slopulism en · NOUN
Etymology
Blend of slop + populism.
Meanings
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(derogatory, neologism, uncountable) Populism characterized by low-quality (often gen AI) memes and conspiracy theories.
Excessive contrarianism against the liberal establishment has also resulted in slopulism spiralling off into the most moronic of conspiracy theories.
2025 May 2, Endeavour, “Against Slopulism”, in Counter-Currents, archived from the original on 21 Jun 2025:The key ingredient to this online soup is extremism: from nativism to racial science to casual neo-Nazism and textbook misogyny. Presented to followers via livestreams, memes and X posts, this deluge of far-right content has been called "slopulism" — a vibes-based politics designed for social media and born from social media.
2025 July 10, Nathan Taylor Pemberton, “Trolling Democracy”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:In light of this anti-tax slopulism, it bears repeating that taxes per se are not bad. They are not a punishment, they are not theft. They may be misused, but that depends on how frequently we choose to elect Republicans.
2026 May 22, Justin Briley, “We Owe Each Other Better: Reject Slopulism, Embrace Building the Republic”, in Liberal Currents:A spectre is haunting the online right—the spectre of slopulism. Musk now pays X users for impressions. This financially incentivizes people to produce slop (they're putting PRONOUNS in the drinking water!).
2025 May 19, Russell Walter, “The Spectre of Slopulism”, in The Russell Walter Substack, archived from the original on 30 Jul 2025:
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(derogatory, neologism, uncountable) Populism characterized by vague, disingenuous, or excessively idealistic claims.
Slopulism, as described by these commentators, is a kind of political post that elides concrete political concerns in favor of the fast-acting satisfactions of social media rage and culture-war jargon.
2026 February 13, Nathan Taylor Pemberton, “Is 'Slopulism' Shaping Our Politics?”, in The New York Times:Already, skeptics joke about slopulism — a term for populist appeals that seem unserious or superficial, the equivalent of clickbait. Some of the budget math looks, even to progressives, a bit questionable, and it’s not clear, for all the talk of economic injustice, whether the party really means it.
2026 March 18, David Wallace-Wells, “Can the Democrats Become the Party of the People Again?”, in The New York Times:But Democratic lawmakers are failing just as badly to articulate an alternative vision. Instead, some of them seem to be trying to out-Trump the president with their own brand of “slopulism”—half-baked policy proposals that sound good only if you don’t think too hard about them, and that would, if enacted, hurt the people they’re supposed to help.
2026 March 18, Ben Ritz, “Democrats Learned the Wrong Lesson From 2024”, in The Atlantic: