This chapter repudiates the increasingly common attempts to read contemporary politics through the lens of populism. It argues that a notion of populism, if overstated, risks analytically obscuring the racial nationalisms that in fact underlie any such populist politics. First, there are many dissenters who cite Catalonia and Scotland as countervailing witnesses to the possibilities of progressive nationalism. The chapter suggests that the progressive nationalism case remains too anachronistic and distorted a reading of what contemporary nationalisms, especially those carved from within Europe, are currently capable of. As regards populism, it also suggests that this concept, if even necessary, is best read from within nationalism, it enjoys very little substantive content that is sufficiently distinctive to remain meaningfully outside of an understanding of nationalism.