I have a PhD in Political Science and Public Policy, and I have no idea what “Populism” means. It is mainly used an insult against people of differing views, not much different from Leftists calling opponents “racist,” fascist,” or “nazi.”
Maybe if it were just used as a descriptive adjective of a specific policy, but I hardly see it as an ideology.
The people who obsess over Populism are typically focused on style and rhetoric. It is typically done by Center-Left types who have high social status and lots of political influence within institutions. But they miss how much those institutions have been changed for the worse over the last 20 years. The Left captures institutions, changes their policies toward Leftist ends, and then accuses anyone who disagrees with them of being “Populist.”
I see no contradiction between Populism and Classical Liberalism. Classical Liberalism is not a love of elites and established institutions. That is traditional Conservatism in pre-industrial times. They supported the King, Nobility, Church, and the Traditional Order.
Milei is a perfect example of where Classical Liberalism and Populism align.
Classical Liberalism is about institutional structures that force non-violent transparent competition between elites so those elites must offer benefits to the masses to acquire their support. This works in the marketplace, elections, and religion. This is in opposition to extractive institutions that use the threat of violence to expropriate from the masses.
The Founding Fathers were populists regarding the Tory establishment, but they established a constitutional federal republic to ensure that America did not get a new extractive elite.
Unfortunately, the growth of the Administrative state over the last century has gradually eroded the checks in balances within the Constitution.
The Anti-Populists defend the Administrative state, not Classical Liberalism or Democracy. Their path leads to a Soft Totalitarianism that is the opposite of Classical Liberalism. They are not trying to achieve that goal, but it is where they are taking us.
Classical Liberals need to better explain why their ideology is actually about channeling elite behavior towards pro-social ends, not blind obedience to what any given elite stands for.
Embracing federalism is the best path forward, so Classical Liberalism needs to explain to people who are legitimately pissed at our institutions that there are productive solutions:
I think that the entire problem with the article lies in the fact that Milei is not a populist in his most important positions which are all about economics. One can conveniently redefine populism, in such a way that his libertarian economics fits the definition, but it could not be further from the truth. Economically right-wing populists are universally protectionists and defenders of the welfare state. Argentina is a special case and politics across different regions cannot be copypasted. The concern is US. Here is a snipet from my coming article on why this completely does not transfer to the US:
The libertarians, even forgetting the ethical quandaries, have little chance of becoming a dominant ideology of the populist movement. Hanania writes: “Low human capital cultures are the world of transparent scams: anti-vaxx, Stop the Steal, the corrupt televangelist, gold and silver bars sold at exorbitant prices, fake news content mills. Yes, conservatives disproportionately create and fall for such scams. But they proliferate because even among smart people on the right who should know better, there is no culture of shaming or stigmatizing members of the tribe for even the most egregious types of behaviour. This doesn’t mean that Low Human Capital communities are completely devoid of a moral sense. But it’s a tribal morality, which appeals to people who are stupider and less idealistic.“
Libertarians will never be such a tribe. As dr Tom G. Palmer put it “Liberalism, it isn't as stirring in the blood as massacring your neighbours. Not many things, especially for young men, are as exciting as going and killing your neighbours". Libertarianism is not, and cannot be built around a cult following (no gods or kings, only man is the central point afterall), hate for foreigners, or disdain for the elites. The libertarian ideas are too complex and those libertarian intellectuals who give in to populism, quickly become subject to audience capture, that quickly turns them unrecognizable from what they were before.
They become Dave Rubin’s of the world, capable of believing and spreading every hoax, but lose any power to steer the movement in their way. One can hardly believe that a few years back Rubin had Caplan and McCloskey on his podcast. This is the future libertarian movement needs to be saved from.
