Oddbean

Well, that was interesting. There was a senior leadership meeting in my government and the deputy head of the Ministry came in suddenly and said, " We're looking at our comms plan and we have realised that there is a wave of populism around the world with certain leaders being elected recently. We have to guard against this rise in populism in our own community and be ready with our communication plan." Isn't that interesting? What does populism mean anyways? Something the citizens want? Isn't it the role of government to support that? Who does that person think they are to dictate what is wrong and right? Worse.... Where/when were they warned against this? Who is giving this message to our government officials??

That kinda sounds like some fascist orders coming down the pyramid right there. “The people seem to be suggesting they don’t want people like us in charge, therefore we must protect and defend the government we currently control from doing what the people want or being run by those the people choose.”

I swear it was something completely unexpected. The senior official (the top person in the room) just blurted this out, saying other comments about how " those people" won't believe the truth and perpetuate their false narratives. It was hard not to stand up and tell her to fuck herself.

I saw a lecture by Dr David Starky recently where he gave an interesting insight about populism. it was essentially that democracy used to mean the will of the majority but with the post war consensus and the civil rights movement it changed to the will of the minorities. That's why populism became the new word for will of the majority.