"The English language provides a great many solid choices for someone wishing to describe a leader who plays on mob psychology or racial intolerance. 'Demagogue' is an obvious one, but there are others—'nationalist,' 'nativist,' 'racist,' or 'fascist,' to name a few. They are serviceable words, all of them. In the feverish climate of the Democracy Scare, however, none of those will work: 'populist' is the word we are instructed to use. 'Populists' are the ones we must suppress."
Thomas Frank at Harper's Magazine looks at the original Populists compared to how the description is used today.
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