General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Meet Bernie Sanders' 2018 challenger [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)and a much smaller number of others to discard, who value and want to fix their government, are NOT populists. Don't be fooled by the notion that "populists" are "the people." They're not. Those who get caught up by populist passions are special subsets of the people. And not all initially drawn to populist leaders for their stated goals become "populist" in mindset. By a long shot.
Populist movements by by definition are resentful, emotional riots of those people who mostly want to burn an amorphous, undefined "the establishment" down. Mindless resentment rules, the "reform" part they always claim mostly mostly just words glossing over the underlying desire to attack. They do very sincerely want "change," all right, but reform is not where their passions lie so specific goals are not committed to. And populist leaders can use these passions as a ring in followers' noses to take them wherever the leaders want to go.
Btw, as a way of illustrating that populism does not equal just normal folk finally saying no, populists are typically also hostile toward some other group or groups, too. All that aggressive resentment needing outlets. Right wing populists are very obvious--Rump promised his followers to persecute Hispanics and Muslims for them. As just their main targeted groups.
Left-wing populist targets in the U.S. are far, far, far less developed. Sanders emphatically did not hit that note for any group, and of course, he is a Jew himself. Nevertheless, a rise in antisemitism is seen in the radical and far left, and thus in left-wing populism, even though it's far less strong than it is in Europe in their left- and right-wing populist movements.
(For an example of the latter: POPULIST SURGE IS A THREAT TO JEWS
http://www.newsweek.com/anti-semitism-labour-ken-livingstone-front-national-europe-454071 )