According to Wikipedia, the word “populism” refers to “a variety of political stances that emphasize the idea of the ‘common people’ and often position this group in opposition to a perceived elite. It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment.”
Having grown up with the Civil Rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the gay rights movement, and the anti-war movement broadcast regularly on the black-and-white television in our family room, I am inclined to be a big fan of populism. To me, populism is the organizing principle undergirding many of the social and political justice movements of my lifetime.
“The people, united, can never be defeated,” was woven into the soundscape of my youth.
Populism in its purest, most organic form is a very good thing. It suggests that in a world filled with social, political, and economic inequity, the oppressed can band together to defeat their oppressors. Without populism, there would have been no Boston Tea Party, no American Revolution, no voting rights for women or Black Americans, and no social parity for LGB Americans (real equality has not yet been achieved for the trans community, and given our current political climate, it is unlikely to happen anytime soon). In its most beneficial form, populism is a grassroots phenomenon, creating political movements that are of, by, and for the people.
But populism has a dark side, as well.
The tenets of populism can be manipulated by the ill-intentioned to induce those who are frightened and gullible to cede control of their governments to sociopaths seeking absolute power. Sadly, this is a tale as old as time. Some of the most ruthless tyrants in human history have used what I can only think of as “faux populism” to dupe their countrymen into surrendering not only their rights as citizens but their human decency as well.
Dictators love the populist playbook. All they need to do is either magnify and distort an existing social grievance or create the appearance of a crisis by telling the same set of lies over and over again. Once the populace has been whipped into a frenzy of resentment (directed, always, at the dictator’s perceived enemies), the dictator offers himself as the savior. Mussolini did it; Hitler did it; Mao did it; Stalin did it; Orban did it; and now Donald Trump has done it as well. It is important here to recall that the only book Trump has ever given evidence of having read is “Mein Kampf,” Adolf Hitler’s “how-to” guide for aspiring tyrants.
All of the above-mentioned dictators harnessed the economic and social anxieties of ordinary citizens, then amplified and weaponized them against groups whom they accused of being responsible for all the ills of their countries.
Mussolini scapegoated socialists and convinced his countrymen that fascism was a much better idea. Stalin identified “middle-class liberals” as the flies in the ointment of Russian society. Mao savaged capitalists as the root of all evil. Hitler grabbed a humiliated, militarily defeated, impoverished Germany, bankrupted by an ill-advised war and a worldwide economic collapse, and persuaded the populace that they had been duped and ruined by the Jews. Jews had nothing to do with it, of course, but that did not stop him from whipping the citizens of Germany into a vicious frenzy of antisemitism that allowed the destruction not only of 6 million Jews but of millions of other “enemies of the Reich.”
In the time-worn tradition of tyrants, Trump manufactures enemies at lightning speed:
We are being ruined by Muslims! We are being ruined by migrants! They are poisoning the blood of America! We are being overrun by Haitians! They are eating the dogs! They are eating the cats! The deep state is plotting against you! The courts are corrupt! Wokeness is the root of all evil! Women and people of color are a threat to the natural order! The East Coast elites are grooming your children! Trans athletes are destroying competitive sports! The entire planet is ripping us off!
And like all good faux-populist dictators, Trump has plenty of assistance from ardent propagandists to help amplify and embellish the faux threats that the so-called enemies of the state represent to the ordinary citizen. The firehose of falsehoods and false equivalencies runs at full bore all day, every day. Hitler had Joseph Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl, the best propagandists he could find. Putin has Pravda and RT news network. Trump has Fox, the National Enquirer, One America Network, and a smattering of boorish, MAGA-bro radio hosts.
Just to be clear, bearing false witness and dehumanizing entire groups of people for the sole purpose of seizing and maintaining absolute power makes you a hideous human being. The paid liars at Fox News and their ilk, who are abetting the Trump dictatorship by pumping out torrents of hogwash, know exactly how evil he is; the voting machine lawsuits that Fox lost several years ago revealed their disparaging private text messages about how much they despise him. Nevertheless, they persist in flooding the zone with fact-free assertions. The right-wing media has simply devolved into a garbage-strewn wasteland of lies.
So, to summarize, Trump and his merry band of myth-makers are lying to you nonstop. They are preying on your resentments. They are creating utterly false narratives to turn you against your relatives, your neighbors, and your fellow human beings. And now that you are all spooled up, they are robbing you blind, revoking your civil liberties, and using the United States Constitution as a doormat.
Eventually, all tyrants, like all life forms, die, and upon their deaths they are swiftly repudiated by the same citizens they duped and robbed and tortured and betrayed. When at last they shuffle off this mortal coil, their names are entered into the Annals of Ignominy to take their place among all of the other deceased examples of unmitigated human evil.
I still have hope, although it grows more faint by the day, that the good citizens of this country will decide not to wait for the American Dictator-in-Chief to die before they categorically reject Trump, Trumpism, and tyranny.
Faux populists are not on your side. You have already outlived your usefulness to Donald John Trump. You voted him into office, and since he has no intention of leaving, you and your needs are of absolutely no consequence to him. Truth be told, you and your needs have never been of any consequence to him, and never less so than at present.
Just how expendable you are becomes slightly more obvious when the tyrant takes away your strollers and pencils and Barbie dolls and Medicaid and food assistance while simultaneously accepting for himself a $400 million luxury airliner and sweetheart branding deals from his despotic Emirati partners in crime.
Donald Trump is a totalitarian despot, just like all of the other dictators he admires. If you are finally ready to recognize that he is killing our republic, then stand with your fellow Americans to oppose him with every ounce of outrage you can muster. You do not have to stand by and allow an evil megalomaniac to flush you and your country down the toilet. You can stop squandering your fealty on a sociopath whenever you are ready.
There are protests scheduled in almost every city in every state every weekend. In fact, there is quite likely a protest scheduled somewhere near you today. Mine is walking distance from my home, and only one of many local protests I could choose to attend.
Let’s defend democracy together and put an end to this madness.
