No it's not. It's a system whereby the powerful tell working class and low income common folk to be angry at things like immigrants, minorities, other countries, etc. so their anger goes elsewhere. A more modern alternate form involves convincing people to be angry at things that don't exist, like Satanic pedophiles harvesting adrenochrome or 5G chips in vaccines, so people expend their limited energy fighting windmills and diving down rabbit holes that lead nowhere.

Here's a good rule of thumb: if you are angry at someone about a condition such as high costs or unemployment, ask yourself if the people you are angry at have the power to act as decision makers in control of any of the decisions that led to that condition. If the answer is "no" you are angry at the wrong people.

That's not populism because it involves thinking, and populism is mindless.