Populism

Populism is a political philosophy or rhetorical style that holds that the common person is oppressed by the elite in society, and that the instruments of the State need to be grasped from this self-serving elite and used for the benefit and advancement of the people as a whole. A populist reaches out to ordinary people, talking about their economic and social concerns, and appealing to their common sense. Most scholarship on populism since 1980 has discussed it as a rhetorical style that can be used to promote a variety of ideologies.

Populism in Germany

• Fichte began the development of nationalism by stating that people have the ethical duty to further their nation.
• Herder proposed an organic nationalism that was a romantic vision of individual communities rejecting the Industrial Revolution's model communities, in which people acquired their meaning from the nation. This is a philosophy reminiscent of subsidiarity.
• The brothers Grimm collected German folklore to "gather the Teutonic spirit" and show that these tales provide the common values necessary for the historical survival of a nation.
• Fredrick Jahn, a Lutheran Minister, a professor at the University of Berlin and the "father of gymnastics," introduced the Volkstum, a racial nation that draws on the essence of a people that was lost in the Industrial Revolution.
• Adam Mueller went a step further by positing the state as a bigger totality than the government institution. This paternalistic vision of aristocracy concerned with social orders had a dark side in that the opposite force of modernity was represented by the Jews, who were said to be eating away at the state.