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Old 12-18-2019, 07:04 AM   #196
Samsonite2010
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Good point on traditional media - I actually avoided the news and newspapers as I could see it was full of agendas posted as facts. And again you are right about the age groups - my parents' generation all buy their left or right wing newspapers as a badge of honour. I used to get nervous when one of them would be at my house and put their political badge newspaper in my recycling in case people walking past got offended and egged my house (or something)!
 
Old 12-19-2019, 09:20 AM   #197
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ondoho View Post
Also I'm getting increasingly leery of people winning elections by populistic means
I'm reading this and trying to do the "debating principle" thing of putting the most generous interpretation on the other persons words but I can't seem to find one.

Are you really suggesting that putting forward policies which meet with popular approval is an unacceptable way to win elections.

Or is it that the electorate is to easily mislead to be allowed to make substantive decisions and those need to be left to some sort of intellectual elite (let me guess who that includes).
 
Old 12-19-2019, 11:51 AM   #198
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It has always amused me that the Latin word populus and the Greek word demos mean precisely the same thing: the common people. Yet "democracy" is universally thought to be a good thing and "populism" a bad thing.

A democracy is literally a state in which the common people hold ultimate power (usually through some kind of electoral system that enables them periodically to "throw the rascals out"). Populism is the term for the kind of ideas and policies that these same common people tend to approve of. But you cannot give people that kind of power and then complain about their reasons for voting in the way they do.

Until about the mid-19th century, it was taken for granted by most educated people that democracy was a bad thing precisely because they did not approve of the kind of ideas that less educated people had. Voting, they thought, should be a privilege confined to people like themselves, who knew the right people and ideas to vote for. That at least has the merit of being consistent. The attitude of modern self-identified anti-populists is just a muddle.
 
Old 12-19-2019, 09:47 PM   #199
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"they did not approve of the kind of ideas that less educated people had"

One has to realize the drastic differences in the classes that existed and in many ways still do. The 1800's common person (male voter) was unlikely to have had any education at all. I think this goes back to the great enlightenment theory.
However today's modern academia is out of touch with the common person.
 
Old 12-20-2019, 10:34 AM   #200
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People like former Labour Party leader and Prime Minister Tony Blair are among the "anti-populists". "populism" itself is not actually what these anti-populists claim it to be. The term has been abused and distorted to serve the political ends of those who want to portray anyone, who tries to put any power back into the hands of ordinary people and give them a fairer crack of the whip, as a crank.
 
Old 12-28-2019, 05:09 PM   #201
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cynwulf View Post
People like former Labour Party leader and Prime Minister Tony Blair are among the "anti-populists". "populism" itself is not actually what these anti-populists claim it to be. The term has been abused and distorted to serve the political ends of those who want to portray anyone, who tries to put any power back into the hands of ordinary people and give them a fairer crack of the whip, as a crank.
Clear your inbox...

Last edited by Lysander666; 12-28-2019 at 05:10 PM.
 
Old 12-31-2019, 08:12 AM   #202
ondoho
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"Populism" is a defined term and means something very different than "power to the people" - it describes tactics employed by parties to win (a certain demnographic's) votes.
One aspect is that of "simple solutions for complex problems" - and discrediting those who still dare to take the challenge of providing realistic solutions to real problems.
Those that actually clicked on B. Johnson's election ad that I linked earlier will see a near perfect example how this works.
Another aspect of populism is that of generating an athmosphere against something, rage, animosity, hate... nothing brings people together like a common enemy, right? And the so-called social media and their algorithms have proved most useful in amplifying that aspect. You know, "angry people click more".

This is not an exhaustive list.

And I agree that many people abuse the term.

Essentially, it is about selling something that has very little to do with reality.
Unfortunately, the "established" political parties have been stealing from that same cookie jar themselves for a long time.
The documentaries Hypernormalisation and The Century of the Self could provide further insight into this topic.
 
Old 01-01-2020, 10:55 AM   #203
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Looking up "define populism" on the internet gives some quite different definitions, so I don't know that there's one true definition. But as a contradiction to ondoho's point of view, the Cambridge Dictionary gives:

political ideas and activities that are intended to get the support of ordinary people by giving them what they want

Not that there aren't definitions out there closer to ondoho's definition.
 
Old 01-01-2020, 11:11 AM   #204
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Well, that's just the point, isn't it. Giving ordinary people what they want is frowned on by the great and the good because they are convinced that ordinary people want the wrong things.
 
Old 01-02-2020, 05:47 AM   #205
ondoho
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hazel View Post
Well, that's just the point, isn't it. Giving ordinary people what they want is frowned on by the great and the good because they are convinced that ordinary people want the wrong things.
A good example of "simple solutions for complex problems".
Basically you are saying: "making good politics is soooo simple - you just give people what they want"???

And anyhow, in a way politics in a democratic country is always about giving the people what they want.
(And any counter-argument you can think of to this blue-eyed statement is valid for the so-called populists too.)

