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maria mut bosque

'The danger is when populism becomes radical'

What should we un­der­stand by pop­ulism?
We often un­der­stand it as an ide­ol­ogy and a po­lit­i­cal trend look­ing to sat­isfy the in­ter­ests and de­sires of the masses. I'd say it is now a change­able term –which can be more or less ex­treme– that is often used with a strong pe­jo­ra­tive mean­ing. Even if it's not the same, pop­ulism is often iden­ti­fied with dem­a­gogy, and we need to be aware of this use and its pe­jo­ra­tive ef­fect.
Is there a right and left wing of pop­ulism?
The main el­e­ment of pop­ulism is pop­ulism it­self. It sees lit­tle dif­fer­ence be­tween right or left; it is just pop­ulism. Yet, both forms of pop­ulism have a lot in com­mon, and a few dif­fer­ences. It is often dif­fi­cult to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween them and they end up be­com­ing mixed, which means they in­clude typ­i­cal fea­tures of the right and the left.
What are the dif­fer­ences be­tween them?
The basic com­mon points are: a charis­matic leader, an abil­ity to mo­bilise masses, a rhetor­i­cal dis­course and anti-elit­ist feel­ing, op­po­si­tion to the sys­tem and sup­port of the as­pi­ra­tions of the lower classes. There are two main as­pects to the dif­fer­ences: one is that the el­e­ments or in­sti­tu­tions they wish to re­form vary, and the other is they use a dif­fer­ent focus or po­lit­i­cal strat­egy to com­bat or trans­form the sys­tem. Yet, we need to be aware that the final aim of both the right and left wings are the same, which is sat­is­fy­ing pop­u­lar de­mands. This was seen in the UK ref­er­en­dum.
What dif­fer­ent strate­gies do they use?
The dan­ger of these move­ments be­com­ing stronger is that they can also be­come xeno­pho­bic, to­tal­i­tar­ian or rad­i­cal. Dem­a­gogic po­lit­i­cal par­ties ap­peal to ir­ra­tional emo­tion and make gen­eral utopian promises for which no plan can be for­mu­lated to re­alise them. They are not re­al­is­tic pro­pos­als and from the point of view of the re­sults achieve low lev­els of ac­com­plish­ment. It is cheat­ing and lying dis­guised by a pompous and highly emo­tion­ally charged dis­course. An­other dan­ger is that the dem­a­gogic-pop­ulist move­ments tend to seek out en­e­mies to fight against, and then make them the scape­goats for all of so­ci­ety's prob­lems. They promise the pub­lic that once all those iden­ti­fied as en­e­mies dis­ap­pear, then their prob­lems will also dis­ap­pear. These en­e­mies could be ei­ther mi­grants or fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, it re­ally all de­pends on the kind of pop­ulism that is being ped­dled, left wing or right wing.
What about the threat to the de­mo­c­ra­tic sys­tem?
Their sim­plis­tic vi­sion ob­vi­ously comes with risks for democ­racy, se­cu­rity and the pro­tec­tion of all of us as part of a de­mo­c­ra­tic so­ci­ety. There's no short­age of ex­am­ples in his­tory. It is now also true that a well-mod­er­ated, non-dem­a­gogic pop­ulism could even have pos­i­tive con­se­quences if it is cor­rectly con­ducted. It could be use­ful for iden­ti­fy­ing prob­lems that af­fect the pub­lic, cor­rect in­ef­fi­cient in­sti­tu­tions and break down un­mov­ing at­ti­tudes. The prob­lem is that the line be­tween mod­er­ate pop­ulism and the more rad­i­cal kind is a fine line that is very eas­ily crossed. After all, the whole dan­ger for the de­mo­c­ra­tic sys­tem is that pop­ulism might eas­ily be­come ex­trem­ist and rad­i­cal.
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