The Blue Voice ponders Jerry Brown, radical politics on both sides of the spectrum, civil liberties, and more in a thoughtful post.
They quote from an interview Jerry Brown did with The Progressive in 1995. Brown makes a crucial point, that militia anger is based on real grievances. The Blue Voice thinks Brown misses the dangerous [...]
Posts Tagged ‘populism’
If the left does not make an effort to organize populist anger then the right will grab it by default
Palin, resentments, and populism
Frank Rich. NY Times
Culture is politics. Palin is at the red-hot center of age-old American resentments that have boiled up both from the ascent of our first black president and from the intractability of the Great Recession for those Americans who haven’t benefited from bailouts. As Palin thrives on the ire of the left, so [...]
Former Masters of the Universe want to become Street Fighting Men
Wall Streeters can get special lessons in “How To Kill” at an upcoming Vegas seminar.
I guess they’re feeling like targets lately, what with the rising tide of populism and anger against them. And to think they used to be Masters of the Universe. In a forgotten era long ago, they once were actually admired and [...]
The direction of working-class populism
John Russo of the Center for Working-Class Studies details how populism increasingly is cutting across class and political boundaries. But the left hasn’t realized that yet and liberals too often side with corporatists while failing to realize that the Glenn Becks of the world have followings because they are tapping into quite real populist anger.
Some [...]
Corporate piracy decried by Populist Party presidential candidate, 1892
In 1892, the Populists’ People’s Party ran James Baird Weaver as their Presidential candidate. That same year, Weaver published “A Call to Action,” which offered a cogent indictment of the rise of the Corporate State in place of the recently dismantled Slave State in America.
That’s a crucial point. Slavery, and the economic system that went [...]
The Populist Party and the Democrats, 1896
A major third party fractures on whether to stay independent and radical or merge with the Democrats and try to push them to the left.
No, this wasn’t factions in the Green Party in 1996-2004, but the Populist Party in 1896. Well then, this particular debate has been going on for quite some time, hasn’t [...]
The agrarian populist revolt of the 1890’s
From the amazing Democracy School subsite at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
The Agrarian Populist Movement was the largest people’s struggle for democracy in U.S. history. After the Civil War, with the demise of the Slave State and the rise of the Corporate State, capital became increasingly concentrated and farmers across the continent were being [...]
Populists saw Democrats / Republicans as Tweedledum vs. Tweedleedee robbing the public
From the Missouri State University online collection of populist cartoons of Worth Robert Miller, who has assembled a huge online resource about US populism.
Populists claimed that Democratic and Republican politicians agitated meaningless issues, such as tariff revision, in demagogic attempts to divert people’s attention from the real problems that producers faced. Notice where the politician’s [...]
Populist Party Platform, 1892. (It could have been written for today)
The populists of the 1890’s arose in response to the Robber Baron excesses of that Gilded Age of robbery and plunder by a few against the many – an era quite a lot like ours.
Update the language in their 1892 platform, and it could be written about our current times.
The conditions which surround us best [...]
The financial crisis. It’s not about left vs. right. But is increasingly populist
Dylan Ratigan’s ‘The Cost of Corporate Communism‘ has appeared all over the net recently. He hosts MSNBC’s ‘Morning Meeting’ and uses ‘corporate communism’ to ‘describe the ruling-elite corporate/financial EMPIRE that has taken over our country’ as an OPEdNews diary puts it.
The massive spike in unemployment, the utter destruction of retirement wealth, the [...]
The Battle of Athens. Armed populist uprising against corruption. Tennessee, 1946
Returning battle-hardened veterans from WWII took matters into their own hands after a viciously corrupt election in Athens, TN in 1946 enforced by violence and intimidation by police against the veteran’s slate of candidates. There were 200 armed “deputies” at the voting booths. One deputy shot a African-American man trying to vote. Poll watchers were [...]
If the left doesn’t organize them, the right will
This awesome rant howls about the cluelessness of liberals moaning about health care while wars rage and elites plunder the economy. This also, I must add, includes the maddeningly comatose behavior of the radical left who during this massive crisis of capitalism has been doing precisely nothing.
(I’m not sure who the author is, it doesn’t [...]
California ballot propositions crushed
All the ballot propositions were defeated except for F (which limits pay raises for state officials). The budget train wreck continues.
Make no mistake, this was a voter revolt. And it was across the board. As mentioned before, both the right wing Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Foundation and the Peace and Freedom Party, the only socialist [...]
Making change. Coalitions and populism
Reader KN in the comments to my John Rich “They’re Shutting Detroit Down” post refers to a World Socialist Web Site article on Rich, saying it has an interesting take on the song. I’d say it takes a standard doctrinaire Marxist view, which is that since Rich is right wing all this must be suspect [...]
Who controls the country? AIG and raging populism
Who controls the country? The government or Wall Street? That answer will determine the ferocity of the populism.
John Robb
Viral violence incoming. As this NYTimes article points out, the public is actively targeting AIG execs. Death threats have resulted in armed guards posted at the company’s offices and at executive mansions.
The Big Picture
American history is replete [...]
