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randallsquaredyesterday at 12:35 PM1 replyview on HN

Openness to technology use and to technological progress is a separate axis. The whole left-right thing is a convenient grouping mechanism and doesn't have explanatory power. If you dissolve it into multiple axes (openness to tech, authority beliefs/morals/economics, tradition, etc) you can show much tighter groups of beliefs with more distinct boundaries, but in practice they are lumped into "left" or "right" at a given moment, even though some of those clusters have switched from one side to the other (and even back!) in living memory. See also "horseshoe theory", which is what happens when you try really hard to put everyone on a single axis.

In contrast, populism is a style, not a set of beliefs.


Replies

cmrdporcupineyesterday at 2:01 PM

In most cases "populism" is a campaigning style / way of building hegemony more than it is any set of actual beliefs in popular power.

Among many so-called "populist" politicians you will find very intensely elitist and anti-democratic belief systems, just kept quite mute.