Race is the Base of Both Right and Left Wing Populism

 

Race is the Base of Both Right- and Left-Wing Populisms

Back on the blog scene and hope to post with more regularity now as I settle into my retirement routine.

As we witness the drama in the nation’s capitol we must be reminded that at its extreme political polarization is not just vigorous difference of opinion about what is going on. In the case of America today it is an indication that we have two nations within our national territory. It has become fashionable to refer to them as conservative Red America and liberal Blue America. But Liz Frombgem and I have been arguing since 2009 that what we actually are experiencing is the deepening entrenchment of two American nations fueled by grassroots populist passions on both sides. Furthermore, we posit that divergent values regarding race are at the center of these national divisions (Johnson and Frombgen, 2009).

I have been blogging and lecturing about the two nations thesis since 2017 when Trump got elected; but I haven’t talked much about its link to populism. Populism is not so much an ideology as it is a “political logic” mobilizing the common people against big government and the most powerful economic interests. Because populism is an attitude rather than an ideology it can manifest across the ideological continuum from right to left.

The Populist Party raged against big government and big capital in the 1890s. But the origins of populist sentiments can be seen in the era of the American Revolution. Shays’ Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion of that period were rooted in a sense that the revolutionary political elite were not devising economic policies in the interests of the common people, many of whom had fought in the war (Formisano, 2008). Those earliest manifestations of populism featured cross-class coalitions of workers, small farmers and shopkeepers.

Populist logic against the collusion of elites with government became uncoupled in the 19^th century. Andrew Jackson’s presidential campaign slogan in 1828 was “Andrew Jackson and the Will of the People.” His “people” were the Jeffersonian “yeoman farmers” poised against revolutionary era eastern seaboard elites. His call for universal white male suffrage, though, had cross-class appeal among white men. Jacksonian democracy ignored the rights of white women, dispossessed indigenous people and his own slaves. Thus, we see white patriarchal nationalism centered in this right-wing brand of populism.

By the 1840s populist movements for the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage had emerged. These thrusts from the left also lambasted the collusion of economic elites with the government, but their causes sought to dismantle systemic racism and patriarchy, respectively. Among the women prominent early in the suffragist movement were folks who had cut there teeth in opposition to slavery (Angela Davis, 1981). My writings on populism focus on the differing role that race plays in shaping populisms of the left and right, and that will be my primary focus in talking about populism in this space. But I do wish to point out that feminist populism had important roots in the populist movement to abolish Black slavery.

Populisms of left and right are always multi-class in nature, but in white supremacist America they cannot help but be also racial. Today’s traditonal American conservatism is being pushed to the right by white supremacist/nationalist populist forces. At the same time American liberalism is being pushed left by progressive social democratic populism. This white nationalism of the right and social democracy on the left form the bases of the two American nations dividing the country today. In upcoming posts I will unpack how right populism seeks to unite all classes of whites to defend white supremacy, and how left populism aspires to a multiracial, cross-class democracy. Stay tuned! 

References

 Vernon D. Johnson and Elizabeth Frombgen, "Racial Contestation and the Emergence of Populist                     Nationalism in the United States, Social Identities, September 2009, URL: http://dx.doi.org                    /10.1080/13504630903205290 

 Formisano, Ronald. For the People: American Populist Movements from the Revolution to the 1850s.                 Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

Angela Davis,  "The Anti-Slavery Movement and the Birth of Women's Rights, from Angela Davis,                  Women, Race  and Class, New York: Random House Publishers, 1981.

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