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>These two populist movements were meant to deconstruct power, but instead gave way to even more terrifying tyranny Where they truly populist and where they ab
by Muromec 2y ago
>These two populist movements were meant to deconstruct power, but instead gave way to even more terrifying tyranny
Where they truly populist and where they about deconstructing power? soviet communists where about radical transformative changes to all of the societies and explicitly accepted that violence is necessary to perform those transformations (i.e. goals justify the means).
If your agenda is deeply transformative and you have vocal oppositions you either abandon the agenda (soften it, extend the timeframe, etc) or force this through. That's what is scary about all the politicians with grand designs -- them turning out to be corrupt schmuk is the best outcome. Actually following through on all of that is scary.
- z3c0 2y agoBolshevism and Volkism indeed have roots in populism, though, to your point, their institutional counterparts arguably were the exact opposite. Bolshevism is only one prevailing school of thought from late 19th/early 20th century Russia, but walking back through Narodnaya Volya and the Narodniks will lead you back to Going to the People. Volkism itself may be one of the best examples of unbridled populism ever, having posited that "true" Germans were being overrun by alien elites (Jewish folk and the like). The fact that the movement was leveraged by neo-pagan Bavarian aristocrats doesn't nullify the ideas that rallied the public behind them in the first place (especially when those ideas persist today).