Unlike most other political notions, like democracy or authoritarianism, for example, there seems to exist no “ideal type” of populism, which also explains why the brand is almost as frequent on the left as on the right. This is also why the term invites ideological confusion. As established politicians and commentators grope for words in order to confront the unpleasant face of today’s political life, populism often comes in handy as their cri de guerre, naming an enemy against which we must mobilize democratic institutions, liberal values, and civic virtues. To be sure, such reactions are welcome and needed as a defense against the world’s Bolsonaros, Erdogans, Trumps, Modis, Salvinis, and Orbans. But are they sufficient? The rhetoric elicited by these authoritarian tendencies shows that populism is a label emerging from the embattled center of politics, and it usually warns against invasion by political outsiders. This is also to say that populism is a normative political concept, not a sociological or historical one. In order to grasp the antagonisms covered up by the discourse on populism we should, I suggest, relate it to two other categories that tend to crop up as the two opposite poles of this discourse: the fascist and the migrant. Both are, strangely, designations of “the popular,” but with contrasting relationships to political power. In what follows, I first trace these categories in contemporary political discourse and I then describe how they shape aesthetic imaginaries of “the people.”