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I really don't understand how this publication thinks it can get away with demanding subscriptions

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If you think there isn't a conspiracy at the highest levels of wealth, power, and government, maybe you deserve for them to rule over you.

Freedom is being outside their control.

We collectively should distrust the government, but this has nothing to do with right/left politics or populism

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There are many ways to look at trust. At first it seems like trust is an unequivocally good and desirable trait but take the case of trusting a predator. Is it a virtue to trust a predator?

It has happened many times in the past that states have become predatory and fallen into a path of mechanical destruction of the citizens, an orgy of destruction in the name of the state. The Spanish Inquisition is but one example, The Holocaust is another and the War on Drugs is yet another.

When the state becomes an agent of sadism that exists with punishment as its goal and justification for existence, trusting the state is no virtue, it is a vice --a moral failing.

Original study:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pops.12886

Abstract

Populism and beliefs in conspiracy theories fuel societal division as both rely on a Manichean us-versus-them, good-versus-evil narrative. However, whether both constructs have the same dispositional roots is essentially unknown. Across three studies conducted in two different countries and using diverse samples (total N = 1,888), we show that populism and conspiracy mentality have a strong common core as evidenced using bifactor modeling. This common core was uniquely linked to (aversive) personality, namely the Dark Factor of Personality (D), beyond basic personality traits from the HEXACO Model of Personality Structure. The association between D and the common core, in turn, was fully accounted for by distrust-related beliefs as captured in cynicism, dangerous and competitive social worldviews, sensitivity to befallen injustice, and (low) trust propensity. Taken together, the results show that populism and conspiracy mentality have a shared psychological basis that is well described as a sociopolitically flavored manifestation of generalized dispositional distrust. The findings thus underscore the value of generalized trust for societal functioning and suggest that increasing trust may simultaneously combat both populism and beliefs in conspiracy theories.

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Sounds like realists to me.

I’m not a populist nor a conspiracy theorist, but I distrust all of you and all of society. Civilization is a farce. No authority is legitimate.

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Like when elderly widows blindly trust someone to manage their money and the next thing you know they’re savings are gone.

Why is populism bad exactly? Switzerland is populist to its core and it does very well. Why is it a good thing that our government in the US no matter what party they are in failing to do things all American want a good thing?

Today there’s only one place to put your trust.

In yourself

Uh, did this need to be a study? Pretty sure that was obvious from the start; it's kinda the whole deal with those mindsets.

Because populism as a political movement almost always involves “othering” some group and scapegoating them for all your problems. In extreme cases this can lead to violence against said group or groups and can be dangerous

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>this has nothing to do with right/left politics

The right exists to rationalize elite worship, while the left exists to destroy it. They’ll both claim the latter but if you pay any attention at all, it’s obvious which one is lying. Those are the sides, and if you don’t pick and pick the correct one, you’re giving up your vote to the entrenched power structures represented by the right.

And we can’t other the Oligarchy.

The thing is we have good reason to distrust society.