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Populism is characterized by a sometimes radical critique of the status quo, but on the whole does not have a strong political identity as either a left-wing or right-wing movement. Populism has taken both left-wing and right-wing forms. In recent years, conservative politicians have increasingly begun adopting populist rhetoric; for example, promising to "get big government off your backs", or to stand up to "the powerful trial lawyer lobby", "the liberal elite", or "the Hollywood elite". Populism has also at times been adopted as a vehicle for extreme radicals; in 1984 the Populist Party name was revived but was used in 1988 as a vehicle for the Presidential campaign of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
The word populism is derived from the Latin word populus, which means people in English (in the sense of "I will govern for the people", not in the sense of "There are people visiting us today"). Therefore, populism espouses government by the people as a whole (that is to say, the masses). This is in contrast to elitism or aristocracy, both of which are ideologies which espouse government by a small, privileged group above the masses.
Populism has been a common political phenomenon throughout history. Spartacus could be considered a famous example of a populist leader of ancient times through his slave rebellion against the rulers of Ancient Rome. In more recent times, the French Revolution, though led by wealthy intellectuals, could also be described as a manifestation of populist sentiment against the elitist excesses and privileges of the régime ancien. Abraham Lincoln could not have summed up the populist ideology better when, in his famous Gettysburg Address, he advocated "... government of the people, by the people, for the people."
A demagogue (sometimes spelled demagog) is a leader who obtains power by appealing to the gut feelings of the public, usually by powerful use of rhetoric and propaganda. H. L. Mencken defined a demagogue as "one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." The word is nowadays mostly used as a political insult: political opponents are described as demagogues, but people we approve of are "men of the people", or great speechmakers.
In the twentieth century populism gained an altogether more ominous character when dictators such as Juan Peron and Adolf Hitler used demagogery and populist rhetoric to achieve their privileged leadership positions. It could be argued that none of these men were genuine populists because they usually saw the masses as not fit to govern for themselves and therefore their elitist and privileged style of leadership was needed to govern and regulate the behaviour of the masses. Indeed, Adolf Hitler's contempt for the masses was profound; his Mein Kampf is replete with sentiments such as "the masses are inherently stupid", not to mention his hatred for democracy and adoration of Social Darwinism.
The revival of religiosity all over Europe played an important role in bringing people to populism and nationalism. In France, Chateaubriand provided the opening shots of Catholic revivalism as he opposed enlightenment's materialism with the "mystery of life," the human need for redemption. In Germany, Schleiermacher promoted pietism by claiming that religion was not the institution, but a mystical piety and sentiment with Christ as the mediating figure raising the human consciousness above the mundane to God's level. In England, John Wesley's Methodism split with the Anglican church because of its emphasis on the salvation of the masses as a key to moral reform, which Wesley saw as the answer to the social problems of the day. All of these were united by a search for something to believe in because of the anxiety of the time.
Chateaubriand's beginning brought about TWO Catholic Revival s in France: first, a conservative revival led by Joseph de Maistre, which defended ultramontanism, also known as the supremacy of the Pope in the church, and second, but at the same time, a populist revival led by Felicite de Lamennais , an excommunicated priest. This religious populism opposed ultramontanism and emphasized a church community dependent upon all of the people, not just the elite. Furthermore, it stressed that church authority should come from the bottom-up and that the church should alleviate suffering, not merely accept it, both principles that gave the masses strength.Nationalism became the secular religion of the masses; that something bigger than themselves that gave their life meaning. It was a religion spawned of a fear of losing this meaning. Fichte began the development of nationalism by stating that people have the ethical duty to further their nation. Herder proposed an organic nationalism that was a romantic vision of individual communities rejecting the Industrial Revolution's model communities, in which people acquired their meaning from the community/nation. The brothers Grimm collected German folklore to "gather the Teutonic spirit" and show that these tales provide the common values necessary for the historical survival of a nation. Fredrick Jahn , a Lutheran Minister, a professor at the University of Berlin and the "father of gymnastics," introduced the Volkstum , a racial nation that draws on the essence of a people that was lost in the Industrial Revolution. Adam Mueller went a step further by positing the state as a bigger totality than the government institution. This paternalistic vision of aristocracy concerned with social orders had a dark side in that the opposite force of modernity was represented by the Jews, who were said to be eating away at the state.
In France the populist and nationalist picture was not so grim. Historian Jules Michelet fused nationalism and populism by positing the people as a mystical unity who are the driving force of history in which the divinity finds its purpose. For Michelet, in history, that representation of the struggle between spirit and matter, France has a special place because the French became a people through equality, liberty, and fraternity. Because of this, the French people can never be wrong. It is important to remember that John Michelet's ideas are not socialism or rational politics, but his populism always minimizes, or even masks, social class differences.
Nationalism turned in the second half of the 19th century and the nationalist sentiment was altered into an elitist and conservative doctrine. Power-state theorist and multi-volume historian Heinrich von Treitschke's Politics talked about top-down nationalism in which the state is the creator of the nation, not a result thereof. His state's power fashions political unity because, as he asserts, the national unity was always in place. For von Treitschke, the state is artificially constructed by the elite who know that power counts, but who also form myths such as racism for the comfort of the nationalistic masses. Von Treitschke's nationalism had a dark side; in his eternal struggle of nations, the weakness of confederated states and war as social hygiene that culminated into a thought that all nations are egoistic, but their struggles embody morality and embrace progress. Such notions would later be proliferated in contemporarily unpopular methods by the likes of Adolf Hitler.
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