Recently, populism has appeared quite often and frequently in society. Is it a phenomenon that brings positive or negative things? Perhaps this is also a question that certainly has different answers depending on the angle of approach and purpose of using it.
Historically, capitalism developed most strongly in the 19th century, when politicians and social activists, in the name of the people, opposed the interests of the elite, often a minority in society but holding state power. Capitalism often has the following characteristics:
– On behalf of the majority, put forward slogans for the benefit of the people;
⁃ It is a method, a tool to attract and gather the majority against the elite. At first, it has great trust and fascination for the masses, because it indeed demands very specific benefits for the community;
⁃ CNDT can combine with other ideological movements, even when these ideas are opposed to each other, to call on the masses to act;
⁃ Another typical characteristic of CNDT is the instability of its stance, or in other words, the easy change in goals and methods of struggle; it seeks temporary support from the public rather than implementing fundamental solutions for their long-term, sustainable interests;
⁃ Increasingly, CNDT not only appears in the political field, in parliamentary activities but also spreads to other fields and is used very flexibly by people, in order to gain the maximum number of supporters for their viewpoints and actions;
⁃ With the high openness of today’s society, when science, engineering, and technology help people create a “flat world”, a “fast world”… then CNDT is no longer the “exclusive” of political activists. It can easily appear in any individual and this mentality spreads quickly in the community.
Thus, it can be seen that the political nature of democracy is increasingly mixed and diluted, and it is often considered just a tool and a means to achieve goals, to the point that people almost consider it pure demagoguery.
Through monitoring and studying some of our recent events and phenomena, we see a very concerning thing: socialism has clearly appeared in some cadres and a part of the people. More worryingly, it takes advantage of the "rebellious, narrow-minded, short-sighted" mentality to create movements with huge consequences: Individual things go against the common interest; take advantage of the crowd mentality to achieve personal goals; satisfy trivial, even deviant needs in the name of freedom and democracy; use small, immediate benefits to destroy large, overall long-term benefits... Whether intentional or unintentional, it is an issue that we must think seriously about and fight to limit the negative aspects that socialism brings.
A leader or an elected representative, when meeting with the people, promises this and that, but then quickly forgets. There are cadres who "beat the drum and leave the drumstick", do not do as they say, many times they put forward very good slogans, propositions, very eloquent declarations but do not know/cannot deploy solutions to implement them. There are cadres who, as the Party says, are heavily "term-based". There are also cadres who follow the crowd and join in with certain phenomena (Lenin called them "following the masses") but do not dare to fight or do not dare to make decisions at important moments according to their authority and responsibility... That is the ideology of those in power. Listening to the people is indispensable for leaders, but life sometimes requires decisiveness and daring to take responsibility, so leaders must definitely demonstrate it.
What about the populist trend in society? For a long time now, we have encountered and witnessed many situations and events where a large community of people loudly criticizes something of unclear truth or defends some illegal behavior, violates traditional ethical standards of someone in an emotional way without basing on the discipline of the State's laws and the sad thing is that many times that reaction is just because they do not like (or hate) a certain force, a certain group of officials. They are ready to go into a trance to slander and insult others in the name of protecting the "weak" in an unreasonable way without knowing that they are often promoting evil, negativity, and harming the very people they defend. Democracy is often dressed in the beautiful "humanitarian" coat. These manifestations of democracy in the masses are increasingly clear, which we see is very different from the early days of democracy.
Leaders whose thoughts and actions are dominated by ideology will not be able to solve strategic problems, and will even hinder the later stages of social development, and will overshadow the role of the political organization they represent. Individuals who use ideology to justify shallow thinking and emotions that overwhelm reason will certainly leave behind major negative consequences for the community.
Some thoughts as expressing a deep concern about the rise of Populism today!
