Rightwing Populism, or Anti-Populism Writ Large

One hundred and twenty-four years ago the Populist Party collaborated with the Democratic Party and ran the young radical William Jennings Bryan for president of the United States on the Democratic ticket against Republican William McKinley. His platform: “There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-do-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through to those below. . . . if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.” This, of course, turned out the entire business class against him—journalists, academics, clergy, and vast amounts of Republican money—and McKinley won the election.

In 2016 Independent Party member Bernie Sanders collaborated with the Democratic Party and was screwed by not only the entire business class but by the Democratic Party as well. Bernie’s platform: support the working class by unending an economic system that supposedly “leaks to those below”—in today’s parlance called “trickle down economics”—with one that yes, makes the masses prosperous.

In between, we had the New Deal with FDR, which conquered the Great Depression, discredited capitalism around the world, established a safety net, strengthened unions, and created a middleclass America, where auto workers and construction workers could afford to buy the things they built.

Today, the only time the word “populism” is used is to describe the populist right, signified by Donald Trump. Instead of reflecting a progressive economic agenda to empower the working class, it’s associated with authoritarianism, bigotry, anti-immigration, deregulation, and tax cuts for the rich.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump was planning a similar game to the one Steve Bannon cooked up: citing the financial crisis and the bailouts as the “inciting incident” for the global populist rebellion he wanted to lead (Thomas Frank, The People, No: a brief history of anti-populism). On the issue of trade, for example, Trump took an unusual stance for a Republican, constantly criticizing NAFTA and trade with China, the bêtes-noires of organized labor, and reaching out to alienated white, working-class voters, the rank and file of so may historical protest movements. He said he cared so very much about the people of the deindustrialized zones and their sufferings. He claimed to feel for the victims of the opioid crisis.

And then . . . the working-class hero in the Oval Office delivered a landmark tax cut for the rich. Trump deregulated Wall Street banks, too. With his attacks on Obamacare, the president did his part to make our capitalistic system just a little more brutal and Darwinian for ordinary people. He turned over the judiciary to the elites of the Federalist Society. He turned over the economy to the Chamber of Commerce. He turned the EPA over to polluters. He ran the US government in a way designed to enrich and empower himself. The one leadership task to which Trump took with enthusiasm—rolling back the regulatory state—is essentially an attack on one of the few institutions in Washington designed to help working-class Americans. If this is populism, the word has truly come to mean nothing.

Now that Trump is banished to Mar-a-Lago we have senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz ready to pick up the populist cause claiming Republicans represent the “party of the working class.” It’s enough to make you an anarchist: Republicans and Democrats alike spinning their claims like Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold.