Eli5 what is populism?
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Its a style of rethoric focused on a specific part of the population. Usually, the majority. The main hallmarks of populism is a strong “us vs them” type of rethoric, and is widely used on all sides of the political spectrum.
Populism is usually characterized by finding a population target that all share some type of characteristic. That characteristic is then amplified to make it appear to be defining for that part of the population, and then whoever is using this tactic, claims to represent the people who identify with that characteristic.
So to illustrate, a common characteristic that many people share is their nationality. So if you want to “represent the american people”, you have to first define who is allowed to be American, maybe you say you have to be christian to be american. This will mean that if anyone argues against christian values you can denounce them for being anti-american, and never have to actually argue their views. Your supporters will support you since you represent them, not because of your actual opinions.
The second thing you have to do, is to get people to identify with that identity. There may be christians who do not care about being american, that means you have to get them to think being american is an important trait. And therefore anyone who is arguing against religion, is arguing against americans, and is therefore arguing against the voters.
Populism works best on any part of the population that feel oppressed, they do not have to be oppressed, they just need to feel like it. And if they dont you can make them feel like it.
Common ways of making a native population feel oppressed and attacked can be saying things like
“The immigrants are taking our jobs”
“The immigrants are living on social security”
“The immigrants rape and kill us”
By saying things such as these you are painting the supporters as victims, and therefore anyone who goes against the group is attacking those supporters. And since you decide where that group goes, anyone who opposes you also opposes every single supporter personally, since if they are anti-you, they are also anti-american, and since the supporters are anti-american, that means they hate the supporters personally.
Its about giving simple solutions to complex problems. A populist will rarely say **how** they are going to fix a problem, just that they are going to do it. At most they may give some very basic idea of how.
For example:
Candidate: I will stop crime
Voter: How?
Candidate: Arm the police and kick out the criminals
Voter: Isnt arming the police going to lead to more violence? And there are laws in this country about kicking out people. Its not possible to kick out every single criminal.
Candidate: No, we have shown these beasts mercy for far too long and you are part of the problem. By hamstringing our police you are responsible for the deaths of crime in the last decade, by supporting the current government you are commiting murder. No good person would ever think of giving these criminals more room to grow.
tl;dr: populism = us good, them bad.
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