Alexander Downer—former foreign minister and Liberal Party elder—said on Sky News on Saturday night that the South Australian Liberal Party has been devastated in that state’s election because they were caught up in a ‘populist wave.’
This, he said, had swept through America, Britain and parts of Europe and has now come to Australia.
This means that Downer has fallen into the mistake of thinking that ‘populist’ means something bad.
I have explained this before in these columns, but clearly, I need to do so again—because some basic linguistic facts are just not getting through.
Key fact— ‘populism’ does not mean something bad.
The word ‘populism’ means ‘democracy’.
Those two words are exact synonyms.
The word ‘populist’ comes from the Latin word populus meaning ‘people’, while the word ‘democracy’ comes from the Greek word demos meaning (surprise, surprise!) ‘people’.
Both ‘populist’ and ‘democracy’ mean ‘the will of the people.’
Anyone who opposes ‘populism’ is opposed to democracy.
So, has there been (as Downer claimed) a ‘populist wave’ (that is a ‘democratic wave’) sweeping through the western world?
Probably.
The Brexit referendum in the UK was the ordinary people telling the governing elite that they rejected them and their ideas.
Here in Australia the Voice referendum was the same thing—the ordinary people telling the governing elite to do and get stuffed.
The popular support for Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Pauline Hanson is the great mass of ordinary people saying they won’t be dictated to by powerful elites.
So there does seem to be such a ‘wave’ washing around the world.
But it’s not a bad thing.
It’s just democracy!
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