A Note on Vulgar Populism
(…and Chapo Trap House)
Some people don’t get Chapo Trap House. Some people don’t quite understand how people can, ‘meet on Twitter’ as the presenters of the podcast did, or how a left-wing show could spend more time mocking the Democratic party than crusading against the far-right. Most of all, some people don’t understand why many thousands of people — often younger, and hardly uneducated — would choose to listen to some guys from Twitter instead of, say, whatever plastic person resides amongst other studio lit plastic on mainstream news channels. This is perhaps a harsh use of language, but it is chosen for a purpose. Allow me to explain.
Vulgar populism is not so much a set of political beliefs, but rather — to borrow a phrase from philosopher Olly Thorn — a style of politics. And it is a style which is, by and large, a reaction to the homogeneous style of legacy media. Take, for instance, legacy media’s general obsession with electability. It is in many ways a vapid talking point — all electable candidates for any position have electability in the sense that they can be elected.
Of course, you may rebut that electability does not mean can a candidate technically be elected, but what are the chances of them being elected. If that is the case, however, then I would argue that is a wholly different question from the vague question…
