One of Dave Chappelle’s most memorable characters was the ‘Black White Supremacist.’ A blind black man raised as white who eventually becomes a leading white supremacist. Whenever I hear the dreaded populism term bandied about I immediately think of that sketch. Almost everyone that is regularly labeled a populist is in fact the exact opposite. They would need to be reacting against themselves in order for it to be true.
Most who are labeled populist are really performative populists. People who feign outrage or use an object of scorn as a prop. An ‘other’ their supporters can collectively denigrate and blame as the source of their problems. We use populism as a term for people that are really veiled and closeted fascists. There is nothing inherently popular about minoritarian movements based on resentment of entire classes of people. Populism in itself is something we should aspire to – empowering ordinary citizens with agency in the affairs of government. We should probably be more careful with the language we attach to different movements.