Libertarians have an actual opportunity to influence the world through politics. Many countries with high degree of polarization and two major parties, could find themselves struggling to form a stable majority, once a libertarian leaning third party is in play. Even a couple MPs with a tight majority, could give huge negotiating power to a well-running libertarian party. However, if libertarians cozy up to the right-wing parties there will be nothing to gain in such regards, as the libertarian identity won’t be distinct enough to build the third largest party upon it of the size that could become a kingmaker. Admirers of Orban, Trump or Bolsanaro don’t need a paper-mache replica of their cult leader.
The utter degeneracy of the libertarian-nationalism tactic is best illustrated by the case of the Konfederacja party in Poland. Konfederacja is a monster mash of the most disgusting political figures one could imagine all brought together under the banner of “freedom populism”. It is exactly what a libertarian nationalist could desire. After all, it is a strategic alliance between the classical liberal Korwin party and the Nationalist Movement party. In their search for the populist electorate, the party quickly became a crossover of all the most toxic, despicable and deranged ideologies. They brought into the Polish parliament, the internationally known antisemite Grzegorz Braun (he gained global press for destroying Hanukkah candles in the Polish parliament with a fire extinguisher and harming a woman in the process). Among its last year candidates, one could find even some flat-earthers. It would be just another terrible alt-right party if not for one detail, commitment to some free market elements at least in rhetoric.
Thanks to them the situation is disastrous for libertarians. The Konfederacja party will talk about tax cuts and champion free markets, at the same time voicing support for conscription, ending free trade with Ukraine, state-ownership of the largest petrol company in Poland, Orlen, and hatemonger against immigrants trying to find the sweet spot between hate and pogroms. Its politicians will be vocal about legalising weed and fight for supposed freedom of speech whenever the left wants to ban hate speech but will pair it up with advocacy for ending pride marches, corporal punishment for homosexuality, and banning speech that criticises the Catholic Church. This is libertarian populism in action, and it is an utter disgrace.
Thanks so much for writing this Dr. Klein (I'm resisting saying "Danny" since that is what you went by when I first met you in 1980).
If Trump 2.0 (along with Elon, Vivek, Gabbard etc.) manage any significant reductions in government -assuming Biden and the Democrats do not start WWIII - so many Beltway "libertarians" and "classical liberals" will not be able to claim any credit.
I'm with Bruce on this. Danny has consistently been a voice of reason and good judgment on everything from Adam Smith to Milei and now to the blindness of our friends who claim the title "classical liberals." The door is wide open for them to repent.
Being primarily a classical liberal, I have historically been against populism, at least in the U.S, in the traditional sense that populists are generally for more government intervention on both economic issues and on social issues.
But as many note, populism is more often about rhetoric and being anti-establishment. Given what elites have done in the last several years, in the U.S. beginning with the Obama Administration, a healthy dose of being anti-establishment is more than merely justified, it’s almost essential.
Trump the first time around talked populist, but generally governed like a traditional GOPer (except on spending and entitlements, where he governed like a Democrat).
I’m on Team Milei, though I know very little about Argentina (don’t cry for me…). And it’s very clear that the MSM’s leftist bias shines through brightly in how they label Milei.
More to the point, I immediately unsubscribed from The Unpopulist several months ago as soon as I saw how illiberal it was in its pro-establishment, TDS stances.
Reading this piece makes me even more glad that I did this.
“Over the past eight years I have come to think of the United States as an erstwhile ‘first-world’ country. We become ‘second world’, like China, or ‘third world,’ like Argentina—countries in which governmental elites are deeply and systematically corrupt.”
This statement is extreme and extremely wrong, taken any way you could charitably read it. The US is not a second-class country today, in any sense — it is an economic, cultural, technological, scientific, military, and growth powerhouse. It is certainly not in any way as corrupt or illiberal as Argentina or China. As appalling as any US libertarian should find the last eight years, we are not a one-party dictatorship or a kleptocracy. We remain a country with solid rule of law, little corruption in day to day affairs, with a healthy democracy and highly competitive elections, and a large, dynamic private sector. All of that can still be true while you revile the policies and politics of most elites, or indeed those of the great unwashed masses who elected [pick a bad politician]. All of that can still be true while you worry constantly about the many threats and losses we’ve suffered over the years.
