When it comes to the spicier cultural issues that generate flame wars online, I tend to find myself falling on the side of the conservatives. The exceptions to this are LGBT rights and drug use, but these days, these issues seem to divide more on old/young lines than conservative/liberal lines anyway.
I'm strongly against all forms of gun control. I believe that nations often have the responsibility to get involved in the affairs of other nations, including militarily. My diet consists mostly of red meat and I have a longstanding beef with vegans. I find media that overtly panders to minorities irritating whether or not I'm in said minority. I believe that wealthy liberals are intentionally and maliciously fanning the flames of race and gender conflicts to break down community bonds to make people easier to manipulate. Yadda yadda.
In short, when it comes to cultural views, I'm a milquetoast example of exactly what you'd expect to find from a young, online, cultural conservative, or at least libertarian.
And yet, despite all of this, I'm a Socialist. Not a Socialist-lite or Social Democrat in the vein of Bernie Sanders, but a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist.
I believe corporations are fundamentally evil to the core. I believe the overwhelming majority of working people in the US (and probably the world) are being ruthlessly exploited by a class of nobles we'd all be better off without. As a result, I believe we have an ethical responsibility to favor trade unions, strikes, and literally anything that protects workers from corporations. I believe the only realistic long-term result of unchecked Capitalism with rapidly improving technology is a dystopia. Yadda yadda.
Now, neither my cultural beliefs nor my economic beliefs are particularly unusual. The proportion of people in the US identifying as an Economic Leftists or Socialists has gone up every year since 1989, and the cultural conservatives, reactionaries, anti-progs, and anti-woke types are growing rapidly as well. Yet, I've never met anyone else in the overlap.
The combination of cultural Conservatism and economic Socialism is what's historically been called Populism, so that's how I'll be using that word. (I'm clarifying this because some people call Trump a "populist", but he's about as anti-socialist as someone can be, so I'm not using that word the same way as these people.)
Looking to the past, I can see lots of examples of this kind of Populism, especially in the first half of the 20th century, but practically nothing in the present. Libertarians are culturally liberal and economically conservative, and there's loads of them, so you'd think the opposite would also be true, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
With this in mind, I have 3 questions for this community:
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Why are there drastically fewer Populists today than there were in the past?
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Besides "Populist", what are some other names for the belief system I'm describing?
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Where are all the Populists that are left? I assume there's not literally zero, and that some of them hang out online together somewhere, so where are they? Are there populist blogs? Populist forums? Populist subreddits?
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Notes -
I would say that your definition of socialism has been abandoned.
DC is full of people who are better described as ruthlessly exploitive nobles.
While the left in the US pays lip service to workers rights, the prevailing view is that greedy American workers deserve to have their jobs offshored. Baristas deserve $15/h but it's just fine to hire illegals at less then minimum wage to perform work around your home.
Worker's rights are all well and good, but they don't mean much when a federal bureaucrat can bankrupt your employer on a whim.
It's hard to go into more detail without knowing the specifics of what socialism means to you.
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