What is Populism and does it Help?
Populism may not be a streamline phrase that we hear these days but it is actually on the rise. This is true particularly in United States and Europe. In the world of political science, populism is the notion that the society as a whole is separated into a couple of groups at odds with the other which are:
- The corrupt elite and;
- The pure people
This is as per Cas Mudde, the author of Populism: A Very Short Introduction. This term is typically used as a type of shorthand political insult. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labor leader of Britain has been accused of being a populist due to the slogan used by his party “for the many, not the few”. But that is not entirely the same thing.
The word is misused particularly in the European context as what stated by Benjamin Moffitt, the author of The Global Rise of Populism. A real populist leader is someone who claims to be representing the unified “will of the people”. A true populist stands in the opposition of the enemy and oftentimes, embodied by current system with the objective of opposing the liberal elite.
The Rise of the Right
There are actually plenty of populist parties that are in existence anywhere in political atmosphere. For instance in Latin America, there’s the Venezuelan’s late President, Chávez, then in Spain where they have the Podemos party and as well in Greece, the label has been applied as well to Syriza. On the other hand, majority of the successful populists nowadays are on the right, especially the radical right according to professor Mudde.
It’s been Long in Practice
He also added that politicians similar to Donald Trump in the US, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France combine populism with anti-immigrant or nativism as well as authoritarianism. Experts do point as well to both societal changes similar to globalism and multiculturalism. Martin Bull, the Director of European Consortium of Political Research or simply ECPR says that the emergence of the populist parties in Europe may have been experienced since the early 2000s.
If you review it, then you are going to find tons of resources regarding populism and populist from review sites, books and the likes.