Populism is a technique of political communication, of attracting votes and winning power, in which a politician successively adapts his speech not to his deepest convictions, but to what he thinks the electorate will most like to hear. This is achieved through demagogic promises, inflammatory rhetoric that appeals much more to emotion than to reason and the definition of external targets that act as a guiding thread for the discourse, channeling various frustrations accumulated in hostility towards elites in general and the traditional political class in particular. Populism occurs on both the left and the right.
Some examples of populism are the primaries for the nomination of the Republican candidate for the White House in the 2016 presidential elections, when Donald Trump revealed his intention to build a border wall to contain illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States and to submit the bill for this construction to the neighboring country. The issue dominated the headlines, put Trump at the center of the debate and helped consolidate his electoral base in the short term. It gave Trump media visibility, which is essential to his success. Another more recent example is the case of André Ventura, leader of the extreme right-wing party, Chega, when his serious criticism of the Roma community and subsidy dependency put him in the media spotlight. As well as his xenophobic and racist discourse.
There are some characteristics of a populist leader, such as a leader who claims to have, and to some extent, is able to fulfill, the claim of having a direct, unmediated connection with the people. He is identified as a strong and charismatic man, creating the image of a “man of action”, one who is not afraid to make quick, difficult and questionable decisions.
With this we conclude that there are several reasons why populism is often considered harmful, for example, populist leaders tend to simplify complex problems, offering superficial solutions that may not be viable in the long term (oversimplification), populists often use divisive rhetoric, highlighting differences between social groups to gain support (social divisions), populists often seek to consolidate power in their hands , to attract followers, populists often make promises that are impossible to keep or that have negative long-term consequences, populists often create imaginary enemies to divert attention from real problems or to justify authoritarian measures. In other words, while populist leaders may gain popular support initially by tapping into citizens’ legitimate concerns, their simplistic and divisive policies can have damaging long-term consequences for society and democracy.
