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Ocasio-Cortez endorses Biden's reelection campaign, sending a strong signal of Democratic unity
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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politics
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Populism is the appeal to the basest of human emotions, exploited by demagogues to seize power and, at absolute best ignore their mandate and consolidate power for themselves and at worst, the Terror of the French Revolution or its parallels in China during the Cultural Revolution.
It is never, ever, guided by reason, sound policy, or best practice. It is what led to the USSR. It is what led to the Trail of Tears. It is what led to the secession of Southern states during the US Civil War. Populism didn't just give us Trump, it consistently gives us the worst society can be, because it is based off of the worst of society's emotions - fear, jealousy, anger, and resentment.
Please, author any defense of populism. I'm all ears.
I understand this is argument probably coming from some Sandersite-progressive "we only have good intentions" place, but that just makes you an enabler, not enlightened.
If good ideas can stand on their own, they don't need to be driven by resentment or fear of an "other."
What you're arguing is based on the assumption that populism is and has always been used by demagogues, and as populism is rather more accurately described as a political campaign strategy, it only requires one example to tear down the always assumption. All I need to point out is Bernie Sanders and the results of his works makes it so that understanding the questionable aspect of our own society is not to be seen as taboo, and making healthcare more accessible as well as reducing wage gaps is not a bad thing. In fact, he alone enabled a faster rate of political shift to that direction and removed the taboo of those stances. Your stance should be that populism is questionable, rather than a firm always bad as that can be teared down by examples of people trying to raise the flaws of socio-economic structures.
One could argue anything as bad if it has been used by demagogues. Moderation is even a example. You could argue that moderates enables a form of negative peace by allowing structure of society to retain gaps between people, and arguably leads to increase of gaps by simply pushing asides forces that wants to address those gaps. Moderates could be argued to lead to Trumpism due to those observation.
At the end of the day, what matters is the impact of political strategies and whether they have been used to benefit others. It is how they're used that matters at the end of the day.
Bernie Sanders is a perfect example of terrible policies supported by fiery rhetoric, yes. Sanders is not an effective legislator and his policies are DOA. He preys upon people's financial insecurity and frustration to "other" all wealthy people.
He is absolutely part of the problem.
From the brief looks in congress.gov, so many legislature that has been voted on by Bernie Sanders also has passed, so there has been some of his policies that aren't dead on arrival. The DOA legislature thing is like criticizing a legislator for not getting things done when political atmosphere prevents said legislator from getting things done. So, I'm not seeing a good jab here. At the end of the day, he opened the floodgates to discussion of socio-economic structure of our society, and nothing should be closed unless there's a very good reason to do so, and that is indeed a positive result, and yes, it shows populism isn't always a bad thing.
Who exactly isn't a problem to you or haven't been a problem? Given that you haven't really responded to the observation that even moderation can be a problem, I'm guessing a moderate, and it would be very easy to spot a policy that is conservative which leads to Trumpism. And you know you want me to avoid pointing that out, and you probably want me to avoid pointing out negative peace issues.
Your second paragraph (if I'm understanding correctly) sums up my entire point. The Republican party didn't just magically arrive here. Every step on the road to Trumpism came from populist rhetoric. That is precisely the danger I'm talking about.
Sanders is absolutely the same problem from a different direction. Demonizing a faceless problem to rile people up is irresponsible and dangerous, full stop. The Republicans should be a clear warning of the dangers inherent.
Pardon if I misunderstood - had some trouble parsing your second paragraph.
The second paragraph is more about pointing to moderate stances leading into Trumpism. How does it do that? By pushing out rhetorics that shines a light into our structures and by simply hiding problems like systematic racism in the name of order. The second paragraph is not about populism, but as a observation of how anything can be argued to be bad.
You need to demonstrate that it's a faceless problem given that younger people are having far more struggles. So far, you failed to provide that case.
Trumpism didn't come from any specific policy. It was a combination of decades of populist/nativist rhetoric on talk radio leading into the same in mass media/the internet. Couple this with 2010s massive reshaping of congressional districts due to gerrymandering, and the radicals in the party were given the loudest voting "voice." Together, these things removed any barriers to MAGAs ascendance from within the party. As is commonly said, the Republicans who claim to be the "Party of Reagan" would have kicked him out of the party these days
Highly recommend you read "Why We're Polarized" by Ezra Klein for a well cited narrative of how this came to be.
Trumpism isn't really about policies, at it's core. It's about feelings. Feelings of resentment, dispossession, and nameless dread of the future. See any parallels there with how non-conservatives are beginning to feel?
Literally on a front page thread today: https://lemmy.world/comment/1150069
This is not a sign of healthy discourse and it is escalating.
Trumpism did have it roots within conservative policies years ago. You can either trace it back to Nixon, or the observation of the political party switch after the Civil Rights movement. The hatred that are seen within Trumpism has always been there. It isn't populism at all, and I'd argue it never has been any more than other political campaign strategies. And yes, there are Reagan voters that proudly support Trump as the conservative mindset of hatred were always there.