Populist modeling.

I often manage to recognize a populist party even when the vulgate would like it to be the opposite. For example, if it were up to me you shouldn't say "third wave feminism", but simply "feminist populism", even if feminism is normally associated with the left, which is normally considered (wrongly) immune to populism.

There is a characteristic that unites all, and I repeat all, populisms.

Let's make a comparison between Salvini's League, or the populist right in general, and feminists.

If we take the League, we immediately notice an aversion towards migrants, and the justification will be that they commit crimes, such as rape and murder. On the other hand, even the fans of Meloni and those like, say, Larussa, in turn have it against the crimes of gypsies, migrants, and in the case of La Russa also with drug dealing. They also have other messages, but these are indispensable, they are identity.

If we take feminist populism, we find that it in turn focuses on two messages: rape, violence against women, femicide. Then there are other messages in their carnet, but in the end the recurring ones, those of identity, those that cannot be renounced.

If we take the populists of the past, such as Di Pietro or Travaglio, we also discover Grillo that they bet everything on the idea of ​​"honesty", where it coincides with the fact that the politician "does not steal", "is clean" and more. Although there are other messages, those of identity are those concerning "the honest politician", "the politician who does not steal", "the politician with a clean record".

You immediately see a common trait in these movements:

all populist movements, sooner or later, describe the whole society starting from crime.

When the feminist talks about rape, domestic violence and femicide, we know where it will go: she will accuse the ENTIRE society of being a society of rape, domestic violence and femicide. A society, they say, "patriarchal".

When the Northern League talks about the crimes committed by migrants or Roma, he does nothing but describe the whole society starting from the analysis of the crimes. And when he begins to do so, we know well where he will go: he will say that today the whole society is a society of crime, risk and fear, because of immigrants.

Even when populists like Grillo start talking about honesty and uncensored, we know where they want to go: they want to describe the whole politics and the whole society starting from crime.

It is therefore a typical feature.

The problem is not, as it seems, just that the sample size is not enough. It sure isn't.

As you can see, in addition to being a downward trend, the homicide rate is measured in units PER HUNDRED THOUSAND INHABITANTS. You understand that you are trying to make a model of the whole society starting from a sample of two per hundred thousand.

This is obvious, but there is a second thing that is NOT considered. It is not considered that "the criminals" are not just any random sample.

If I want to know, what do I know, if a vaccine works, I'm not just going to test "healthy white males aged 18 to 22". This would not be a good sample, since it is a NON-representative minority.

Even if I took a quantity of healthy white males aged 18 to 22, sufficient to be the sample for an estimate, I would still fail because the sample is not representative.

Likewise, it's not that if crime reaches levels that are quantitatively a sample, then it will represent everyone. And this is because, as a cluster, criminals are NOT representative.

In the case of feminists, using rapists and murderers as a champion to describe society and deciding that it is a violent patriarchy is not wrong in a quantitative sense: it is wrong in a qualitative sense, because the most violent and misogynistic males are chosen for prove that society is violent and misogynistic.

Likewise, choosing thieving politicians to prove that politicians are all thieves, like choosing criminal immigrants to prove immigrants to be criminals, is another form of cherry-picking.

But this is not just any cherry-picking. It is, in fact, a characteristic feature of populism, I would say: to describe the whole society starting from the description of the criminal environments.

It is a very old vice: almost always, when we talk about a film about the Camorra, it is not said that it is a cross-section of the crime of Naples: it is said that it is a cross-section of the society of Naples.

When describing the Lombard underworld, one speaks of "violent Milan", rather than "violent Milanese crime".

That is, there is a tendency in the whole of modern culture to identify society with its criminals. A crime documentary is automatically viewed as a documentary about the entire local society.

And it is on this cultural pillar that the populist vision is based: since the criminal world, with its society, is offered as a portrait (if not as an explanation or intimate knowledge) of the whole society, clearly the populist movement will have I am comfortable in describing the situation of the country starting from the situation of its crime: not for nothing, I think that Saviano is a populist.

Some think that this has something to do with romantic decadence, others with the realism of Sciascia and Verga, but the thing does not change: to describe the company starting from a group selected to prove our thesis, which is a borderline and very rare group. , it is an operation that can only lead to wrong results.

In any case, going back, one of the tools to recognize populism is just this: if someone describes the state of the whole society starting from crime, it is usually a populist.