Former Speaker of the House and California Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi got taken to school by Winston Marhsall, a former banjo player for “Mumford & Sons.”
He was speaking against an Oxford Union motion that “This House Believes Populism is a Threat to Democracy.”
The former Speaker of the House was speaking for the motion.
WINSTON MARSHALL: Words have a tendency to change meaning when I was a boy, “woman” meant “someone who didn’t have a cock.”
Populism has become a word used synonymously with “racists.” We’ve heard “ethno-nationalist,” with “bigot,” with “hillbilly,” “redneck,” with “deplorables.”
Elites use it to show their contempt for ordinary people.
This is a recent change. Not long ago, Barack Obama, while he was still president, at the North American Leaders Summit in June 2016, took umbrage with the notion that Trump be called a “populist.” How could Trump be called a populist? He doesn’t care about working people. If anything, Obama argued he was the populist. If anything Obama argued, Bernie was the populist. It was Bernie who’d spent five decades fighting for working people. But Trump.
Something curious happens. If you watch Obama’s speeches after that point, more and more recently, he uses the word “populist” interchangeably with “strong man,” with “authoritarian.” The word changes meaning, it becomes a negative, a pejorative, a slur.
To me, populism is not a dirty word. Since the 2008 crash and specifically the trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout, we are in the populist age, and for good reason. The elites have failed.
Let me address some common fallacies, some of which have been made tonight. If the motion was that demagoguery was a threat to democracy, I would be on that side of the House. If the motion was that political violence was a threat to democracy, I’d be on that side of the house. January 6th has been mentioned — a dark day for America, indeed. And I’m sure Congresswoman Pelosi will agree that the entire month of June 2020, when the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon was under siege, and under insurrection by radical progressives, those too were dark days for America.
REP. NANCY PELOSI: You are not. There is no equivalence there.
WINSTON MARSHALL: So you don’t agree, that is fine. You don’t agree. That’s fine.
REP. NANCY PELOSI: It is not like what happened on January 6, which was an insurrection incited by the president of the United States.
WINSTON MARSHALL: So you don’t agree, but you will condemn those days.
My point, though is that all political movements are susceptible to violence, and indeed insurrection. And if we were arguing that fascism was a threat to democracy, I’d be on that side of the House.
Indeed, the current populist age is a movement against fascism. I’ve got quite a lot to get through.
Populism as you know, is the politics of the ordinary people against an elite, populism is not a threat to democracy. Populism is democracy, and why else have universal suffrage, if not to keep elites in check?
…
What about Big Tech? Throughout the pandemic, Biden’s team, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security colluded with Big Tech in censoring dissenting voices. Not kooky conspiracy theorists, people like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the Stanford epidemiologist, people like Harvard scientist Martin Kulldorf, people spreading true information, not misinformation, true information at odds with the government narrative.
Need I remind you, democracy without free speech is not democracy.
And I’ll say one last thing. This populist age can be brought to an end at the snap of a finger. All that needs to be done is for elites to start listening to, respecting, and God forbid, working for ordinary people. Thank you.
WATCH:
Nancy Pelosi did not like what I had to say…
Populism is not a threat to democracy.
Democrat elites like her are.
Watch my full Oxford Union speech from the debate with her: pic.twitter.com/ZNm8maNZjy
— Winston Marshall (@MrWinMarshall) May 10, 2024
