How populism became the concept that defines our age | Cas Mudde
 

The spread of this idea reflects a deep and lasting change in the way we view ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’

“Populism” as a term was rarely used in the 20th century; it was limited to US historians describing, in highly specific terms, the original agrarian populists of the mid-19th century. Latin American social scientists (often Marxists) focused it primarily on the Peronists in Argentina. I only started to really engage with the term in the mid-1990s, while researching my dissertation on what was then still predominantly called “rightwing extremism”.

Related: Populists aren't a silent majority – they're just a loud minority | Cas Mudde

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