Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Two Faces of Populism

Adapted from a pithy one-liner in a post by Digby earlier today:

When the rich get richer -- with all the exploitation, corruption, and discontent that inevitably follows from such confiscatory wealth concentration -- uninformed people blame those who are below them on the economic scale, while more informed people scrutinize those who are above them on the economic scale. This is what distinguishes more than anything else the racist reactionary face of right wing populism (say, Lou Dobbs or Pat Buchanan) from the anti-corporatist, anti-militarist face of left-wing populism.

3 comments:

VDT said...

The word everyone is looking is for is Producerism.

Wikipedia has a comprehensive article on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Producerism

Dale Carrico said...

That word is too gawky and awkward to be the one anybody is looking for.

VDT said...

Dale Carrico wrote:

That word is too gawky and awkward to be the one anybody is looking for.

Touché! However, regarless of how gawky or awkward the word "producerism" may be or sound, one can find many interesting essays on the subject matter at hand by including it in a search.

For example, the polical research associates of PublicEye.org have a good essay on producerism:

http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/producerism.html