Apparently you are buying into the narrative of most populist parties, claiming they are closer to the pulse of the populace than the big ones. I don't; they still don't get that many votes anywhere (*). And they have to work hard to get what they get. It might look like the guy next door just talking the talk, but there's a complex machinery behind that that has nothing to do with politics anymore, and needs to be constantly fed. Fully embracing social media is probably an important aspect, and one big difference to the "old, established" parties. I know this for a (journalistic) fact for quite a few countries. Shameless hatemongering is another one.

How to deal with media influencing in politics has been a big problem for a long time, and most if not all political parties felt the need to deal with that one way or another, becoming complicit in something harmful. But never has the influencing been so powerful as in the age of Facebook & Co. Also Brexit shows this.

I really recommend The Century of the Self for a long-term view on all this - the second part is even called "The Engineering of Consent" - and Hypernormalisation of course.

(*) unless one takes a more cynical view that includes mainstream politics in the USA and many other countries. I tend to...
 
Old 01-02-2020, 08:10 AM   #206
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You remind me a lot of the Trotskyist idealists we used to have in university circles back in the 1960s, when I was a student. These people talked all the time about "false consciousness" which translated as "The working classes don't know what they really want but we do."

False consciousness was ascribed, then as now, to the press and popular culture, i.e. the social media of their time. To bring in the revolution and universal social justice, it was necessary to ignore what people said they wanted and to arrange to give them what they would want if they knew better.
 
Old 01-02-2020, 09:19 AM   #207
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ondoho View Post
Apparently you are buying into the narrative of most populist parties, claiming they are closer to the pulse of the populace than the big ones.[etc]
The thing which some are "buying into" is that some parties are "populist" and some are not. Usually the parties denouncing others as populist are actually populist themselves.

It's been summarised in this thread as "giving the people what they want". But thus far that has not been defined. "What the people want", in terms of the popular definition, could be lower taxes, it could equate to the manifesto pledges of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party, but in reality it was manifest in the Tory campaign and in most previous Tory campaigns and indeed most other parties campaigns.

As all sources, differ and the definition varies - indeed in the modern sense the term has been "weaponised" as a perjorative - I can only present wikipedia:

Quote:
Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against "the elite".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism

To me that definition is flawed, extremely flawed, but it's likely the definition of populism as touted by political parties which support the established status quo.

I prefer:
Quote:
Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of $THE_MAIN_GROUP and often juxtapose this group against $THE_OTHER_GROUP.
i.e. any politics which sets people against people to score political points - by appealing to a perceived majority.

For example: "the British people are tired of Brexit...[blah]". What is this if not populism? Presumably the poor hard done by people are sick and tired of Brexit and $THE_OTHER_GROUP are the ones prolonging it all...

It's the politics of division - setting people against people, races and religions against each other, men against women, old against the young, 'Brexiteers' and 'Remainers' against each other, all to achieve a political end. There are some in the current regime that would have you believe that Brexit was the will of "the people" and they must carry it out because of that - and that "foreigners" or some comfortable Guardian reading, champagne socialists (from London) or Scots nationalists are trying to block that - that's your "populism".

Last edited by cynwulf; 01-02-2020 at 09:21 AM.
 
Old 01-02-2020, 11:16 AM   #208
DavidMcCann
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cynwulf View Post
There are some in the current regime that would have you believe that Brexit was the will of "the people" …
But if the people (how do they differ from "the people"?) didn't want it, why did they give the government an increased majority — they could have all gone out and voted Liberal?

And note the weasel-word "regime". As Wikipedia, which you seem to consider an authority, says "modern usage has given it a negative connotation, implying an authoritarian government or dictatorship…" Back on ignore for you!
 
Old 01-02-2020, 11:29 AM   #209
hazel
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidMcCann View Post
they could have all gone out and voted Liberal?
No, they couldn't. The real source of public anger wasn't so much about brexit (pro or contra) as about the complete impotence of parliament to get anything done at all. We were in almost the same position as Northern Ireland, because a parliament that can't do its job is no better than one that can't sit. The only way to break the deadlock was to give someone a working majority and that someone obviously could not be the Liberal party. Increased Liberal representation in parliament would just have made the gridlock worse.

Simple arithmetic required either a Labour or a Conservative majority. But a Labour majority was simply not possible because:
1) No one outside the London wing of the Labour party trusted or liked Jeremy Corbyn.
2) His promises were so extravagant that everyone was laughing at him. You can't tell people for 364 days that if it seems too good to be true it isn't true, and then expect them on day 365 to vote for the politician who found the magic money tree.

So a clear majority in parliament meant a clear majority for Boris Johnson, simply because no one else could get one.

Last edited by hazel; 01-02-2020 at 11:34 AM.
 
Old 01-02-2020, 07:03 PM   #210
cynwulf
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidMcCann View Post
Back on ignore for you!
You read and interpret from my posts whatever suits your agenda. I did not cite wikipedia as an "authority". I did not use the word "regime" according to that wikipedia definition.

Despite your numerous "weasel words" and veiled attacks, I have never felt the need to put you "on ignore", but do what you must, if that's your modus operandi in dealing with people you don't agree with.
 
  


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