I told the audience in Toronto that I hoped to speak to three groups of people.

I hoped to speak, first, to the small numbers of the genuinely undecided, to those who might imagine that populism offers them something. This is not true. The new populist politics is a scam and a lie that exploits anger and fear to gain power. It has no care for the people it supposedly champions and no respect for them. It will deliver nothing—not only because its leaders are almost invariably crooks (although they are), but because they have no plans and no plans to make plans.

Read: What is a populist?

I hoped to speak, next, to the many people who see populism for what it is—and who resist it. Since the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 and the euro-currency crisis that began in 2010, the so-called populists have won election after election in this country and in Europe. Even when the anti-populists have won, as they won in France in 2017, they have won by dwindling margins. Countries that formerly seemed secure against populism, like Germany, have been trending in ominous directions. But hope is not lost. On Tuesday, the American electorate has the opportunity to set the limit: This far have you gone; you will go no further. The tide turns here. What’s most urgently needed now is courage and confidence, and I hoped from the platform to do a little part to inspire even just a bit more of each.

I hoped to speak, finally, to those who see populism for what it is—and support it. I hoped to look in the face of their most self-conscious and articulate champion, Steve Bannon, and tell them: You will lose. You will discover what so many thugs, and bullies, and plunderers, and people who elevate themselves by subordinating and humiliating others have discovered before you: Liberal democracy is tougher than it looks. The cruel always believe the kind are weak. But human decency and goodness can also move human affairs. They will be felt. And today’s “populists” will follow their predecessors into what President George W. Bush so aptly called “history’s graveyard of discarded lies.”

Yes, the populists spoke to authentic concerns: about the aftershock of the Great Recession and the euro crisis, about the dislocations of mass immigration, about failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about the frustrations of the middle class, about the selfishness and irresponsibility of financial and political elites across the developed world. Demagogues succeed by talking about things that people authentically care about, not things they don’t.

Bannon and I had met once before, a decade ago. He interviewed me for one of his films back in 2009. We shared then a perception that something had gone terribly wrong with both the American system and conservative politics. To me, that perception called for a constructive program of reform and renewal. It equally seemed to me that Bannon had seen an opportunity to bring dangerous people and ideas to a power that they could never use for good.