21 September

What’s less known about populism (believing that only what is popular is right and real) is that fascism is just a form of populism. Fascism is what you get if you let populism run. Hitler and Mussolini for example spoke endlessly of ‘the people’, and sold themselves as champions of the people, against ‘elites’. Sound familiar? Trump, the most famous modern populist, does the same. Within one term of government his supporters were sacking the Capitol building. Populism is a mechanism to bypass all existing due processes in societies, all institutions. A fast-track way to ultimate power. Anything can be made popular, it’s just marketing. Right now people line up to get infected with Covid, over and over, it’s hugely popular. Infection and disease are popular! Ffs. It’s high school culture, we all went to high school, we all know popularity is the currency there. Populism is the transfer of adolescent culture to all of life.