It is easier to talk about populism than to try to define it or inquire about who coined the word or where it first occurred. Why? Because the specialists have not agreed on these issues and it is not a purpose here to treat these issues with an orthodoxy or purism that are irrelevant. We are going to settle for describing this phenomenon, which Venezuelans have suffered so much, and which right now seems to be settling in North America and threatens to spread to other parts of the globe, thus being a hot topic that, according to the DRAE (now DILE) it is the "political tendency that seeks to attract the popular classes." On the other hand, there are those who argue that it was in tsarist Russia, shortly before the Soviet revolution, that anti-tsarist groups, not Marxists, the Narodnik,they were the first to be called populists, for their movement known as narodnichestvo, or "going to the people." Do you mean that populism did not exist before these groups? Not at all, the forms that coincide with populism, even when they were not called that, are of old date and rulers who used populist methods have existed in all ages.
No less than 2400 years ago, Aristotle described what demagoguery is, a cousin of what today is identified as populism, and defined the demagogue as a "flatterer of the people" and demagoguery as a "corrupt or degenerate form of Democracy that it leads to the institution of a tyrannical government of the lower classes or, more often, of many or some who rule in the name of the people ”. The illustrious philosopher, one of the fathers of our Western civilization, indicated that when in popular governments the law is subordinated to the desire of many, whom he defines as the poor, demagogues emerge "who flatter the citizens, give maximum importance to their feelings and guide political action based on them ”.Together with Plato, he affirmed that when an extreme crisis arises, demagoguery annuls the opposition and leads to an authoritarian or tyrannical regime that assumes all power in the name of the people. Aristotle concludes that demagogy is the corruption of the republic. Clearer impossible. In pejorative terms, a candidate is described as a demagogue who offers things that he cannot or does not want to fulfill once he has reached the government.
The populist ruler bases his success on his gift of communication, he is aware of his ability to stir up large crowds, he is irreverent, authoritarian, impudent and he knows how to inflame the masses with his verb, always targeting the largest sector of the electorate, the one who decides with his vote the winner of the elections. Consequently, the populist quickly learns to polarize his governed, to create hatred among them and to invent enemies whom he blames for his mistakes and omissions, which allows him to govern for a long time even while doing it wrong. Populism is easily implanted in countries where there is fertile ground for it, places where a broad social stratum has been impoverished by the exhaustion of the system, usually bipartisan,where the traditional parties have already worn out and lost that angel they had in their beginnings. We know this well enough in Venezuela, but now it seems that they are going to experience it in the United States, where the results of the last elections clearly showed that the bipartisanship is quite battered, since in both parties non-traditional candidates emerged who were sold as anti-system, which presumes the existence of an abandoned and resentful mass in the northern country. Many saw in Sanders and Trump a messiah, a savior who could bring them out of the ground, and did not hesitate to follow them and support them with their votes, being the winner, as we know, Donald Trump, who now has the table set to implement populism, with all its mechanisms, agendas and consequences,nothing less than the greatest power in the world.
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