Populism Fast and Slow
19 comments
·October 23, 2025grebc
I feel like a lot of people are only just discovering history and that this is absolutely nothing new. Ancient Greeks had a word, demagogue, that isn’t used much but captures certain past/current political figures so well.
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darth_avocado
My reductive take on populism is that it is a consequence of majority of people being unhappy. If the unhappiness is a result of economic struggles, you get right wing populism. If it is a result of social struggles, you get left wing populism. And more often than not, the source of unhappiness is economic struggles.
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colechristensen
It's what happens when the ordinary politicians ignore problems until the "let's solve it like psychopaths" get a critical mass of support.
There were actual problems with immigration, crime, and trade that were aggressively ignored by both parties perhaps one more than the other. The problems grew and grew in the collective minds of the public until enough of the public started to support "let's solve it like fascists".
The lesson is that you can't manifest a perfect political reality by pretending problems don't exist.
irishloop
Or maybe their actual problems are caused by automation, tax cuts on the rich, and a lack of social safety net that lets people live in dignity, but the media they consume mostly blames immigration and crime.
Political "reality" is rarely objective.
bigbadfeline
> The problems grew and grew in the collective minds of the public until enough of the public started to support "let's solve it like fascists".
Well said, and there's no indication that obtaining dictatorial powers hasn't been the original goal all along.
> The lesson is that you can't manifest a perfect political reality by pretending problems don't exist.
There are a lot of lessons here, but this is a good start.
hunterpayne
> "let's solve it like fascists".
You have a weird way of spelling libertarian.
bigbadfeline
A distinction without a difference.
yoyohello13
Nothing says libertarian like federal soldiers being sent into cities.
hunterpayne
There is a lot of irony in this article. There are points he makes where he assumes his political belief is 100% right. On at least one of those points, he is just wrong because of a tiny detail in how the paper he is referencing was setup. Specifically, he doesn't understand how recidivism is calculated. This leads him to think a counter-intuitive thing which is wrong. The simplistic POV is actually right on this specific topic. That leads some some ironic conclusions.
My conclusion is that populism comes about when the "elites" perform badly. The author can't or won't admit this is happening even while unknowingly demonstrating it happening. Populism goes away when either the populist politicians don't improve things or when the elites get their act in order. If either of these happens, things go back to the previous situation. If neither happens, the elites are slowly replaced. We will see what happens going forward.
bigbadfeline
> My conclusion is that populism comes about when the "elites" perform badly.
That's only half true, or maybe a quarter. Actually, populism comes about when the people (are led to) believe that the (patsy) "elites" perform badly.
Without that clarification, we would miss the most likely explanations for present day populism.
> Populism goes away when either the populist politicians don't improve things or when the elites get their act in order.
This is manifestly false today, the elites are now consolidating power for themselves, removing competitors left and right, mostly left because the right surrendered without a fight. In the end, they not only retain power but get more of it while acting materially worse.
nicodjimenez
There are only two political systems at the end of the day: authoritarianism (everyone knows who is in charge) and oligarchy. Populism, in a liberal democracy, is basically authoritarianism-lite representing the interests of a particular faction of oligarchs. There's no "populism" in China, that's an American & European invention. Populism is ugly but it's a useful tool that can get things done in an oligarchy.
pessimizer
"More profoundly, the negative dynamic of fragmentation is cultural: mass higher education creates stratified societies in which the highly educated – 20%, 30%, 40% of the population – begin to live among themselves, to think of themselves as superior, to despise the working classes, and to reject manual labour and industry. Primary education for all (universal literacy) had nurtured democracy, creating a homogeneous society with an egalitarian subconscious. Higher education has given rise to oligarchies, and sometimes plutocracies, stratified societies invaded by an unequal subconscious. The ultimate paradox: the development of higher education ended up producing a decline in intellectual standards in these oligarchies or plutocracies!"
The dislocation of the West: what threatens us - Emmanuel Todd
screenoridesagb
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I regard swissinfo.ch as basically propaganda but they once made the point that direct democracy can be faster than populism at addressing citizens' (cognitive) needs: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/direct-democracy-seri...
(The populism here on HN might be tempered by this mechanism too!)