What’s the Problem with ‘Populism’?

All manner of nonsense proliferates in the public sphere because, as Orwell once wrote, “the average human being never bothers to examine catchwords”. Legacy media journalists far less so than the average human being. Take, for instance, the near-ubiquitous ‘far-right’? What does this even mean? I’d lay good money that, asked to define what they mean by it, very few journalists could answer. On the other hand, multiple surveys have shown that people who oppose socialism are much more likely to be able to correctly define it (which is the cause and which the effect, is up for debate).

Another such word is populism. Legacy media journalists love to throw it around, clearly at people they don’t like. But, what does it mean? According to academic definitions, populism has two core principles: it must claim to speak on behalf of ordinary people and these ordinary people must stand in opposition to an elite establishment that stops them from fulfilling their political preferences.

Yes, it’s noted that populism can be authoritarian, or it can be democratic. But authoritarianism is not inherent to populism. Democracy, or at least a stated commitment to democracy, is.

So, where’s the problem? Why are so many legacy media journalists spitting “populism” like a deadly insult? It’s almost as if they are part of the elite establishment standing opposed to the ordinary people.

With that in mind, I offer a definition of ‘populism’ of my own: “Popular ideas not approved of by the elite”.

Voters have every right to distrust the political elite. They have watched referenda deliver clear verdicts only for the establishment to shrug and carry on regardless. Britain voted for Brexit. Teresa May then negotiated a framework that punished the country with years of economic self-harm and bureaucratic entanglement. Australians rejected the Voice at a national referendum. Multiple state Labor governments simply ignored the result and pressed ahead with their own Voice-style bodies anyway. Polling shows overwhelming public support for the SAVE America Act, yet political elites in both parties work overtime to stymie it. This is not democracy in action. It is the elite establishment telling ordinary people their preferences do not count.

What both the legacy media and the political elite clearly failed to anticipate was just how much harder the digital revolution would make it for them to carry on business as usual. For all the elite hysterics over the online revolution, it is a levelling technology that has stripped legacy media of their old monopoly as, in Jacinda Ardern’s telling, “your sole source of truth”. Arthur C Clarke saw it coming in 1984. He predicted that any citizen armed with a portable camera, a computer and an internet connection could become a journalist.

Leaving aside the quaintness-in-hindsight of Clarke’s vision of a ‘briefcase-sized computer’ needing an antenna like a ‘small umbrella’, that is precisely what happened. The gatekeepers lost their lock on information. Ordinary people could see the gap between what governments promised and what they delivered. They could organise, share evidence and bypass the legacy press entirely.

That same technology also threatens the power of established elites in another way. It opens the door to genuinely responsive government – direct democracy on steroids, Swiss-style but turbocharged. Citizens no longer need to navigate labyrinthine bureaucracies or wait years for potholes to be fixed. Real-time data from smartphones can tell city engineers where the road is broken before anyone files a form. The private sector already works this way. The question is why government cannot.

Isaac Levido, the architect of Boris Johnson ’s successful 2019 election campaign, told a gathering in Sydney last week that the rise of Nigel Farage ’s Reform was badly misunderstood by elites who dismiss it as irrational populism. Levido argues that the quality gap between the output of the private sector and that of governments has been exacerbated by technology.

Adam Smith would have marvelled at the silicon chips that process millions of tiny signals emerging naturally from voluntary exchange in a competitive market. Governments, by contrast, appear clunky, expensive and inefficient. A private company that consistently frustrates customers rapidly loses market share. Yet a government department can remain dysfunctional for years without any threat to its funding.

“Every minute of every day, we experience things that just work,” he told a Menzies Research Centre gathering. “Problems that once seemed enormous are now solved seamlessly, often for free or very cheaply. Meanwhile, the government seems to be getting worse and more expensive.”

Now we understand why the government and legacy media are in such lockstep on attempts to censor and control the internet. While there are legitimate concerns around social media and children’s especially mental health, these are just the mottes for the establishment’s assault on the bailey. Australia’s ‘e-Karen’, or the UK bobbies arresting people for posting pictures of bacon, don’t care about your children, or ‘social cohesion’: they want complete control over everything they’ll allow you to hear, see, and read.

Cite me one instance in the history where the people wanting such absolute control were the good guys.

The more they try to assert such control, the bigger the backlash.

Attempts to destroy the legitimacy of populist parties by framing them as far-right, racist or fascist have not stopped their rise in popularity.

They have, however, deterred established conservative parties from forming formal governing alliances, notably in Germany, where the Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party forged a tenuous alliance with their former rivals, the Social Democratic Union, after the February 2025 election, rather than with the second-place Alternative for Germany.

Some 15 months later, the AfD is the clear leader in the national poll. As in Australia, the new force in German politics has no particular ideological leaning. Its targets are the Berlin elites, European Union bureaucracy, public broadcasters, technocrats and the Parteienkartell – the party cartel of the established parties.

When a government cannot even fill potholes, voters eventually conclude it cannot do anything competently except expand its own power and spend their money. That is why ‘populism’ keeps winning ground. The digital revolution did not create the discontent. It simply made the gap between what the private sector delivers and what government delivers impossible to ignore. Elites can keep sneering at the word. Voters have already moved on.

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