79
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
79 points (100.0% liked)
askchapo
22692 readers
164 users here now
Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
-
Posts must ask a question.
-
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
-
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
-
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
TBH, populism is bad when that populism is just a cover for right-wing puppet governments who push austerity and anti-immigrant measures to please their billionaire backers.
"Populism" isn't a thing at all. It's an empty buzzword that doesn't mean anything but "thing that I, the smart and rational adult in the room, do not like and think is vulgar and cringe," and it gets applied to everything from things that are popular and appealing to the public to things that are intensely elitist and unpopular. For example, being against war is always populism, and thus bad, but being for war in too honest a fashion is also populism, and thus also bad. Civil rights are populism, and thus bad, but being against them is also populism, and thus bad. It's a framework that exists to defer all authority to a specific sort of tepid managerial technocracy where the government has to do bad and unpopular things because that's "pragmatic" but they have to be contrite about it instead of admitting they like being corrupt, bloodthirsty assholes because liking being the bad guy is bad populism stuff. And they're definitely not allowed to even try to be better, because trying to do good things and be popular is populism, and thus bad.
Is popular, therefore wrong
True that
But I do see libs who honestly believe that because an idea has popular support, that means it's populist and therefore bad
It's kind of weird
Elitism, I'm gonna guess. That, and believing in meritocracy because they got successful and can't handle thinking it was due to luck.
when half your worldview is "the adults in the room are making the hard choices sweaty" you start to think that the easy choices, even if exceedingly obviously good and correct, are somehow bad
literally vanguardism