"anti populism" just sounds like technocratic dictatorship with extra steps.

Doing what is popular (for better or worse) is supposed to be the whole point of democracy.

The fact that the bourgeoisie use false populism to pretend to do what people want, while only doing the bits that benefit them, doesn't negate that.

The issue is that left populists tend to get assassinated, either literally, like Huey Long, or figuratively, like Jeremy Corbyn.

I don't think about that at all.

There's thus really good video on populism by Ryan Chapman (on YouTube) that explains in really well, but in a nutshell, populism is the idea that this group/leader represents the people and is fighting against "the establishment". It is the converse of pluralism, which is the acceptance of many different ideas. Populism is not inherently dangerous but it is often associated with authoritarianism (and rightly so) due to its anti-pluralistic nature.

Ryan explains it a lot better than I can do in an internet comment. I find he has a pretty factual and balanced take on the topics he discusses.

Well, yeah. Populism is a necessary precursor to fascism. Because remember, populism isn't giving the public what they need, or even what they want; rather, populism is feeding and glorifying the worst impulses of the public: tribalism, vengefulness, novelty-seeking, and other destructive behaviors. It's a distraction from deteriorating material conditions and an outlet for the stress those conditions create at the same time.

Well, first of all populism isn't really a defined concept that everyone can agree with. Because of the question you're asking I'm assuming you're talking about populism as represented by such politicians as Trump/Milei/Bolsonaro/etc.

In that case the answer is that Populism is not fascism in the same way that elections are not democracy. As in, you can have one and not the other, but they tend to go hand in hand often enough to be very strongly associated.

Sure, you can have a democratic populist, but in history most examples of populism were preludes to fascist. And a fascist government usually uses populism to keep some sort of approval.

Populism isn't fascism, but neither is democracy. In general, political systems that are set to make stronger governments, either with a second vote or tuned to just have two parties, makes that the parties don't represent accurately the people.

This makes that people vote against what they fear and not for what they believe.

Democratic decisions should be done by consensus, by negotiating with each point of view trying to get to a compromise or a middle ground.

On top of this, if you have more parties being part of the government in a coalition, corruption is harder since the parties watch each other.

Humans are diverse and can enrich with collaboration. Having two parties, one that say that slaves should be exploted and another one saying that slaves should have some rights, does not represent the slaves points of view and their experience on handling things.

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