Populism, we’re often told, threatens democracy. But, argues Benjamin Arditi, the common understanding of populism as pitting righteous masses, led by a charismatic leader, against evil elites describes most emancipatory movements since the French Revolution – some of which promoted democracy. Criticising ‘populism’ is sometimes a way of criticising democracy or mass movements without admitting that this is what you’re doing. So instead of flinging about the ‘populist’ slur, we should be more precise and honest about what exactly it is that we object to.

Populism is a word blessed with academic muscle and street cred. Everyone uses it. But let me ask you two questions. First, can you explain what it means? You will probably say that populism is a moral view of politics that divides society into two camps, pitting the good people led by a messianic leader against the evil elites who stand in the way of fulfilling the promise of popular sovereignty.

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That would be the standard answer. It is so generic that it describes most emancipatory movements since the French Revolution, not to mention many far-right projects for radical change. All you need is an aggrieved party and its designated nemesis. Little changes if you replace the good people and the evil elites with something else. Make it the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and the opposition becomes the Marxist struggle to end class rule. If it is colonial subjects rising against imperial powers, you have a struggle for national self-determination. If it is proponents of White Lives Matter or the Great Replacement (the belief in a gradual, planned genocide of the native population through replacement by immigration) fighting back against Blacks, Jews, Muslims, or simply non-Caucasian and non-Christian immigrants, you get one variety or another of white supremacists.

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Calling far-right parties populist tells us little about them.

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Class struggle, national liberation, and the far-right’s distorted interpretation of identity politics fueled by resentment and paranoia then become species of the genus populism. Strong leaders like Lenin, Mandela, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, and Donald Trump would be the archetypical messianic leaders of populist movements. This resembles Ernesto Laclau’s view of populism as the general formula for (radical) politics. In his book On Populist Reason, he said that “Populism means putting into question the institutional order by constructing an underdog as a historical agent … But this is the same as politics,” and he reinforced this in an article published almost simultaneously by declaring that “there is no political intervention which is not populistic to some extent.” Name your underdog, define your opponent, rally around a leader, and you are well within the territory of populism. But if it overlaps with politics, why bother explaining populism? Just talk about politics and be done with it.