Mia culpa. It must be the arrogance of a commentator that afflicted us. We wrote a casual commentary about populist politicians and thought nothing of it. At least until we read a commentary by a professor the other day that inferred that a populist was a fascist. It got us thinking.
Obviously we are going to include that aberration Donald Trump in this discussion but that is too black and white. Start with a more complex question: is Bernie Sanders of the Democratic Party in the U.S. a populist? We would suggest to you he is not. He is clearly a social democrat and is a fine example of the old adage that we are too soon old and too late smart.
You have to consider the characteristics of a political populist. Initially a populist was part of the populist movement in the United States in the late 1890s that advocated public ownership of services to people such as railways. It has since come to mean any politician who speaks to public concerns without reference to party dogma. Call it pandering to the masses if you wish but every politician wishes they could.
And then there are some politicians who cannot see it any other way than to deal directly with what they feel is the will of ‘their’ people. There are also those who simply do it their way. Pierre Trudeau was a good example of the ‘my-way’ school. It took him a while to learn that without the help of political apparatchiks such as Keith Davey, his intellectual style was not going to work. He actually made a game of being of the vox populi.
Of course, all politicians need to have some ego but Donald Trump trumps them all. From his funny hair to what he considers his people, Trumps ego is all you see. He could not tell you what a fascist is because he knows next to nothing about politics and how it works. He is fascinated with the idea of being President but has seemingly no understanding of the job.
Thinking of alternative histories, the world would have been very different if Adolph Hitler had been a Brit. Seeing him on a step ladder at Speakers’ Corner at London’s Hyde Park would have been safer than haranguing drunken, out-of-work Bavarians in their beer halls.
People hung fascism on Hitler because it was the rage at that time and because of his buddy Benito Mussolini. Hitler was a monster waiting to be turned loose on the world. And, come to think of it, what is Donald Trump?
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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