Part 6 of a 10-part Series:
The Double-edged Sword of Populism
There has always been in our national experience a type of mind which elevates hatred to a kind of creed…For this mind, group hatreds take a place in politics similar to the class struggle in some other modern societies. “
Richard Hofstadter, 1963, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
Populism is a political movement that purports to champion the “common person” against a real or perceived elite that exerts an inordinate amount of power over the life of everyday people. The paradox of populism is that it can come from either the right (anti-government) or the left (anti-corporate), and its effects can be either progressive or regressive.
Populism often arises in response to real injustice, but then may morph into something darker as it gains power. A good example of this is the Jacobin Club of the French Revolution. It was formed by mostly middle and upper-middle class persons, and its goal was to preserve the gains of the revolution by preventing a reactionary backlash from the aristocratic elites. The Jacobins increased their membership by recruiting lower-middle-class shopkeepers and artisans, and they became increasingly radicalized. During the trial of King Louis XIV, moderates who opposed violence were excluded from the club. What followed was the Reign of Terror, where many people were publicly executed. The Jacobins were blamed, and they were eventually abolished.
Here in America, perhaps the earliest example of populism was Shay’s Rebellion in 1786-1787. A group of farmers who were subject to bank foreclosure violently stormed courthouses in Massachusetts. The governing authorities in some states (who were comprised of elites) were concerned whether they would be able to suppress future such rebellions themselves. Shay’s rebellion was the event that motivated the American Constitutional convention (May-September 1787). A national government would allow the states to combine defenses against future challenges to “property.”
Later populism in America was associated with the Progressive era (1877-1917). This was the period characterized by the ascendance of industrialism, the growth of monopolies, and rampant inequality. For most of the “regular folks,” there was a major shift from livelihoods on small family farms or independent shops to wage labor. It was the period where businesses combined to form huge “trusts,” which allowed regionally dominant businesses to merge across state lines. The enlargement of trusts created the American Gilded Age and prompted passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. This was more than a matter of money and raging inequality, but presented a threat to democracy itself, as the voices of regular people were increasingly unable to be heard in the halls of Congress that had been captured by big money.
The Progressive Populist movement pushed forward trust busting (the Sherman Act), reform of government corruption and cronyism (the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883), and the labor union movement. Although the Progressives themselves were not directly responsible for violence, violence and unrest frequently appeared around labor strikes. Like today, while the mainstream press often blamed the striking workers, later investigations found that it was often created by Pinkertons (a vigilante law enforcement group hired by the industrialists) or federal and state national guard troops responding to requests to defend factories.
More recent examples of American populism are represented by the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. Although these movements are frequently portrayed as opposites, in their early days they sometimes were described as two sides of a very angry coin. Both were motivated to some degree by the government bailout of Wall Street and big banks during the Great Recession of 2007-2009, while the pain of Main Street and working people was ignored. Although both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street started as grass roots response to injustices against “the people,” the Occupy movement faded out due to lack of organization and resources. Conversely, the Tea Party movement morphed into something much more organized and better funded—including the support of right-wing billionaires.
Throughout American history, various groups have been demonized: Abolitionists, Mormons, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, African-Americans and other peoples of color, immigrants, bankers and intellectuals. We can intuit that the demonization of the latter (bankers and intellectuals) came from the ground up, whereas other forms of demonization were likely more generalized. Anti-intellectualism is a common element of populism in America.
Some of us remember former Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s calling students protesting the Vietnam War “effete snobs.” The intellectual is portrayed as someone who is content to live a life of the mind, safely ensconced within the Ivory Tower and immune from the hard work and exempt from fighting wars that all the rest of “us” must do. The intellectual is stereotypically described as enjoying an unearned social superiority while contributing nothing of real value to the rest of society. Intellectuals are the ones who live in an abstract world of spreadsheets and data, who jet off for meetings in fancy places like Davos, where they make decisions resulting in lost jobs and shuttered factories.
In modern times, the buzzwords are “meritocracy” and “professionalism,” along with their messages that only those with requisite (usually expensive) training and degrees are qualified to make certain decisions. We can sympathize with populist arguments that “elites” were behind policies (e.g., globalized trade and rapid technological change) that made a few very wealthy while destroying jobs and impoverishing the communities that were left out of the decisions.
In real life, however, the targets of anti-intellectualism are not always so easy to identify. Typical non-Wall Street targets are higher-level public administrators and university professors. Although public administrators can be co-opted by the managerial ethos (get more work out of everyone for less), they are also public servants—most who genuinely want to see their work make a difference and improve communities. Likewise, many university professors genuinely want to improve the future through their students, and they often share the angst of their working-class neighbors—managing larger classes with fewer resources and constantly under threats from “the Administration.” Or state legislatures. Indeed, professional-level workers are increasingly subject to many of the same forms of inferiorization typically experienced by blue-collar workers.
While “bottom-up” driven populist anti-intellectualism is usually based on legitimate grievances (and may sometime serve to advance democratic ideals), todays anti-intellectualism is a top-down driven version with entirely different roots and purposes: Oil and gas companies deny climate change, the corporatocracy and the wealthy promote “trickle down” economics, notwithstanding all the evidence that it doesn’t work as they claim. This form of anti-intellectualism allows them to whip up the working class against “intellectual elites.” Which, remarkably, never includes the well-paid white-paper “researchers” at their own posh think tanks.
