Populism, Rhetoric and Democracy. An Approximation to the Populist Rhetoric's Functioning

this document presents an analysis of the functioning of populist rhetoric, which starts from two opposing perspectives on this political phenomenon. The first sees populism as a danger to democracy and defines its rhetoric as a device to deceive the masses. The second considers populism as that which establishes democracy and its rhetoric as the mechanism that allows the articulation of the people. The discussion that is woven between these two visions of populism will show that the role that the rhetorical element plays in each one of them determines the notion of democracy that serves as the assumption for their statements.