OK, let's imagine a politician who used populist rhetoric and positioned their policies in the "center" between two political parties with some small but arguable difference between them. Lets call these the Republican and Democratic parties.
Now, Margaret Canovan, author of the classic book "Populism" would call this "politicians' populism," one of her seven categories:
***Agrarian populism (3 types):
*Commodity farmer movements with radical economic agendas such as the US People's Party of the late 1800's.
*Subsistence peasant movements such as the East European Green Rising.
*Intellectuals who wistfully romanticize hard-working farmers and peasants and build radical agrarian movements like the Russian narodniki.
***Political populism (4 types):
*Populist democracy, including calls for more political participation, including the use of the popular referendum.
*Politicians' populism marked by non-ideological appeals for "the people" to build a unified coalition.
*Reactionary populism such as the White backlash harvested by George Wallace.
*Populist dictatorship such as that established by Peron in Argentina.
But as you point out, a "centrist" politician using populism is really just trying to "throw the bums out" but offering no real change in the sysyems or structures of power, and no real policy changes. What's the point?
Good to break up the two corrupt parties, you say? OK, now imagine a "populist" revolt of this type when the political right was stronger than the political left. Which way would the country tend to shift? Probably to the right. Not a good plan.
Now imagine calls for the political left and the political right to join forces to smash the corrupt regime ("duopoly").
Congratulations, you have arrived at the political game plan of the Strasser brothers. It worked, too. And it mobilized many different sectors of the political scene, but especially the hard-working middle class (the "producers").
Alas, the National Socialist German Workers Party shifted gears after being handed state power. There was the "Night of the Long Knives," and the gullible leftists got murdered by Hitler and his henchman.
That is not likely to happen here. But credulous calls for "populism" to smash the "duopoly" ignore the very real possibility that the populist political right in this country--also anti-elitist--would come out on top and give us something far worse that what we have now. Something that would probably be even more xenophobic and anti-immigrant. Something that would target gay men and lesbians and others seen as not fitting heterosexist ideals. Something that would outlaw abortion rather than trying to erode it. Something that would make things even worse for people of color. Something that would probably resurect anti-Jewish conspiracy theories with denunciations of "parasitic financial capitalism" and "secret global banking elites."
Things are bad right now, and they are likely to get worse over the next four years. But things could get much worse, especially if there was an economic downturn or some unexpected social or cultural friction. Scapegoating gets ugly very quickly. There is plenty of evidence of this process throughout US history.
We wrote the book to document this history from the 1670s to the year 2000 becasue we kept running into people who were ignorant of this history, and had naive ideas about "the will of the people" always being good. A lynching is the will of the people, as Adolph Reed, Jr. has pointed out. Derrick Bell and Lani Lani Guinier write about the problems of "majoritarianism."
A good critique of romantic ideas about populism is by Joel Kovel, who ran against Nader in the Green primaries.
Find it along with other articles at the PRA "Sucker-Punch" website
http://www.publiceye.org/Sucker_Punch/Clueless.html
Arianna S. is a libertarian variety of right-wing populist. Buchanan is a xenophobic nationalist variety of right-wing populist. Just because Arianna is "distinguishable" from Buchanan should not make her political goals and policies acceptable to thinking leftists.
There is not a "good" center and a "bad" right. This is a prescription for supporting the status quo. Just because one form of right-wing populism seems less nasty than another, does not make it an attractive alternative.
Not all "anti-elite" rhetoric comes from the left.
-Chip Berlet
----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Friday, February 09, 2001 8:36 PM Subject: RE: Right-Wing Populism
>
> Is possible in your scheme for there to be centrist
populists? It seems
> to me that's where Arianna and Ventura belong. And for
better or worse,
> that's why people who lust after third parties support
them -- because iff
> third parties have a value in themselves, as a means to
break the duopoly,
> then this is the creed that would have the best chance of
taking sizeable
> votes from both existing parties, if people voted purely
based on whether
> they agreed with sentiments. Since (again, for better or
worse) it's
> probably closer to majority common sense that the variant
peddled by
> either of the parties.
>
> Of course this is still a mug's game, not only because
people don't vote
> that way, but because these guys just hate the elites
because they want to
> replace them with themselves, exactly the same reason Dem
and Repug elites
> hate each other. But them seem distinguishable to me from
right-wing
> populists. I thought you were saying they -- or at least
Arianna -- were
> not.
>
> Michael
>
>
____________________________________________________________
______________
> Michael Pollak................New York
City..............mpollak at panix.com
>
>
>
>