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Well, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t populism about listening to the people? Looking out for the little guy? Isn’t it simply about abiding by the common sense of the common folk? Well, no, or not only that. Fine-sounding words, especially in politics, often mask sentiments of a less lofty kind, and the most idealized sense of a word is rarely its meaning in common usage.

If it were just a matter of listening to the people or looking out for the little guy, the idea would obviously be uncontroversial. As with its close cousin, nationalism, however, there are shades of meaning to populism; which meaning it takes in any given context is best discerned from observing how and to what it is applied.

With its contempt for experts and the whole notion of expertise, populism has degraded into something closer to nihilism.

So far as nationalism is about discovering shared interests and common values, it can be a positive, unifying force, encouraging members of the same nation to put aside their petty differences in the service of a larger ambition. But nationalism can as easily take the opposite form: not “we are us” but ”we are not you.” At which point all of its familiar pathologies arise.

So it is with populism. Though it often invokes the word “we,” populism is rarely just about Us. It is as much or more about Them: the people versus the vested interests; the little guy, not the fat cats; the common folk, rather than the elites. Not just different, these are presented as hostile, menacing forces.

Of late, the number of Thems has expanded. They threaten Us not only from the right but from the left: not only Big Business, but also Big Labour, or Big Government and its apparatus, bureaucrats, activist groups, lawyers, and so forth. When fused with nationalism, populism acquires a whole catalogue of additional Thems: refugees, Muslims, immigrants of all kinds.