Quotessence
Home / Topics / Populism Quotes

Populism Quotes

Browse 122 quotes about Populism.

Related topics

PeoplePoliticalThinking

Populism Quotes

“Most of the activists and survivors I know... knew the loudest, most hyperbolic garbage will rise to the top if left unchecked. We knew enough people in charge either don't understand, don't care, or are part of the problem.”

TrumpAbuse Of PowerPopulismTrumpismNeonazisOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingTrump AdministrationAlt RightInternet Abuse
Book:Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate
Create image

“Desde tiempos inmemoriables la fuerza que impulso las grandes avalanchas historicas de indole politica y religiosa, no fue jamas otra que la magia de la palabra hablada. La gran masa cede ante todo el poder de la oratoria, todos los grandes movimientos son reacciones populares, erupciones volcanicas de pasiones humanas y emociones afectivas seleccionadas, ora por la diosa cruel de la miseria, ora por la antorcha de la palabra lanzada en el seno de las masas, pero jamas por el almibar de literatos estetas y heroes de salon.”

PopulismTotalitarismo
Book:Mi Lucha
Create image

“... Americans were now supposed to make their own sense of the world. There was no dependable authority left to turn to, no life raft in the increasingly perilous informational sea. This coincided with an age when Americans now needed to understand more of the world than ever before. A factory worker in suburban Ohio now needed to understand the cultures of places like Bangalore and Beijing if he wanted to know why he'd lost his job. Which, incidentally, he probably had. Now broke, or under severe financial pressure, with no community leaders, no community, no news he can trust, Joe American has to turn on the Internet and tell himself a story that makes sense to him. What story is he going to tell?”

PopulismCurrent EventsPolitical CommentaryPolitical Opinion
Book:The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
Create image

“Here I am looking at that house on St. Bart's and feeling so bad that this is what the freedom of the citizens of Russia was sold for. It's time to stop using the Native Americans who sold Manhattan for $24 as the standard example of an unfair deal. Think instead about a popularly elected president who won his first election (fairly!) with 57 percent of the vote, only to barter everything for a house with a terrace in the Caribbean. A cool, objective look at the Yeltsin era confronts us with a dismal and disagreeable truth, one that explains Putin's rise to power: there never were any democrats in government in post-Soviet Russia, let alone freedom-championing liberals who opposed conservatives desperate to resuscitate the U.S.S.R. The whole lot of them-with rare exceptions...were an unholy horde of hypocritical thieves and lowlifes. They were aroused for a time by democratic rhetoric in order, within the framework of the political contest of the time, to be on the same side as the Kremlin, as the authorities. That was the only thing that mattered to them; along with, most important, the opportunities for self-enrichment. The whole bunch of them have always regarded power as a cash cow, and they still do. The feudal allocation of land for sustenance. Power equals money. Power equals opportunities. Power equals a comfortable life for you and your family, and everything you do while in power is aimed at retaining it. That is why all these functionaries were loyal members of the CPSU and never once inclined toward dissidence (none of the, including Yeltsin, who, despite the PR myth, never relinquished his seat in the ruling bureaucracy). Then, still ensconced in their old offices, they gravitated to the ideological niche of "capitalist democrats" and were agreeably surprised to find how much personal property they were allowed to accumulate under the new economic dispensations. "Elections," "freedom of speech," and ridiculous "human rights" were by no means an obligatory appendage to their Swiss bank accounts. They drifted toward a new stance as "patriotic conservatives deploring the collapse of our glorious U.S.S.R.," an entirely organic, stress-free metamorphosis. I do not believe in karma or predestination, but as I am writing this, I feel the fates are mocking me. I feel I am being made to pay for my blind support of Yeltsin despite his disregard for the law. I don't like the way Putin set out to kill me. But what was it I said when Yeltsin, who appointed Putin, was blasting away at the parliament with tanks? A reminder: I said, "It's long overdue. There should be no mercy for these irredeemable morons cluttering up the parliament." What about those privatization loans-for-shares auctions, when the nation's major natural resource enterprises were handed over for free to people appointed from above to be oligarchs? Those, after all, were not only fundamentally shameless and immoral but also completely illegal in purely formal terms. People who wanted to get in on the act and compete for the best bits of what remained of the U.S.S.R. were barred, using the same ridiculous pretexts as those used nowadays to sideline election candidates. And when they took the matter to the courts, they were smirked at in just the same way the prosecutors smirked in the trumped-up cases against me. My comrades are being squeezed out of the political field year after year. Not only are we prevented from taking office, but any connection with our organization, even just a monetary donation, is threatened with inspections or even criminal prosecution. And that has all been done by the very people whose right to bombard the parliament, to falsify elections "for the sake of reform," and to drive the Communists and nationalists out of politics "for the sake of the future" I so fervently defended.”

