I write here to offer a teaser for a video on populism and classical liberalism, a lecture which I gave for the Bruno Leoni Institute in Milan. I redid the lecture on my own, and the recording has been graciously posted by Glenn Diesen:

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMMqrwZISjY

The slide-deck, which contains links, is here.

Here are some points and slides from the lecture. I hope you find the video instructive!

The deep state and its mouthpieces have been training people to revile “populism.”

Here are some of the globalists’ adversaries that we are told to revile:

However, as a classical liberal, I have been troubled at how some classical liberals have joined in the popuphobia.

Thus, there are two types of popuphobes, swampy globalists and certain misguided classical liberals.

I suggest that the classical-liberal popuphobes are playing into their hands of the greatest threat to liberty—the swampy globalists.

A populist strain is natural to classical liberalism.

I reject the notion that populism is necessarily bad: Karlson, Dalmia, and Lemieux are wrong.

I relate populism to Max Weber’s three sources of legitimacy for a political leader, finding a correlation between populism and charisma.

Classical liberals should be wary of populism but accord it at least one cheer, especially in these times of swampy globalism.