Political “populism” seems insidious when it tends towards the ideological – specifically, ideology which blames a single group or class for social and economic disasters. (“Blame it on the immigrants”; “it’s the welfare layabouts”; “No, it’s the elites; it’s the Liberal Establishment; it’s the corporate media…”). Steve Bannon’s populism took the form of blaming the media (Bannon famously said to writer Michael Lewis that, “the real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit”). To argue against such populism, one must expose the hyper-generalisations
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