To try to counter the obvious fact that America is amazing and still has the brightest promise of basically any place in the world today (despite our ever-looming fiscal problems), populists offer a blizzard of outrageous and ahistorical hyperbole about how today’s president and the media and elites are the worst ever, and how we’re just coasting on the accomplishments of the past. The America in decline narrative is always popular, and it’s the narrative that is common to populists of all ideologies — left, right, and, sadly, even libertarian.
Well, looking back at last week in Rio de Janeiro: Millei trying to pull Argentina out of climate agreements, or blocking mentions of gender equality in the final document, or withdrawing from the pact against hunger; or perhaps feasting with Trump during G20 negotiations, maybe praising/defending/embracing/etc. the Brazilian group – its top leader – who prepared a military coup that included assassinating a Supreme Court judge, the elected president, and the vice president... all of this is quite liberal. Perhaps Bolsonaro is a classical liberal and not even a populist. (My Zeus)
This article parallels my own thoughts. 1 cheer for populism. The issue with the MAGAs is there is nobody with any coherent idea of what to do after tearing down the old. Trump is not all that classically liberal and is certainly no Milei. So we're going to be in for a wild ride. Possible: we'll get some sort of payments to taxpayers in a bill called the "Tariff Impact Relief Act".
Vivek might have an idea. Elon is friends with Thiel. Tulsi Gabbard, having sold her home in Anacostia, is apparently great friends with Ben Domenech & Meghan McCain and stays with them when visiting D.C.
To be against all elites is anarchism. But “elites” in this definition never includes elected officials or business leaders of the preferred Republican faction.
I think of populism as 1) offering benefits through “simple” solutions while ignoring the true complexity and trade-offs of a given issue, 2) a narrative of the common folk being held back.
Trump and Nigel Farage in the UK fit that definition. Milei doesn’t seem to. He has a clear agenda but is also clear about the trade offs.
It seems that the essence of "populism", to the extent that it is genuinely something bad, is to promote a kind of "us versus them" style of thinking amidst the electorate, particularly when this would not be warranted or helpful in maintaining true social progress. The problem, of course, is that there really are interested parties working within most modern political systems whose ends are not aligned with those of the general public. For such narrowly focused players as these, it becomes easy to see how the term "populist" could get thrown around in media circles rather regularly on their behalf, in a strategic effort to deflect public awareness from these players' own machinations.
So populism is bad when - perhaps through campaign rhetoric - a political leader creates an ideological divide within society that didn't already exist. But populism would be good, on the other hand, when that very ideological divide was already in place, where afterwards, through a populist candidate's rise, the prior existence of this divide is made crystal clear, and so is then able to be fought.
You can call him a populist or not. What’s more important is whether his policies and political strategy end up improving Argentina by controlling spending, thinning out broken and corrupt governmental bureaucracies, reducing trade barriers to and from Argentina, improving Argentina’s relationships with non-dictatorial governments around the world, and ultimately creating economic growth and opportunity for Argentinians across the country. If he has to do that by blaming all of Argentina’s problems on “elites” and claiming to stand up for the beliefs of the “common man”, so be it. Nevermind that no “common man” in Argentina has read FA Hayek or ever cracked open an economics textbook, if somehow he gets “the people” to accept his classical liberal / libertarianish policies by claiming that these classical liberal thinkers are “real populism” then he should have at it.
In fact, if he can wrestle “the people” in that entire continent away from believing “socialism is the peoples’ belief” and towards the idea that classical liberalism is what “the people” believe, he will be crowned the savior of South America and rightfully so.
