Populism Is Diversifying, Why Populism Ends in Disaster
Populists are in power, either in control or playing a supporting role in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Slovakia, and Sweden; they are on the march in Latin America.
Even more importantly they have forced established politicians to discuss subjects once deemed out of bounds, such as immigration, national identity, and social disintegration.
In France, the National Rally (NR) is the largest party of the National Assembly and runs swathes of the south and industrial north.
The French magazine Le Nouvel Obs warned its progressive readers that Jordan Bardella was particularly dangerous because he appeared to be “a new man, clean and smooth.” He grew up in the suburbs, the child of Italian immigrants; has two million followers on TikTok and 800,000 on Instagram
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has been putting a populist spin on the news since 1996.
Populism is evolving, splitting into new subspecies, or forming alliances with other lifeforms. The essence of populism remains the same: siding with the people against the powerful; thinking with the gut rather than the head; ignoring cost benefit analysis
The leaders of classic populism are usually white men of a certain age who hanker after a lost world when the population was mainly Caucasian, and the only alphabet soup came in a can. They live in a world of Fox News where stories about social carnage are interrupted by advertisements for hemorrhoid ointment and gold coins.
The most interesting example of hybridization is Javier Milei’s libertarian-populist mix in Argentina. It may take a right-wing populist to undo the damage done by left-wing populists.
Perhaps the most fast-growing form of populism at the moment is on the left.
In his new book, Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster, Richard Hanania argues that left-wing populism is going through the same evolution as right-wing populism.
Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster Richard Hanania
https://www.amazon.com/Kakistocracy-Why-Populism-Ends-Disaster/dp/0063479990
The current right-wing populist wave began in 2009 in the inchoate Tea-Party movement
Likewise, left-wing populism began in 2011 in the equally inchoate Occupy Wall Street and was consumed by internal squabbles.
But now, after a false start with Bernie Sanders, the movement has found several plausible messiahs, principally New York City mayor Zohran Mamdaniand Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a new taste for hierarchy, organization, and power.
Adrian Wooldridge Bloomberg 17 July 2026
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-07-17/populism-isn-t-peaking-it-s-diversifying
Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former writer at the Economist, he is author of “The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World.”
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