ideologies.

I've been trying to find out two things.

A.- What exactly are the critiques of the end results of populism, that being more widely distributed power and resources for all(I've heard sound bites about people saying populism is bad but they don't quite say why per se).

B.- Why don't we use populism more as a rallying call? It's easy to explain(we want to get money and resources from rich people and give it to poor people) and easy to get behind by people who are the have nothings(the majority of people).

Just wondering

Cassius23

[elehhhhna]

1. we want to get money and resources from rich people and give it to poor ..

That sentence answers your question. It's a gross oversimplification of what populism is about. Populism is not Robinhoodism, it's about social policy...of which welfare and entitlement programs are a small part.

[Cassius23]

3. Ok, that's fair.

But that doesn't really answer the question. Why is it that the only time I hear the word and/or have seen anything about it other than Condi Rice saying, "Populism is bad, ummkay?" and I wasn't able to get it right after doing some good digging on it(as opposed to say, communism in which one google search will pull up 34,700,000 hits while populism pulls up about 10% of that(and I didn't find any that produced a square, "this is what this is", other than what I pulled up).

[zbdent]

5. Probably because populism is a way that's used to get rid of

Democrats in power . . . now that the Republicans are running things, the MSM doesn't want to rock the boat and get rid of Republicans . . . (concentration of power of the media into a few elite hands . . .)

[Inland]

2. Lou Dobbs.

Excellent example of populist views. However, populism has often been negative in attitude and associated with nativism, racism, and a lack of focus. Richard Hofstadter in the Age of Reform basically said populism was mostly a sour attitude, IMO.

[adigal]

4. I wanted to run in my Congressional District

as a populist candidate - and I was told nicely by the heads of the Democratic party in the area that they already had a candidate they were hoping would run, who is an Ivy League educated lawyer, whose father was a big Republican lobbyist in Albany, and who had ties to Hillary Clinton, so would I please go to the back of the room and not make waves so she can be unopposed, although I was still welcome to walk the precincts and man phone banks. I got the picture.

Her first fundraiser was a $1000 per plate dinner with Hillary Clinton in NYC, which is about 120 miles from the area in which she is running.

It's all about protecting what the elites have, people. That is all it is about, even for the Democrats.

[Montauk6]

6. DISCLAIMER: This is the viewpoint of a recovering conservative...

who listened to way too much right-wing talk radio in the 80s. This is all opinion with no evidence at hand to back it up. That said, these are my sincere, heartfelt beliefs on the matter.

I think populism became associated (ohhhh, we're talkin', say, late 80s/early 90s) with the shortwave/libertarian/coin-hoarding/tricorn-and-knicker branch of the right wing. They tolerated Reagan because he seemed to have good intentions about championing free enterprise and capitalism. But when it looked like Bush I was set to take over, the handwringing begun. You heard lotsa worry and whining about "NEW WORLD ORDER"; much protest about the impending one world government. There were many basement gatherings trading stories/rumors about secret camps being set up out west, black unmarked helicopter sightings, United Nations blue-helmet military forces, etc. Speculation abounded about a cashless America, not to mention the states being consolidated into the regions that would correspond with the branches of the Federal Reserve. And for good measure, all the talks was sprinkled with healthy doses of David Rockefeller, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderburgers.

The big split finally came down in the early 90s as the proto-Freepers, stung by Father George going back on "Read my lips," turned to H. Ross Perot (hey, remember him???) who was probably just as much a corporate elitist bigwig as his rival Bush Sr, but he wore his man-of-the-people drag a lot more convincingly. Not only did he sound like a loudmouth mechanic out of Tulsa but he spoke of shaking up the political system (returning its country to the "owners," television voting, etc.). Whereas Herbert Walker's disguise consisted of pork rinds and shouting down Dan Rather, Perot hobnobbed with Bo Gritz and threw some cash at the POW-MIA movement.

So one could argue that all this backbiting allowed Bill & Hillary to slip in. One COULD argue that... whether one chooses to is another story. Once they emerged triumphant, the lightbulb shined for the wound-licking GOP (particularly the mainstream neocon faction). Instead of continuing to try and isolate the disgruntled, they embraced them. They pretended to join them in the fight against the elite establishment, and they skillfully used Bill/Hill to their ends. The Clintons, already pegged as commie libs (a popular epithet was "Clintonistas"), became a ready-made symbol of know-it-all, big-government snobs who were ready to host bonfires fueled by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Their villainy (as fictional as it turned out to be) seemed to reunite and re-ignite the Right.

Meanwhile, the faux populism show continued as talk radio, previously dismissed as a haven for conspiracy nuts, was now seen as a powerful weapon as GOP insiders used it to network the message of "government in the hands of liberals is worse than Nazism, Stalinism, and slavery combined." It was pretty effective as there was no counterbalance to these viewpoints in the era of call screeners. Then, of course, two key events occurred that added grist to the mill; the sieges at Waco and Ruby Ridge. This dual right-wing cause celebre helped establish the Clintons, along with henchperson Janet "Butch" Reno (this is the unfair sobriquet she was saddled with by her detractors) as eternal enemies of the people (some).

So, it was a nice little arrangement for a while, the populists (qua "angry white man") and the more mainstream conservatives; both seemed to channel all their energies against Clinton and the Democrats with such fervor that it even showed results in the so-called Republican Revolution and the now-laughable Contract With America. The historical Repub majority in Congress was viewed as the first step in TAKING BACK AMERICA, though we'd see much later how much of a sick ironic joke that would be.

Then, a huge event took place that worked well in the long run for the neocons: Oklahoma. The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building put the populists out front and center as it was soon learned that fellow militia-types Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh were behind it.

You could say the populist movement was damaged beyond repair with this as the adherents scrambled to and fro to shake off any whiff of allegiance with McVeigh. And it was a big prize for the neocons as, FINALLY, this faction was out of their hair as group to be mollycoddled. They could continue their fascist march towards power with none of these curmudgeons questioning them along the way; aka a unified Republican party. And, of course, the rest is history.

Just my two cents.