The problem is that "populism" is ambiguous. It usually refers to an ideology said to favor the common people in opposition to an elite. However, the term has been used as a synonym for authoritarianism, which is indeed opposed to classical liberalism. For instance, in "Beyond Liberal and Conservative" (1984) by political scientists William Maddox and Stuart Lilie "populism" was defined as being opposed to personal freedom and in favor of economic intervention in opposition to libertarianism. People who understand "populism" in that sense may be predisposed to see authoritarian tendencies in any politician commonly described as "populist."
It is very difficult for me to be happy calling Milei a populist. Seeking less power can’t possibly be the characteristic of a populist. For example getting the government out of control of the media is very libertarian.
I think your definition is pretty good. I would note that it does not include policy prescriptions (which is why I like it).
Most Anti-Populists fixate on one policy, for example immigration or tariffs, or a certain rhetorical style, and conclude that it is not compatible with Liberalism, and then claim that they are defending Liberalism, when they actually want the opposite.
It sounds like the takeaway is the whether or populism is good or bad depends on the truth of the populist leader's claims. If [1] the elites really are as bad as the populist leader says, and if [2] the populist leader really will replace them with something better, then populism can be good.
The problem is that 1 and 2 are big ifs. In the case of Argentina it sounds like they are both true. In the case of the USA, by contrast, 2 is almost certainly false. I can see a case for 1, but in practice most of the things I hate about elites are different from what populists hate about elites.
As opposed to popupphobes, who are afraid of websites with pop-ups.
Yes, pop-ups make me far more angry than populists.
LOL
111111111
This topic raises a sore point with me.
I have a PhD in Political Science and Public Policy, and I have no idea what “Populism” means. It is mainly used an insult against people of differing views, not much different from Leftists calling opponents “racist,” fascist,” or “nazi.”
Maybe if it were just used as a descriptive adjective of a specific policy, but I hardly see it as an ideology.
The people who obsess over Populism are typically focused on style and rhetoric. It is typically done by Center-Left types who have high social status and lots of political influence within institutions. But they miss how much those institutions have been changed for the worse over the last 20 years. The Left captures institutions, changes their policies toward Leftist ends, and then accuses anyone who disagrees with them of being “Populist.”
I see no contradiction between Populism and Classical Liberalism. Classical Liberalism is not a love of elites and established institutions. That is traditional Conservatism in pre-industrial times. They supported the King, Nobility, Church, and the Traditional Order.
Milei is a perfect example of where Classical Liberalism and Populism align.
Classical Liberalism is about institutional structures that force non-violent transparent competition between elites so those elites must offer benefits to the masses to acquire their support. This works in the marketplace, elections, and religion. This is in opposition to extractive institutions that use the threat of violence to expropriate from the masses.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-importance-of-non-violent-competition
The Founding Fathers were populists regarding the Tory establishment, but they established a constitutional federal republic to ensure that America did not get a new extractive elite.
Unfortunately, the growth of the Administrative state over the last century has gradually eroded the checks in balances within the Constitution.
The Anti-Populists defend the Administrative state, not Classical Liberalism or Democracy. Their path leads to a Soft Totalitarianism that is the opposite of Classical Liberalism. They are not trying to achieve that goal, but it is where they are taking us.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-dangers-of-soft-totalitarianism
Classical Liberals need to better explain why their ideology is actually about channeling elite behavior towards pro-social ends, not blind obedience to what any given elite stands for.
Embracing federalism is the best path forward, so Classical Liberalism needs to explain to people who are legitimately pissed at our institutions that there are productive solutions:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/one-radical-reform-to-solve-all-our
Elites don't like checks and balances, and that is exactly why we need them!
