{"id":305661,"date":"2017-04-28T13:33:37","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T12:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/slandering-populism-a-chilling-media-habit\/"},"modified":"2017-04-28T13:33:37","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T12:33:37","slug":"slandering-populism-a-chilling-media-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/slandering-populism-a-chilling-media-habit\/","title":{"rendered":"Slandering Populism: a Chilling Media Habit"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p>I imagine I\u2019m not the only political and media observer sickened by the dominant (\u201cmainstream\u201d) corporate media\u2019s habitual reference to xenophobic, right-wing, white-nationalist, and neo-fascist politicians like Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, and Marine Le Pen as \u201cpopulists.\u201d\u00a0 Populism properly understood is about popular and democratic opposition to the rule of the money power \u2013 to the reign of concentrated wealth. It emerged from radical farmers\u2019 fight for social and economic justice and democracy against the plutocracy of the nation\u2019s Robber Baron capitalists during the late 19th century.\u00a0 It was a movement of the left.\u00a0 As the left author and journalist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/marine_le_pen_is_a_fascist_not_a_right-wing_populist_20170425\">Harvey Wasserman notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe Morgans, Rockefellers and their ilk had captured the industrial revolution that dominated the U.S. after the Civil War. The farmers of the South and West fought back with a grass-roots social movement\u2026They formed the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/projects.vassar.edu\/1896\/populists.html\">People\u2019s Party<\/a>. Its socialistic platforms demanded public ownership of the major financial institutions, including banks, railways, power utilities and other private monopolies that were crushing the public well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt their national conventions in Omaha in 1892, and St. Louis in 1896, and elsewhere, they demanded an end to corporate and foreign ownership of land. They wanted a national currency based on food rather than gold and silver. They endorsed universal affordable medical care, free public education and a general&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/04\/28\/slandering-populism-a-chilling-media-habit\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I imagine I\u2019m not the only political and media observer sickened by the dominant (\u201cmainstream\u201d) corporate media\u2019s habitual reference to xenophobic, right-wing, white-nationalist, and neo-fascist politicians like Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, and Marine Le Pen as \u201cpopulists.\u201d\u00a0 Populism properly understood is about popular and democratic opposition to the rule of the money power [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-305661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}