Populism is not a contemporary phenomenon

The term populist is a modern invention. Yet it says nothing about a dynamic whose mainspring can be found as far back as antiquity: criticism of the imperfections of the political system, with the aim of amending it.

It's one of those words that everyone considers to be overused, but which remains in use until a supposedly more appropriate expression supplants it. These days, calling a politician a populist is an easy way of discrediting his ideas and avoiding any discussion of the legitimacy of his claims.

This was not the case when the term appeared in late 19th-century Russia with the rise of the Narodniki movement, intellectuals who aimed to establish a society based on the principles of agrarian socialism. At the same time, the People's Party, a political formation that shamelessly claimed to be the voice of the peasants, was born,