Socialism is not populism (or, the red-baiting of Bernie Sanders)

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to opinion essay by Times columnist David Brooks, “No, Not Sanders, Not Ever,” February 27, 2020

Indeed, we should reject a Manichaean politics that appeals to resentment and paranoia. But why attribute all of this to "the left" as such? And the undead, if you listen to pundits like Brooks, specter of Communism? Intellectual black mail and the old Red Scare are a demagogue's tricks. Shame on you, Mr. Brooks.

Populist motifs in contemporary politics owe less to the imagination of socialism, which can be democratic in a way that privately-owned firms rarely are, than to modern media culture and the reliance of political campaigns on them. What a politician purports to and is likely to do in terms of policies is less in question here than what is often a cynical attempt to substitute what will benefit some or all of we the people, with what may appeal to voters in contexts where oligarchs who control most of the media and many corporate lobbies and interest groups are the real ones deciding.

A government that wills itself as leaning towards democratic socialism, though that is more meme than policy as Sanders is really a European-style s social democrat, may facilitate the greater semblance of liberty and democracy in daily life that we need. Populism is an opposite tendency that tends to substitute appeals to a pre-constituted myth of popular sovereignty.

The old guard of the Democratic Party fits it better, as it sought to appeal to demographical minorities as interest groups with a representation that is personalized, substitutional, and spectacular.