The only thing dated about that Time paragraph from almost half a century ago is “New Deal reforms.” An invasion of the Capitol building by ardent New Dealers would have required many more wheelchair ramps than the Americans with Disabilities Act We have a populism problem in America... One big, honking populist has just been shooed out of the White House. And his replacement – while more of an old political hack and Washington establishmentarian than a populist per se – is coming in trailing strong fumes of populism from his own political party.
stipulates, and New Deal disturbances in city business districts would have been limited to the occasional whacking of police riot shields with canes and the looting of Depends. Otherwise, Time puts it neatly. Populism is a muddle. This muddle may be “classic” in the sense that “disparate policies and passions” date to the beginnings of governance. But, in America, the type of muddle that’s currently on display began to manifest itself in 1874 with the founding of the “Greenback Party.” The main concern of the Greenback Party was inflation – they were for it. They felt that America’s post-Civil War return to the gold standard and a “sound dollar” gave too much power to big business and banking. They opposed deflation, believing lower prices were bad for “the little guy.” They wanted the government to print more money – because that way... everybody would have more money . Today, we would call them some sort of pinko flake advocates of Modern Monetary Theory.
Populism isn’t a Right-wing or Left-wing ideology. Populism isn’t an ideology at all... It’s about feelings, not ideas. Populism isn’t conservative or liberal, Republican or Democratic. But it is both MAGA and BLM, both QAnon and Antifa – AOC in a Boogaloo Boys Hawaiian shirt. A reasonably good definition of Populism can be found in an unsigned article from the April 17, 1972, issue of Time magazine cited by the Oxford English Dictionary : Populism is a label that covers disparate policies and passions: among many others, New Deal reforms, consumer rage against business, ethnic belligerence. Often it is merely a catch phrase. Yet it describes something real: the politics of the little guy against the big guy – the classic struggle of the haves against the have-nots or the have-not- enoughs.
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February 2021
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