Scholarship on populism splits between resigned retention and outright ban of the word

Evidence

At this point, the specialists usually divide into two camps. A first group simply believes that we’re stuck with the word, for better or worse, and claim that to surgically remove it from our vocabulary would prove too tiresome. The second group demands that we ban the term from our vocabulary altogether. “The worst we can do with words,” George Orwell once proclaimed, “is surrender to them.” Since the 1980s at least, this camp has been known as the “populist nihilists,” while the other is usually put in the “positivist” bracket. Both groups are marked by a certain indifference to the term’s history, or the factors that grant the term its contemporary allure. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 43

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the long-running literature on contested political keywords, similar to the taxonomy debates in Islamophobia scholarship. — connects to: The persistence of the word populism signals a real hidden dynamic despite its vagueness — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 72; Condemning ‘populism’ indirectly delegitimizes popular sovereignty itself — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 51; Neutral scholarship rhetoric often conceals worldly power connections — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the…, 309 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• The persistence of the word populism signals a real hidden dynamic despite its vagueness #corroborates (0.85) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 72
• Populism’s analytical elusiveness stems from theory’s own limited tools #expands (0.85) — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 9
• Moral condemnation has driven supposedly objective analyses of populism #corroborates (0.85) — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 58
• Populism is a permanent possibility of political structuration, not a deviance #complicates (0.80) — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 46
• Political reclamation rearticulates a stigmatized term rather than replacing it #corroborates (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 233
• Neutral scholarship rhetoric often conceals worldly power connections #expands (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 309
• Condemning ‘populism’ indirectly delegitimizes popular sovereignty itself #complicates (0.70) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 51
• Essentialized etymology discredits a people’s political agency while posing as neutral scholarship #expands (0.70)