No “if” about it. Demagogues work at appealing not to the “silent” majority, but to the noisy minority.<\/p>\n
I started thinking about this while reading a wise opinion piece in today’s Times<\/a>, “From the ‘Silent Majority’ to the Unvaxxed Minority,” by European political scientist Ivan Krastev<\/a>. (He has published a short book about our 21st century plague, with the terrific, darkly comedic title, Is it Tomorrow Yet?<\/em><\/a>, which further convinces me to pay attention to him.)<\/p>\n In the piece Krastev uses the terms “populist” and “populism” to describe autocrats and wanna-be’s. In doing so, he makes it clear that there’s nothing “populist” about their appeal, which — as we Americans all know — is directed to an ugly, very loud minority.<\/p>\n So that got me thinking. If we shouldn’t be calling Trump, say, a “populist,” what should we call him?<\/p>\n How about populite? Like cellulite, except not.<\/p>\n Years ago, in a conversation with a friend who remained a Trotskyist throughout his life, I guess I must have used the term “Trotskyite,” which is what a lot of people called them.<\/p>\n My friend tersely corrected me. “It’s ‘Trotskyist<\/em>‘ if you’re one of them, ‘Trotskyite<\/em>‘ if you’re not.”<\/p>\n Ah-ha. So “ist” was a designation, “ite” was a sneer.<\/p>\n Try it: Populite.<\/em> It makes sense, for all sorts of reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No “if” about it. Demagogues work at appealing not to the “silent” majority, but to the noisy minority. I started thinking about this while reading a wise opinion piece in today’s Times, “From the ‘Silent Majority’ to the Unvaxxed Minority,” … Continue reading