I hate to diss the Democratic urban activists who tend to think that "populism" is a cute word to toss around, but the posts below on Lou Dobbs et. al. should make clear that I equate populism with Juan Peron, if not with the German Nazi Party. It's nice to see that Middle East Report, a fairly lefty quarterly covering the Middle East, thinks so too. Their new Winter issue is a special on Iran that is worth reading cover to cover, particularly Kaveh Ehsani's piece on the inside nature of the Iranian regime. Some U.S. activists think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a pretty cool guy because he hates the U.S. and Israel, and many Iranians treat him as a rock star. He's a populist, dictatorial snake. I still am reserving a small portion of hope for Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, since many of his domestic policies are cool, but his international grandstanding is getting tiresome, and has "populist" written all over it. Populism is not cool. It leads to "Sieg Heils" when you least expect it.
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