I think that the entire problem with the article lies in the fact that Milei is not a populist in his most important positions which are all about economics. One can conveniently redefine populism, in such a way that his libertarian economics fits the definition, but it could not be further from the truth. Economically right-wing populists are universally protectionists and defenders of the welfare state. Argentina is a special case and politics across different regions cannot be copypasted. The concern is US. Here is a snipet from my coming article on why this completely does not transfer to the US:
The libertarians, even forgetting the ethical quandaries, have little chance of becoming a dominant ideology of the populist movement. Hanania writes: “Low human capital cultures are the world of transparent scams: anti-vaxx, Stop the Steal, the corrupt televangelist, gold and silver bars sold at exorbitant prices, fake news content mills. Yes, conservatives disproportionately create and fall for such scams. But they proliferate because even among smart people on the right who should know better, there is no culture of shaming or stigmatizing members of the tribe for even the most egregious types of behaviour. This doesn’t mean that Low Human Capital communities are completely devoid of a moral sense. But it’s a tribal morality, which appeals to people who are stupider and less idealistic.“
Libertarians will never be such a tribe. As dr Tom G. Palmer put it “Liberalism, it isn't as stirring in the blood as massacring your neighbours. Not many things, especially for young men, are as exciting as going and killing your neighbours". Libertarianism is not, and cannot be built around a cult following (no gods or kings, only man is the central point afterall), hate for foreigners, or disdain for the elites. The libertarian ideas are too complex and those libertarian intellectuals who give in to populism, quickly become subject to audience capture, that quickly turns them unrecognizable from what they were before.
They become Dave Rubin’s of the world, capable of believing and spreading every hoax, but lose any power to steer the movement in their way. One can hardly believe that a few years back Rubin had Caplan and McCloskey on his podcast. This is the future libertarian movement needs to be saved from.
Libertarians have an actual opportunity to influence the world through politics. Many countries with high degree of polarization and two major parties, could find themselves struggling to form a stable majority, once a libertarian leaning third party is in play. Even a couple MPs with a tight majority, could give huge negotiating power to a well-running libertarian party. However, if libertarians cozy up to the right-wing parties there will be nothing to gain in such regards, as the libertarian identity won’t be distinct enough to build the third largest party upon it of the size that could become a kingmaker. Admirers of Orban, Trump or Bolsanaro don’t need a paper-mache replica of their cult leader.
The utter degeneracy of the libertarian-nationalism tactic is best illustrated by the case of the Konfederacja party in Poland. Konfederacja is a monster mash of the most disgusting political figures one could imagine all brought together under the banner of “freedom populism”. It is exactly what a libertarian nationalist could desire. After all, it is a strategic alliance between the classical liberal Korwin party and the Nationalist Movement party. In their search for the populist electorate, the party quickly became a crossover of all the most toxic, despicable and deranged ideologies. They brought into the Polish parliament, the internationally known antisemite Grzegorz Braun (he gained global press for destroying Hanukkah candles in the Polish parliament with a fire extinguisher and harming a woman in the process). Among its last year candidates, one could find even some flat-earthers. It would be just another terrible alt-right party if not for one detail, commitment to some free market elements at least in rhetoric.
Thanks to them the situation is disastrous for libertarians. The Konfederacja party will talk about tax cuts and champion free markets, at the same time voicing support for conscription, ending free trade with Ukraine, state-ownership of the largest petrol company in Poland, Orlen, and hatemonger against immigrants trying to find the sweet spot between hate and pogroms. Its politicians will be vocal about legalising weed and fight for supposed freedom of speech whenever the left wants to ban hate speech but will pair it up with advocacy for ending pride marches, corporal punishment for homosexuality, and banning speech that criticises the Catholic Church. This is libertarian populism in action, and it is an utter disgrace.
If elites themselves give up on liberalism it is left to 'the people' to defend it
You and 3 likes do not know what liberalism is. What the people want is not liberalism.
Thanks so much for writing this Dr. Klein (I'm resisting saying "Danny" since that is what you went by when I first met you in 1980).
If Trump 2.0 (along with Elon, Vivek, Gabbard etc.) manage any significant reductions in government -assuming Biden and the Democrats do not start WWIII - so many Beltway "libertarians" and "classical liberals" will not be able to claim any credit.
