Populist Movements Quotes

The lack of societal and institutional safeguards provides fertile ground for populist movements fueled by fear.

Like all populist movements, the Tea Party will eventually peter out. It won't succeed in returning America to the minimalist state of the 19th century.

I think that liberalism and the centrist governing elite of this country need to learn lessons from the Trump phenomenon. It is part of the way that the country is governed and the country is shaped that induces spasms of populism, including spasms of bigoted populism.

The fact that populism is flourishing internationally, far from the Electoral College and Fox News, suggests that Trump's specific faults might actually be propping up American liberalism.

The surge in right-wing populism and the phenomenon of Trump are related. You can think of them together as the same problem.

While anti-immigrant and anti-E.U. parties across Europe may not take power anywhere in 2017, theirs is now a permanent and growing presence, leeching away support from centrist parties left and right.

If we say leaders are incompetent, we are going to fuel extremist, populist, xenophobic and ultra-nationalist parties.

You see it with Brexit, you see it in Donald Trump's election, you see it with the fact that neither of the main parties ended up in the final round of the French presidential election, you see it with the Italian referendum being defeated, you see it in a lot of ways - the political revolution.

I keep telling my American friends, "If you think of Donald Trump as only something that is happening inside the United States, you're missing it." Because there are Trump-like events happening across the Western world, in Warsaw Pact countries, in France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands. As we speak, the second-largest party in the Dutch legislature - who's more level-headed than the Dutch? - is Geert Wilders's party, which is a very Trump-like party, and they've got 33 out of 150 seats.

Another similarity of Brexit and Trump's campaigns was an attack on so-called elites. This is not so much a failure of capitalism as of its high priests in the economic profession, for which we must all take some responsibility.

Between 1945 and 2005 the United States has attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements…

I draw a very clear distinction between populism and democracy.

A part of society in our countries would still prefer an authoritarian regime today. These are people with the mentality of Homo sovieticus. But they also exist in France - just think of Le Pen - and even in Finland and Sweden.

2017 may have been that year when identity politics hit a brick wall - and slumped limply on the pavement.

I think the twenty-first century happened, basically. That this century started on 9/11. And basically, it's been a century of counter reaction to globalization and the meritocracy. And a good century for 72 nations have gotten more authoritarian. We've had Brexit. We have Le Pen rising in France. We've just got a lot of these types all around the world. And the people who are suffering from globalization and the meritocracy are saying, "No more. You know, we get a voice too."

We see threats to liberal democracy coming from lots of directions. We have to create something new, a common response, because in so many places - the UK, France, Germany - ultranationalists and the far left threaten the free market and liberal democracy.

We have Trumpist (ph) tendencies in Europe. Look up Marine Le Pen in France. Look at the Five Star Movement headed by a clown by profession, Beppe Grillo, in Italy.

I think I knew how frightened people were [when Donald Trump was elected], and I think I knew that people were worried about their future. I don't think I realized that they would be willing to risk kind of a 1920s Germany in order to blow it all up, not realizing that we've accomplished a lot as Americans, and we want to keep the good things and revolutionize the new things.

If you look at the history of demagoguery and fascism, it always happens when there are two things. It requires a gentle populace to allow it to happen, whether through laziness, ignorance or ineptitude, but it also requires a very angry, dissatisfied section of the populace who want egregiously simple answers to very complicated problems.

The danger, though - and there have been signs of this recently - is that Europe begins to demonstrate a return to more nationalist sentiment. To my mind, that would be a great mistake.

Extremists and populist movements are exploiting people's fear of those who are not like us. We can see the consequences in the form of terrorism and racially motivated violence.

Take, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It's very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that's not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances.

Spain is an example of how hard it is for a conservative party to campaign for elections if the suspicion is fueled that it wants to go into a coalition with the extreme right.

Brexit is a disaster, Italy won't be real about its debt, and the European Union is in trouble.

If centrist parties face the challenges and start working for their people more efficiently, the ground for left- or right-wing populism will become less fertile.