On the Internet, I learned that populism is generally understood as a potentially violent reaction of the common people to the elite privileges of a few. Populism can be either right-wing, in which case it may rally around nativism/xenophobia, or left-wing and then it often latches onto socialism.
But populism is now found through much of Europe; the anti-austerity insurrections in Greece, Italy, and Spain, for instance. Some people say Donald Trump was elected through populism. Here is a quote I found from 2010:
'In his conversation with the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine, van Rompuy, the former president of the European Council, offered a succinct answer. Not neoliberalism, not plutocracy: “the greatest danger to the contemporary West” he told his German colleagues, “is populism.” '
So, what is populism? And, were the insurrections on Evergreen College campus in Washington State populist?