DemocracyPopulismYeltsinPost Soviet RussiaRise Of Putin
Book:Patriot: A Memoir
Create image

“Populists have sought to extricate themselves from this conundrum in two different ways. Some populist movements claim adherence to the ideals of modern science and to the traditions of skeptical empiricism. They tell people that indeed you should never trust any institutions or figures of authority—including self-proclaimed populist parties and politicians. Instead, you should “do your own research” and trust only what you can directly observe by yourself. This radical empiricist position implies that while large-scale institutions like political parties, courts, newspapers, and universities can never be trusted, individuals who make the effort can still find the truth by themselves. This approach may sound scientific and may appeal to free-spirited individuals, but it leaves open the question of how human communities can cooperate to build health-care systems or pass environmental regulations, which demand large-scale institutional organization. Is a single individual capable of doing all the necessary research to decide whether the earth’s climate is heating up and what should be done about it? How would a single person go about collecting climate data from throughout the world, not to mention obtaining reliable records from past centuries? Trusting only “my own research” may sound scientific, but in practice it amounts to believing that there is no objective truth. As we shall see in chapter 4, science is a collaborative institutional effort rather than a personal quest.”

TruthSciencePopulism
Book:Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
Create image

“Some populist movements claim adherence to the ideals of modern science and to the traditions of skeptical empiricism. They tell people that indeed you should never trust any institutions or figures of authority—including self-proclaimed populist parties and politicians. Instead, you should “do your own research” and trust only what you can directly observe by yourself. This radical empiricist position implies that while large-scale institutions like political parties, courts, newspapers, and universities can never be trusted, individuals who make the effort can still find the truth by themselves. This approach may sound scientific and may appeal to free-spirited individuals, but it leaves open the question of how human communities can cooperate to build health-care systems or pass environmental regulations, which demand large-scale institutional organization. Is a single individual capable of doing all the necessary research to decide whether the earth’s climate is heating up and what should be done about it? How would a single person go about collecting climate data from throughout the world, not to mention obtaining reliable records from past centuries? Trusting only “my own research” may sound scientific, but in practice it amounts to believing that there is no objective truth. As we shall see in chapter 4, science is a collaborative institutional effort rather than a personal quest.”

TruthSciencePopulism
Book:Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
Create image

“Populism is at its essence just determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government. One big difference between real populism and what the Tea Party thing is, is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can't say, let's get rid of government. You need to be saying let's take over government.”

PeopleNeedsRealHelpingBigsGovernmentAbleEnergyDifferencesPartyEconomyEnvironmentFocusMediaEssenceDeterminedTeaCorporateCorporationsIronOverwhelmingHelping PeopleOur EnvironmentTea PartyPopulistPopulism
Author:Jim Hightower
Create image

“Populism is folkish, patriotism is not. One can be a patriot and a cosmopolitan. But a populist is inevitably a nationalist of sorts. Patriotism, too, is less racist than is populism. A patriot will not exclude a person of another nationality from the community where they have lived side by side and whom he has known for many years, but a populist will always remain suspicious of someone who does not seem to belong to his tribe.”

