Member-only story
The Benefits Of Populism
How pseudo-patriotic lies ultimately yield enormous upsides
Since 2015 we’ve seen a tsunami of mindless populism sweep the globe. While shambling soggy citizens of the UK see Brexit as the road to achieving a comforting mass delusion of damp pseudo-independence and more than seventy million US voters think a compulsively lying moron and his tribe of craven enablers represents “patriotism” the fact is, when we lift our heads from our parochial concerns and look to see what’s happening elsewhere, we see the same thing: we’ve forgotten what populism/nationalism always yields.
Some people think it’s a great shame that the UK will destroy millions of jobs and stunt the future of millions of its best and brightest young people simply because the old and the ignorant and the simple-minded voted for lies and enormous self-harm. Some people think it’s rather unfortunate that India is heading inexorably toward Rwandan-style genocide on an incomparably larger scale as Modi whips up Hindu extremists and ensures nothing will restrain them when they turn on their Muslim neighbors. News organizations are salivating over the sensationalist coverage they will be able to generate when millions of brain-dead Trump supporters start using their AR-15s to slaughter democrats in order to “restore law and order” while right-wing police forces stand by and…
