In a video message to an international conference on “A Politics Rooted in the People” on Thursday, Pope Francis slammed populism as “political paternalism,” claiming it deprives people of self-rule and grows from “hate.”
Populism, according to Francis, equates to the slogan, “Everything for the people, nothing with the people,” or “political paternalism.”
“Hence, in the populist vision, the people are not the agents of their own destiny, but end up being indebted to an ideology,” the Pope added. The “true response to the boom of populism is not precisely more individualism but its opposite: a politics of brotherhood, rooted in the life of the people,” he added.
He went on, as he often does, to express his disapproval of those “who appear to feel encouraged or at least permitted by their faith to support varieties of narrow and violent nationalism, xenophobia and contempt, and even the mistreatment of those who are different.”
He even raised the specter of Hitler, stating, “I think of Hitler in the last century, who had promised development for Germany. They should know how populisms begin: by sowing hate. You can’t live sowing hate.”
The populism to which Francis refers is the sort that has swelled in America under former President Trump and in Eastern Europe under leaders who stand for the people against the globalist elites like the socialist Pope Francis. In fact, socialism is the vision that binds people to an ideology. The individualism he decries, not the collectivism he espouses, is the vision that leads to freedom and prosperity for the people.