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Populism: a sure way to end with discrimination [1]

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Date: 2023-11-11  

I was commenting on another article and realized that one of the two trends that I think are the most danger didn’t actually fit as a response to that post so I decided to split it of. That separate issue is POPULISM. In 2017 or 2018, I was involved in a protest outside the alleged office of one of the two bought and paid off republican Senators for the State of Louisiana. There was a guy there with us that was running for office and another participant described him as a Populist. That title always causes me discomfort, so I asked him if he considered himself a populist. He said he was not, that he was independent but NOT populist. We three then discussed it, and I expressed, and the guy running agreed, that populism is a dangerous trend because almost always it ends up with a body of the population suffering greatly.

I am going to hit on three populism movements in particular. The first one will be Andrew Jackson. He projected himself as “a man of the people” and had widespread support. So what did he achieve. While many may talk about the expansion of the country as a good thing, there is a much bigger evil that he spearheaded. The trail of tears. I doubt most Native Americans would consider Andrew Jackson a hero. He was not a hero to them...in fact he was the case of a great deal of suffering as he required many people to leave their home behind and suffer on foot across half the country.

The second one is Hitler. The whole Nazi/Fascist movement used the sort of Slogans you might associate with our latest political demogogue who still has great influence with a certain portion of our nation. They project the idea if not the words of populist and claimed to be “for the people”. The people they were for were the presumed Arians or more specifically true Germans in Germany. That left a board base of demographics that were in deep trouble when the Populism of Hitler got power.

Now we have had trump….and we see what that has created. A near Nazi attitude where Freedom is reinterpreted to mean “our freedom to treat everybody else as second class”. True freedom means to grant everyone the freedom to be who and what they are as long as they injure nobody else. They, however, insist that THEY have the freedom to do what they want, and you and I only have the freedom to do what they want. That is not freedom, not even a little bit.

Here are two articles that illustrate that better minds than I have thought this. One is from a religious group. The threat of populism is real.

Beware Populism and anybody claiming to be a Populist. It should be a red flag.

www.hf.uio.no/…

www.nbcnews.com/...

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