Populism, as a political phenomenon, has one particular upside: It conveys things in a manner that people understand. It doesn’t matter if the speaker is telling the truth or not, since the whole point of populism is just saying what’s popular (hence the name). It’s real value is the ability to reduce otherwise complex situations to simple soundbites. And the far-right is absolutely brilliant at doing this. The Steve Bannons, Donald Trumps, Marine le Pens, and Nigel Farages of the world are all very, very good salespeople. The rise of the so-called “alt-right” movement can show us how they did what they did, and what we can extract from it.

Obviously in terms of appeals to topics, we have nothing in common. The right is nationalist, we are internationalist. The right is anti-communist, we are socialists. The right is misogynistic, we are feminists. But the matter at hand isn’t topics, it’s how they’re conveyed, and the fascists did something genius: They not only condensed their own strange idealist theories down to simple language (something we’re God awful at), they conveyed them in mass terms. We all remember that at one point Pepe the Frog was just an unfunny internet meme. Then the right took hold of it and used it for the purpose of spreading Nazi conspiracy theories.

The Nazis didn’t show up in the manner people usually imagine them in – gym rat looking, skinhead doofus with a wife beater on, swastika tattoo prominently sized and visible – they came with business attire, clean shaven faces, and expensive haircuts. They didn’t get on weird conspiracy radio stations to rant about the Jews, they got on CNN and branded themselves as conservatives, libertarians even. Even though it was the thinnest veil on their bullshit, it was really all they needed to do to reach the masses.

Now, of course there are some things we have to acknowledge – First no Marxist or anarchist is going to be let on the air of a major news network and be given the same kid gloves treatment that a capitalist is, that’s silly. And of course a meme war or brash populism isn’t the way to reach the masses and organize them, nor is dressing ourselves up in a more respectable manner. But what all of this combined with was that neo-fascists weren’t getting on these channels and telling people to “look up Julius Evola”, “read Siege”, or anything else that required intellectual labor to understand. It was plain English. In terms the masses understood, over mediums they understood. Reading Mein Kampf came long after the fact.

If our plan is to indoctrinate the masses with revolutionary ideas, ideas that serve as the psychological basis for getting free, then the first thing we have to do is be much more plain to them than we are amongst ourselves. I’ll be the first to admit I’m an academic dickweasel, and frankly, I enjoy it since I come from an intellectual background. But that doesn’t reach ordinary people, at best it reaches maybe 10-15 twenty-somethings in a college lecture hall who were already interested in what I had to say in the first place. Go up to an ordinary worker, tell them about “dialectical materialism”, “anarcho-syndicalism”, or “degenerated worker’s states”. They won’t have a goddamn clue what you’re on about! Hell, they won’t care! The fancy terms really only work amongst ourselves or on other academics in a debate hall!

What has to be noted here is that working people aren’t stupid – quite the contrary, it’s often by the working class itself that the socialist movement is set straight or it’s flaws in direction are shown – it’s that flooding them with jargon is a really good way to see to it that they don’t reach class consciousness. We have to, as painful as it may be to some of us, especially in the current circumstances, start small. We have to remember that we were not always revolutionaries, and we were not always aware of our task at hand. That’s what the right did. And that’s why they’re on the rise.