Why is populism suddenly all the rage?

In 1998, about 300 Guardian articles mentioned populism. In 2016, 2,000 did. What happened?• Revealed: how populists tripled their vote over 20 yearsPopulism is sexy. Particularly since 2016 – the year of the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump – it seems as if journalists just cannot get enough of it. In 1998, the Guardian published about 300 articles that included the terms “populism” or “populist”. In 2015, these terms were used in about