Essay:The problems with right-wing populism

This essay is an original work by Liberaltears. Please comment only on the talk page.

Being someone who just a year ago was considerably less informed of U.S. history compared to as of right now when typing this essay, I admit I previously was led to believe that right-wing populism was just a stronger wing of the conservative movement. However, having now paid closer attention and studied key aspects of history, my views have flipped, to say the least.

Here are a few key points to firstly recognize:

1. Right-wing populism is not conservatism. Right-wing populists reject traditional fiscal conservatism, for example, and justify domestic government spending programs, aka welfare.
2. Right-wing populism emphasizes achieving its goals by "whatever means possible." As such, its leaders in particular tend to lack moral principles in their zealous vanities.
3. Right-wing populists do not believe as conservatives do in judging people individually by the content of their character. Similar to leftists, they tend to focus heavily on racial identity/demographics.
4. While conservatives tend to believe in a merit-based immigration system, right-wing populists advocate ending immigration entirely under the belief that doing so will resolve societal problems pertaining to the social fabric.

An example of the second point is evident in the right-wing populists' continuous defenses of Arizona U.S. representative Paul Gosar, who associated with white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. [1][2][3][4] On social media, they have been known to use logical fallacies via deflections when confronted on Gosar's indefensible associations. Recently Gosar has proved to be an embarrassment and disgrace when he outright incited violence.

Right-wing populists view the roots of Jacksonian democracy as a basis for preferred policies to pursue, even though history has shown regarding the 1800s that the Jacksonians were liberal populists while the conservatives were the pro-business Whig Party. Such pro-Jackson sentiment also fuels the U.S. "Party-switch" myth by implying that the modern GOP should model the early Democratic Party, which only advances left-wing agitprop.