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They say populism is on the rise, but the people they call "populists" have almost nothing in common with each other. They talk about Corbyn and Trump as if they're a part of the same movement. That's of course ridiculous. In fact the non-populists are much more of a unified movement than the populists. What we're witnessing isn't "the rise of populism", it's the decay of neoliberalism.
Socialism and nationalism are competing to fill the gap. The neoliberals see this and try to conflate the two. They figure that if the can conflate the seamingly reasonable "left-populists" and the obviously ridiculous "right-populists", people will stay away from socialism. This tactic is kind of working, but it's not proving sufficient to keep people on board with neoliberalism. In stead, it only serves to make nationalism more attractive.
@AnarchyonGallifrey which is fine for them, really, because nationalism doesn't fundamentally challenge the neoliberal status quo. So that's really more of a feature.
@AnarchyonGallifrey They all call themselves populist, I've noticed. Nobody gets elected with a promise of oppressing individuals to empower the wealthy, even though they end up doing so.
@CharredStencil
We may be talking about separate "thems"
@AnarchyonGallifrey News coverage of Corbyn and Trump is eerily similar, though. Virtually everything they do is distorted or misrepresented. They're completely different, but the press direction is almost identical.