YearsPersonsDoeSeemsSidesCommunityKnownPatriotismRacistPatriotTribesSuspiciousNationalityPopulistPopulism
Author:John Lukacs
Create image

“The lunatic populism that preceded the Pearl Harbor bombing is astonishing in its permutations, its crisscrossings. Guys like [Catholic priest and controversial radio broadcaster] Father Coughlin and [racist and anti-Semitic agitator and founder of the Christian Nationalist Crusade] Gerald L.K. Smith started out as share-the-wealth socialists.”

ChristianGuyFatherWealthShareCatholicRadioRacistPriestsFoundersPearlsAstonishingHarborsControversialBombingLunaticCrusadesPopulismBroadcastersAnti Semitic
Author:James Ellroy
Create image

“Do you know what causes low voter turnout in America? It's the result of having the fate of our nation at stake. This began with the bitter presidential election of 1828, which pitted the education, cultivation, and puritan constraint of John Quincy Adams against the yahoo populism of Andrew Jackson, thereby deciding permanently whether America would become a shining city upon a hill or an overlighted strip mall along a highway.”

KnowsAmericaNationsCausesResultsCitiesFateLowsElectionShiningBitterHillsPresidentialDo You KnowVotersStakesHighwaysConstraintsMallsCultivationAndrewPuritanPresidential ElectionPopulismVoter Turnout
Author:Ozzy Osbourne
Create image

“The interesting thing is that the 82% of the Greeks do not want to abandon the Euro. They really believe that there might be some kind of magical way where we could stay in the Eurozone but do not do our homework. This is not possible. So what we are trying to do is explain, you know, we in Greece invented democracy but we also invented at the same time populism.”

KnowsWayWantTryingBelieveKindMightInterestingDemocracyGreekAbandonGreeceInteresting ThingsHomeworkEuroPopulismEurozone
Author:Dora Bakoyannis
Create image

“I find it ironic and unfortunately because people are very vulnerable to populism now these days because they are desperate, we had really difficult times and we had difficult decisions to make. It is natural and it is logical to have people trying to not to vote for Syriza but to vote against the big parties that were in the Government for the last decade. So it is something that you can explain that way.”

PeopleWayTryingBigsGovernmentLastsDifficultNaturalDecisionPartyVoteDecadesVulnerableThese DaysDesperateLogicalIronicDifficult TimesPopulismDifficult Decisions
Author:Eva Kaili
Create image

“One thing that's important to point out is that this kind of populism has a long and mixed history. It's part of this tradition of problematic anti-elitism where the elites are always the liberal class - the intellectuals, the professors, the artists - and not the economic elites. Why are we so mad and aggrieved at newspaper editors but not at corporate executives? I think we need to look more at the latter, at economic elites.”

ThinkingNeedsLooksKindLongImportantArtistClassOne ThingEconomicTraditionMadNewspapersCorporateLatterExecutivesEditorsProfessorsElitesElitismPopulismNewspaper Editors
Author:Astra Taylor
Create image

“Destroying the nation state are mainly three things: the global economy, global communication technology and global culture. And this is where we are lost in the process. What could be something that can provide us a transversal political sense of belonging? At the end of the day, without an alternative we end up with populism in the name of very narrow identities.”

EndsStatesPoliticalCultureThreeNamesLostNationsProcessTechnologyEconomyIdentityCommunicationAlternativesThe End Of The DayBelongingDestroyingThree ThingsGlobal EconomyPopulismCommunication Technology
Author:Tariq Ramadan
Create image

“I think the people like myself who are in the center ground of politics and who think that center left and center right can cooperate and work together. Who don't like this sort of insurgent populism because we think it's not really going to deliver for the people, I think there's a big responsibility on us in the center to get our act together. And to work out radical but serious solutions to the problems people face.”

PeopleThinkingProblemBigsTogetherFacesLeftResponsibilitySeriousSolutionsWork OutRadicalWorking TogetherInsurgentPopulismBig Responsibility
Author:Tony Blair
Create image