i've talked to left and right wingers in person about this and most seem to agree with this concept or contributed to it. at the vaguest level it's perceived as two groups, the neoliberals/neocons and the populists. the populists have a left (berniecrat, demsoc) and right (trumpian, nazbol-lite) wing. the neos are all the old guard repubs (mitch) and centrist/corporatecrats. at their most basic understanding of this they believe the populists are trying to help the people while the neos only care about the markets. obviously this struggle is being heavily catalyzed by the 2k checks.
No I don't think so. Hawley, Carlson, Cotton, et. al only talk populist to trick people into thinking they are not the same version of ghoul that has been in power since the 70s.
Has Cotton ever claimed to be an economic populist? He seems like a standard ghoul (but more racist), and doesn't pretend to be anything else.
He was an early supporter of the first round of relief checks, I remember around that time people were pointing out that he was outflanking many Democrats on the left economically for that reason.
I'd have to see the right populists officially break ranks with the main body of their party to believe it. The impulse to lick boot is way too strong in them.
This implies that right populism is an actual belief held by those in power, and not a cynical strategy to get voters that standard neocons can't get.
Right populist voter - kinda dumb, kinda racist, but knows NAFTA is bad.
Right populist leader - very bad, very racist, willing to say NAFTA is bad but will do little about it
I always thought the tried&true sign of that kind of populist was like being a blank template funkypop doll that is meticulously ambiguous in language to allow voters to project their own selves onto them, without even realizing it. Like how Trump would say "Drain the Swamp" all the time.... Nevermind the fact that the phrase was originally coined by US socialists about a century earlier. Some people could hear it as "Get rid of all the corrupt deep money interests that corporations are using to control the government" others might hear it as "Get rid of the degenerate gay agenda that's weaseled its way into government and forced my kids to be taught that men aren't automatically right and women automatically wrong" At the end of the day it lets them get votes from two people who might not have a single view in common
The left populists have the same problem. They keep coming groveling back to the Biden centrists, tails tucked between their legs
Yeah I can't disagree. They all very loudly campaigned for that piece of shit and they're extremely hesitant to break ranks on anything even though Biden would 100% rather work with neocons.
'a conservative family member who “Would vote Donald Trump, but he seemed too jewish”'
Holy shit my dad didn't vote for Trump because he thought Trump was a 'new money Jew.' Are you telling me there is in fact someone as dumb as him out there?
My biggest thing here is like, how would a unified Populist party address the very real differences between left and right populism, like in particular I'm thinking about immigration.
I don't think so. The GOP doesn't have a real populist wing, they just have a few LARPers who yell about immigration and trade. The "populist" GOP still opposes minimum wage hikes, unionization, universal healthcare, jobs programs for the American poor, etc. As soon as the "populist" GOP got into power all they did was funnel cash to the rich and now one or two people are pretending to support 2k checks to keep their grift going.
Wake me up when the GOP starts actually challenging the economic power of the ruling class instead of just talking about it.
I think the cultural/political identity is now far too encoded and uniform for any major realignment to happen.
yeah it does seem any such alliance of convenience would be super temporary.
All concrete things turn into sand when crisis happens. Don’t overestimate the permanence of the moment
lmao NPP from TNO hoi4 mod but irl???????
Nah I know a lot of the R and even some of the D populists will turn around as soon as it's opportunistic for them to do so
there's some degree of proto-consciousness brewing, but it's not going to be reflected in party politics because the parties of capital are only allowing "populists" to have power in defanged or captured forms. both the dems and the GOP defeated their popular internal threats, and have reaffirmed for now that there is no alternative. the only thing that's going to make a national election ever matter again is a new worker's party backed by an unprecedented mass movement.
If so, that's what'll make me finally give up electoralism forever. Harris v. Hawley 2024 = pain
fuck this is more likely then ever though. Harris/Romney or something to make it worse. Hawley/AOC
Not AOC. It would never be anyone other than another right-winger. There's an economic populist streak in American politics now, largely people with no class consciousness but who recognize that the government should play a role in improving people's lives. The (electoral) Left had a chance to turn that into tangible power, but it failed. Now the Right will try, and they won't share with demsocs. Some of them are calling themselves national populists (napos), which is scary.
twas joke. and national populists fuck that makes me think of kaiserreich (ww2 sim hearts of iron 4 mod). that was the first time I had ever seen that ideology by name but it's basically in game alt-history fascism equivilant.
I am still waiting for the timelines to merge, so we can have absolutely based countries such as the Union of Britain, the Combined Syndicates of America, and the mf Commune of France. 2021 plz.
i probalbly should have said something like an ideological realignment now that i've seen people's opinions. but it is scary how easily the fash could take advantage of this with such a weak, disorganized but (growing) left in the U.S. hopefully we can all take advantage of this to steer people and use this as a teaching and solidarity moment.
Look at you, talking to people in person during the pandemic. So jealous.
sucks being at an "essential" job aka grocery store so there's a pretty big risk for the socialization esp with half the vendors being omega chuds coming in and out with masks on chins. plus customers obviously doing the same shit. does have an interesting cross section of people working there tho.
TNO Style realignment into a Republican-Democrat party and a National Progressive Party with populists from both ends of the spectrum
