Was Populism a Populism? When a Concept Eludes Historical Criticism

As the word “populism” has become ubiquitous in political commentary and in some sectors of the social sciences, as a tool to analyze our contemporary world, this essay traces the troubled genealogy of the concept. “Small-p populism” was born in the 1950s in the US, in the aftermath of fascisms and during the Cold War. It was based on a new historical interpretation of a major political movement in US history (Populism in the 1890s), and was generalized into a political style, abstracted from any content, that could be applied to all popular movements that could thus be accused of illiberalism. Historians have long completely refuted this historical interpretation of Populism, but the generalized concept has eluded their criticism and become autonomous. It has since been used in countless ways, sometimes contradictory to one another. The essay thus concludes by asking about the intellectual merit of a concept with such fragile empirical foundations.