Hi, Bruce! Do say 'Danny'!
I'm with Bruce on this. Danny has consistently been a voice of reason and good judgment on everything from Adam Smith to Milei and now to the blindness of our friends who claim the title "classical liberals." The door is wide open for them to repent.
Kent Guida
Excellent piece.
Being primarily a classical liberal, I have historically been against populism, at least in the U.S, in the traditional sense that populists are generally for more government intervention on both economic issues and on social issues.
But as many note, populism is more often about rhetoric and being anti-establishment. Given what elites have done in the last several years, in the U.S. beginning with the Obama Administration, a healthy dose of being anti-establishment is more than merely justified, it’s almost essential.
Trump the first time around talked populist, but generally governed like a traditional GOPer (except on spending and entitlements, where he governed like a Democrat).
I’m on Team Milei, though I know very little about Argentina (don’t cry for me…). And it’s very clear that the MSM’s leftist bias shines through brightly in how they label Milei.
More to the point, I immediately unsubscribed from The Unpopulist several months ago as soon as I saw how illiberal it was in its pro-establishment, TDS stances.
Reading this piece makes me even more glad that I did this.
3 cheers for it.
“Over the past eight years I have come to think of the United States as an erstwhile ‘first-world’ country. We become ‘second world’, like China, or ‘third world,’ like Argentina—countries in which governmental elites are deeply and systematically corrupt.”
This statement is extreme and extremely wrong, taken any way you could charitably read it. The US is not a second-class country today, in any sense — it is an economic, cultural, technological, scientific, military, and growth powerhouse. It is certainly not in any way as corrupt or illiberal as Argentina or China. As appalling as any US libertarian should find the last eight years, we are not a one-party dictatorship or a kleptocracy. We remain a country with solid rule of law, little corruption in day to day affairs, with a healthy democracy and highly competitive elections, and a large, dynamic private sector. All of that can still be true while you revile the policies and politics of most elites, or indeed those of the great unwashed masses who elected [pick a bad politician]. All of that can still be true while you worry constantly about the many threats and losses we’ve suffered over the years.
To try to counter the obvious fact that America is amazing and still has the brightest promise of basically any place in the world today (despite our ever-looming fiscal problems), populists offer a blizzard of outrageous and ahistorical hyperbole about how today’s president and the media and elites are the worst ever, and how we’re just coasting on the accomplishments of the past. The America in decline narrative is always popular, and it’s the narrative that is common to populists of all ideologies — left, right, and, sadly, even libertarian.
Well, looking back at last week in Rio de Janeiro: Millei trying to pull Argentina out of climate agreements, or blocking mentions of gender equality in the final document, or withdrawing from the pact against hunger; or perhaps feasting with Trump during G20 negotiations, maybe praising/defending/embracing/etc. the Brazilian group – its top leader – who prepared a military coup that included assassinating a Supreme Court judge, the elected president, and the vice president... all of this is quite liberal. Perhaps Bolsonaro is a classical liberal and not even a populist. (My Zeus)
This article parallels my own thoughts. 1 cheer for populism. The issue with the MAGAs is there is nobody with any coherent idea of what to do after tearing down the old. Trump is not all that classically liberal and is certainly no Milei. So we're going to be in for a wild ride. Possible: we'll get some sort of payments to taxpayers in a bill called the "Tariff Impact Relief Act".
Vivek might have an idea. Elon is friends with Thiel. Tulsi Gabbard, having sold her home in Anacostia, is apparently great friends with Ben Domenech & Meghan McCain and stays with them when visiting D.C.
Yes, I think Vivek (in addition to Milei) is another politician who mixes populism with libertarianism. More proof that thy are not opposites.
To be against all elites is anarchism. But “elites” in this definition never includes elected officials or business leaders of the preferred Republican faction.
I think of populism as 1) offering benefits through “simple” solutions while ignoring the true complexity and trade-offs of a given issue, 2) a narrative of the common folk being held back.
