The idea that populism works when regarded as a certain kind of rhetoric, applied in different ways in different situations, is appealing—but in truth, merely registers its polysemy and returns it to sender.

it is above all a useful hermeneutic tool for identifying and characterizing those political parties that accuse their opponents of populism

went on to write an extended panegyric, before arriving at his real political objective

Le Peuple inveighs against those well-born writers who deign to leave their salons only to describe the tiny minority of delinquents that permits them to reinforce the police

It was entitled Le Peuple and offered a romantic paean to its subject.

Be assured, France will never bear any name but one in the mind of Europe; that inexpiable name, which is also its true and eternal one—the Revolution

'scrapping’ the current leadership of his Democratic Party, relegating it to the role of an old jalopy

His view of populism has been hegemonic in political science ever since.

Not for nothing is the plebiscite, the institution most closely associated with populism—populists are regarded as quintessential supporters of ‘plebiscitary democracy’—the only one that retains a clear trace of its ‘plebeian’ origin (plebs: common people; scitum: decree)

the influence of Sorel in Serge's anarcho-syndicalist formation: the Sorelian notion of a moral elite, alien in Marxism, informed his belief that the direction of history 'depends to a very large extent on the calibre of individual human beings'