Populism, being an ideologically unanchored political style, is neither left nor right. There are populist leaders on both the right and the left, and at both extremes. The characteristic of populism is precisely that it neutralizes the left/right distinction: "neither left nor right" embodies the "anti-party" or "anti-political" dimension of populist movements. The difference between revolutionary and conservative positions is also neutralized.

Every populist leader who addresses the people claims to point out their real enemies, the "ones above" (the unlawful elites), those around ("the system"), or those from elsewhere (the hostile foreigners, the invading immigrants), and primarily the hidden enemies within the national body - hence the conspiratorial view, which is represented by one or another "theory of conspiracy," commonly found in the speeches or writings of populist leaders.

Apart from the decisive contribution of P.-A. Taguieff to understanding the new far-right populism, this essay helps us comprehend the "spontaneous" mobilization of the (Greek) "Indignant" as a miserable mobilization. For Taguieff, we cannot sufficiently understand this phenomenon solely through the interpretative category of populism. It requires recourse to the category of "victimization", focusing our analytical interest on the "display" of compassion and the unconditional glorification of "innocent victims". We need to see this mobilization of disillusioned and desperate segments of the popular and middle classes descending the social ladder for what it is: mournful, saturated with just or unjust "grievances of the victims", but also filled with "hatred" against the "ones above", the "corrupt" ("all rotten", "all the same"), the "kleptocracy", without any real insurrectionary dynamic.