Trump and Nigel Farage in the UK fit that definition. Milei doesn’t seem to. He has a clear agenda but is also clear about the trade offs.
It seems that the essence of "populism", to the extent that it is genuinely something bad, is to promote a kind of "us versus them" style of thinking amidst the electorate, particularly when this would not be warranted or helpful in maintaining true social progress. The problem, of course, is that there really are interested parties working within most modern political systems whose ends are not aligned with those of the general public. For such narrowly focused players as these, it becomes easy to see how the term "populist" could get thrown around in media circles rather regularly on their behalf, in a strategic effort to deflect public awareness from these players' own machinations.
So populism is bad when - perhaps through campaign rhetoric - a political leader creates an ideological divide within society that didn't already exist. But populism would be good, on the other hand, when that very ideological divide was already in place, where afterwards, through a populist candidate's rise, the prior existence of this divide is made crystal clear, and so is then able to be fought.
You can call him a populist or not. What’s more important is whether his policies and political strategy end up improving Argentina by controlling spending, thinning out broken and corrupt governmental bureaucracies, reducing trade barriers to and from Argentina, improving Argentina’s relationships with non-dictatorial governments around the world, and ultimately creating economic growth and opportunity for Argentinians across the country. If he has to do that by blaming all of Argentina’s problems on “elites” and claiming to stand up for the beliefs of the “common man”, so be it. Nevermind that no “common man” in Argentina has read FA Hayek or ever cracked open an economics textbook, if somehow he gets “the people” to accept his classical liberal / libertarianish policies by claiming that these classical liberal thinkers are “real populism” then he should have at it.
In fact, if he can wrestle “the people” in that entire continent away from believing “socialism is the peoples’ belief” and towards the idea that classical liberalism is what “the people” believe, he will be crowned the savior of South America and rightfully so.
The problem is that "populism" is ambiguous. It usually refers to an ideology said to favor the common people in opposition to an elite. However, the term has been used as a synonym for authoritarianism, which is indeed opposed to classical liberalism. For instance, in "Beyond Liberal and Conservative" (1984) by political scientists William Maddox and Stuart Lilie "populism" was defined as being opposed to personal freedom and in favor of economic intervention in opposition to libertarianism. People who understand "populism" in that sense may be predisposed to see authoritarian tendencies in any politician commonly described as "populist."
It is very difficult for me to be happy calling Milei a populist. Seeking less power can’t possibly be the characteristic of a populist. For example getting the government out of control of the media is very libertarian.
You write: "Seeking less power can’t possibly be the characteristic of a populist."
Why do you write that?
In my piece, I offer a definition of 'populist.' It is not incompatible with Milei. What's wrong with my definition?
I think your definition is pretty good. I would note that it does not include policy prescriptions (which is why I like it).
Most Anti-Populists fixate on one policy, for example immigration or tariffs, or a certain rhetorical style, and conclude that it is not compatible with Liberalism, and then claim that they are defending Liberalism, when they actually want the opposite.
That is exactly why the Populist/Classical Liberal dichotomy makes no sense. I go into more detail in my comment above.
It sounds like the takeaway is the whether or populism is good or bad depends on the truth of the populist leader's claims. If [1] the elites really are as bad as the populist leader says, and if [2] the populist leader really will replace them with something better, then populism can be good.
The problem is that 1 and 2 are big ifs. In the case of Argentina it sounds like they are both true. In the case of the USA, by contrast, 2 is almost certainly false. I can see a case for 1, but in practice most of the things I hate about elites are different from what populists hate about elites.
I disagree on your [2] claim as regards USA. Here is Zack Yost and me:
https://yostpost.substack.com/p/empirical-proof-that-the-uniparty
I don't think the solution is replacing elites. The goal should be federalism.
That works for both Populists and Classical Liberals.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/one-radical-reform-to-solve-all-our