Here's one definition of the term from Wikipedia:
By its very nature, Populism incorporates anti-regime politics at a time when it asserts it is due. Because populism motivates people to oppose a ruling class, it has sometimes been maligned and used as a tool by some regimes in combination with nationalism, jingoism, racism or religious fundamentalism.
Often populist movements employ dichotomous rhetoric, and claim to represent the majority of the people. Many populists appeal to a specific region of a country or to a specific social class, such as the working class, middle class, or farmers or simply "the poor".
When McCain and Palin drape themselves with the mantle of "populism", they either don't really understand the term or else they are hoping and betting that you don't. Here's why.
Right-wing populist movements can be precursors for, and building blocks of, fascist movements.[27][28][29] Conspiracist scapegoating employed by various populist movements can create "a seedbed for fascism."[30]
National socialist populism interacted with and facilitated fascism in interwar Germany.[31] In this case, distressed middle–class populists during the pre-Nazi Weimar period mobilized their anger at government and big business. The Nazis "parasitized the forms and themes of the populists and moved their constituencies far to the right through ideological appeals involving demagoguery, scapegoating, and conspiracism."[32] According to Fritzsche:
The Nazis expressed the populist yearnings of middle–class constituents and at the same time advocated a strong and resolutely anti-Marxist mobilization....Against "unnaturally" divisive parties and querulous organized interest groups, National Socialists cast themselves as representatives of the commonwealth, of an allegedly betrayed and neglected German public....[b]reaking social barriers of status and caste, and celebrating at least rhetorically the populist ideal of the people’s community... [33]
The assumption of the role as the defender of the down-trodden, the neglected and ignored in society, the spokesman for the have-nots in our society has always been a common ploy in political campaigns. The use of class warfare as a political wedge issue is ubiquitous. The irony of the McCain-Palin campaign is that they claim that it is the Democrats who are stirring the class-warfare pot when in reality it is they themselves who have adopted this as the central theme of their campaign.
They are making the specious argument that the government has to be returned to the "people" and removed from the clutches of the ruling elite and entrenched politicos who have brought our nation to where it is today. Of course, they are conveniently ignoring the fact that they and the Republican party with its inseparable link to big business and special interests have been the ones running this country for the last eight years. McCain and Palin themselves are part of the ruling elite. And you can't be a more entrenched politico than McCain.
The selection of Palin herself is more than enough evidence that the Republicans have chosen to bamboozle voters with this appeal to the common man. She's the "Mrs. Smith Goes To Washington" of 2008. The need for experience to lead in high office has been maligned and discounted in favor of the person with the common touch and common sense. As David Brook's wrote in Tuesday's NY Times:
"Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared."
McCain and Palin are just tools of the true governors of our country, major corporations who keep the Republican party awash in money and the neocons who control the philosophical direction of it. Never forget that today's "populist" may just turn out to be tomorrow's fascist.
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