me:
> I think seeing populism as People vs. Other is _too broad_. It > includes too many different types of Others, such as unwanted ethnic > or sexual-orientation groups. Classical populism in the US focused on > a specific Other, i.e., the Elite. It's the "little guy" vs. the "big > boys."
Doug:
But you're just generalizing from one example. Right-wing populists hate Mexicans and queers. Left-wing populists hate financiers (and sometimes Jews). The whole point of populism is that the categories can be very slippery.
categories aren't just slippery for populists. Israeli nationalists (Zionists), who often aren't populists, have a hard time with the question "what is a Jew?" does it involve religion or is it an ethnic group? etc. Yoshie writes:
I agree that populism rests on a class division and that it can
overlap with democracy. That's the reason why some think Latin America today is going populist while others think it is going social democratic.< populism rests on class division at the same time it obscures it. It focuses on the mass of the "little guys" vs. the elite, where as socialism and social democracy focus more on the class structure. A rich guy can be a populist because he's an "outsider" (like H. Ross Perot), while a rich socialist has to be clear that he or she is going against class interest (like William Bross Lloyd, who ran for U.S. senator from Illinois on the Socialist Party ticket in 1918 -- or Paul Sweezy). (Lloyd, by the way, has a statue near the public beach in Winnetka, Illinois that bears his family's name. It says "workers of the world, unite!" on it, if I remember correctly.) -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
