Heard some disturbing things on Hartman's program this week

[Beastly Boy]

169. You like the word "nonsense" a lot, don't you?

The elections don't make populists anti democratic, and the elections are not the only means for a populist to gain power. It's what happens after take power that makes them anti-democratic.Just look at 1/6. Sometimes insurrections succeed. Sometimes populists succeed in undermining democratic pinciples, democratic institutions, majority rule, or all of the above. What makes a populist a populist is not party affiliation, but the fact that they don't consider themselves bound by the established rules and institutions that govern liberal democracies. This is the central thesis of populism, no matter what plitical or ideological wing it comes from. They get to define whose vote counts or not, who "the people" are and who the "enemy of the people" are. This is what I saw one of the leftist sources advocating for calling it "extra-parliamentary" methods of government That's why saying that populism is antithetical to liberal democracy is not nonsense. It's a historical fact.