Populism demonstrated

YouTuber’s political announcement was just a “trick”

Chemist Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim reaches a large audience on her YouTube channel "maiLab".(Bild: instagram.com/maithink)

A few days ago, YouTube star and scientist Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim caused a stir with her announcement that she wanted to go into politics. Now she has revealed her plans - or rather told us that there never were any. Her statement only served as an experiment to demonstrate the "tricks" of populism, she explained in her latest post.

The German had declared in a video statement: "I'm worried about the future of our country and I'm no longer just watching this." She claimed she wanted to take up the fight against a "disastrous" climate of debate and announced her intention to "shake up a gridlocked establishment with an outsider's view". But all those who had been looking forward to the scientist entering politics have now been disappointed in another video.

The video clip entitled "This is how we get screwed by politics" on YouTube:

Populism used for anti-populism video
"For everyone who was happy - thank you!" the presenter said in a post on her YouTube channel "maiLab", expressing her delight at the approval of her supposed new career in politics. However, she clarifies the actual background to the statement: "I ended up using populism myself in my own anti-populism video." She wanted to demonstrate "how susceptible we all are to populism".

Chemist Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim reaches a large audience on her YouTube channel "maiLab".(Bild: instagram.com/maithink)

She admits: "I don't notice populism so easily when it represents attitudes that correspond to mine." Although she only listed problems and did not mention any solutions, "some people still wanted to vote for me" - simply because she used populist methods.

Apology for experiment: was a "trick"
"But just so it's clear: I'm not going into politics". She never directly claimed that. "I didn't lie," she smiles. "This trick is called calculated ambivalence," she clarifies, "and I want to apologize for that very sincerely." She had only needed a plausible excuse to demonstrate populism. However, she meant every word she said and her criticism of the discussion climate seriously.