Message from @Somi
Discord ID: 454769492858503171
Anyone around who gives a fuck bout the Ontario provincial election
Ontario is a shithole @King Canuck
@King Canuck My eyes are literally bloodshot red from crying for the last hour, and I just threw up from the stress. I can't believe we lost again. The premier sells hash to people, the PC Candidate in Brampton East steals people's data, and this bitch in Kanata-Carleton wants to genocide all Muslims. And the worst part is people still vote for them! It's happening. We are in 1930s Nazi Germany. We must resist.
Look to be honest
I hear Doug is a bit of an idiot
But we got this
I had an interesting thought
Populism could be Realpolitik in ideological form
What are your opinions on this ?
Posting this here too
by definition yes
Not really. Populism is basically just another form of feels-over-reals in ideological form. It's just a feels-over-reals that doesn't adhere to any structured philosophical thought, and instead simply appeals to what is popular rather than what is actually correct.
There's often a non-zero overlap between popular thought and actual truth, but it's certainly not always the same thing. Mindless populism is as destructive to a country's long-term goals as mindless adherence to any other form of ideological thought.
Feels over reals? You mean the people effected most by, let's say, illegal immigration have less valid concerns over its effects than the upper class elite who advocate for it from a completely detached moral and ideological perspective?
That isn't populism in and of itself.
Populism has always been an a-ideological appeal to the lowest common denominator.
The fact that the complaints of very significant portion of the population directed towards illegal/mass migration are entirely valid is irrelevant to it's usage by populists. Even if it actually indeed wasn't a problem, purely theoretically, but a significant portion of the population would see it as such anyway, populists would still use it as a platform.
A good example of that is climate change. It's a demonstrable fact that the climate is in fact, changing, and there is more than sufficient evidence to believe that anthropogenic pollution is, at least in part, powering that change. Never the less, populists throughout many countries have openly denied the existence of climate change (not questioned, which is just fine in my book, simply openly stated it is not occurring or that anthropogenic pollution is not a part of it), purely to gain votes from the parts of the population that also denies climate change, despite the poorer parts of the population, the people appealed to by populists, being the ones mostly affected by aforementioned climate change.
Populists care about one thing and one thing only: Political power gain. They do not care if the complaints of the voting population they want to use to get into power are actually valid complaints or not.
(At least, the overwhelming majority of populists don't)
"That isn't real populism"? Populism isn't a categorically defined ideology, so I don't see how that is so easy for you to dismiss. Mass immigration is one of the defining topics of political discourse throughout the world.
yet you can say "That isn't populism in and of itself." ?
My point is that if mass/illegal migration wasn't actually a problem, but a portion of the voting population still saw it as one, populists would still appeal to it, regardless of the validity of the complaints being leveled.
That's why the topic isn't directly connected to populism, specifically because populism isn't an ideological category.
A populist will appeal to -anything- a significant portion of the voting population considers important, regardless of its actual importance.
It's also very popular for the "elite" to preach about climate change, and then continue to eat meat, take planes, private ones even. And then sit there an advocate for severe environmental regulations that lead to production being done in places where there is near zero concern for the environment. But to you this skepticism is just a quest for power.
No, I entirely agree that said 'elite' should take the lead then.
they won't. how many private jets were used to coordinate the "Paris Climate accord"?
thousands or something?
Rules for ye but not for me is the reason you have populism
And I never said that skepticism in and of itself was a quest for power. I said that outright denial because it will gain you votes is a quest for power.
I would apply my cynicism to the specific individual in question rather than anything that fits the description of populist, as many different people are given this label
Oh certainly, the very concept of labeling people according to their apparent political preferences is basically not possible nowadays.
Trump for example is maybe the most popular "populist" and despite what some people like to say it is very hard for me to imgagine that his political motives are self-serving. I've never heard anything to convince me of that that didn't resort to deluded armchair psychology or conspiracy theories.
Trump is the best example for why there's exceptions to rules, for as far as you can call it a rule.
But Trump is defnitely the exception.
y'all should give this a look, great thread.
Lotta interesting takes from Venezuelans, i particularly like the response with 'markxplaining' at the end. I think i'm gonna steal that.
Why do I get the feeling that Owen Benjamin does a lot of cocaine?