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When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists and the Origins of Trumpism
Brought to you by Penguin.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A BARACK OBAMA SUMMER PICK
A rollicking, revelatory look at the tumult of the early 1990s and the rise of a new, more berserk America that birthed the Donald Trump Era
‘ When the Clock Broke is leagues more insightful on the subject of Trump’s ascent than most writing that purports to address the issue directly’ Washington Post
‘Terrific . . . Vibrant . . . When the Clock Broke is one of those rarest of unflaggingly entertaining while never losing sight of its moral core’ New York Times
With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated and US power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a ‘kinder, gentler America.’ Instead, it was a period of punishing economic hardship, rising anger and domestic strife, setting the tone for the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today.
The early 1990s climate of despair was weaponized by con men, conspiracists and racists – notably the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke – both in the wider culture and at the ballot box. In other words, they sought to ‘break the clock’ of progress and ‘repeal the twentieth century’. They gave Americans’ resentment a shape and direction, and forged a new kind of paranoid, conspiratorial politics where harmless roguishness and vicious hate became mixed up, as well as declaring a culture war on liberal elites. It was in this moral confusion that the ‘indigenous American berserk’, as Philip Roth put it, took on new and ever-wilder forms.
In this rollicking, original and often hilarious book, John Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of the conspiratorial politics that birthed Donald Trump’s America.
One of the Washington Post ’s 10 Best Books of 2024
One of the New York Times ’ 100 Notable Books of 2024
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award 2024
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A BARACK OBAMA SUMMER PICK
A rollicking, revelatory look at the tumult of the early 1990s and the rise of a new, more berserk America that birthed the Donald Trump Era
‘ When the Clock Broke is leagues more insightful on the subject of Trump’s ascent than most writing that purports to address the issue directly’ Washington Post
‘Terrific . . . Vibrant . . . When the Clock Broke is one of those rarest of unflaggingly entertaining while never losing sight of its moral core’ New York Times
With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated and US power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a ‘kinder, gentler America.’ Instead, it was a period of punishing economic hardship, rising anger and domestic strife, setting the tone for the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today.
The early 1990s climate of despair was weaponized by con men, conspiracists and racists – notably the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke – both in the wider culture and at the ballot box. In other words, they sought to ‘break the clock’ of progress and ‘repeal the twentieth century’. They gave Americans’ resentment a shape and direction, and forged a new kind of paranoid, conspiratorial politics where harmless roguishness and vicious hate became mixed up, as well as declaring a culture war on liberal elites. It was in this moral confusion that the ‘indigenous American berserk’, as Philip Roth put it, took on new and ever-wilder forms.
In this rollicking, original and often hilarious book, John Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of the conspiratorial politics that birthed Donald Trump’s America.
One of the Washington Post ’s 10 Best Books of 2024
One of the New York Times ’ 100 Notable Books of 2024
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award 2024
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First published June 18, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 641 reviews
September 4, 2024
The whole time I was reading I was thinking of it like, “this is sorta Gramsci’s cultural hegemony but comprised of total dickheads” and then Ganz just says it better than that on the last page. Loved this. The introduction is one of the greatest bits of historical writing I’ve ever read (and it’s so funny!)
August 19, 2024
Rarely have I come across a book that is as smooth a blending of erudition and entertainment as this one. In fairness, much of the entertainment aspect is provided by the politicians themselves, but I am confident that few authors would be able to highlight their foibles as adroitly as Ganz. And it would be hard to match the depth of his knowledge and understanding of US history in the second half of the 20th century.
Anyone with doubts about what was behind the 2016 US presidential election or Trump’s current campaign will find this illuminating reading. Even if you have a general idea about the causes, Ganz’ book is likely to open your eyes to ideas and connections that may have passed you by.
For my own part, although I was alive and reasonably alert during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and familiar with the most well-known people and events of the time, the names of many of the far right political theorists Ganz writes about were new to me. Sam Francis and Murray Rothbard, for instance, published in periodicals I didn’t read and so their radical right intellectualism was new to me.
But if Ganz had simply written about these ideologues this book would have been far less compelling than it is. The interest and the energy come from his skill at weaving these people into the major political and cultural stories of the early 1990s, with a primary focus on the presidential election of 1992.
Ganz’ message, in summary, is that the ideas propounded by David Duke, Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot did not come out of nowhere and definitely did not disappear following the election, which was handily won by Bill Clinton after G.H.W. Bush (“born to govern, not to lead”) and his team self-destructed. Ganz shows us how the concerns went back decades (see Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism for more detail on the anti-semitism issue) and how the frustrations of the farmers, former blue collar workers and others who felt they were poorly served by the political and economic establishments continued to simmer.
Filling out the story are a chapter on the Randy Weaver family, culminating with the Ruby Ridge “incident”, and other sections on the police, race relations and politics in L.A. and NYC. I have to say that after reading about his relationship with the corrupt NYC police during his second mayoral campaign, Rudy Giuliani’s involvement with all of the Trump shenanigans, up to and including January 6, 2021, does not seem out of character.
The “culture wars” that were first identified in the early 1990s - the desire to reclaim purported traditional American values vs. what seems to be an updated version of those values - are very obviously still with us today. I wonder if it will take another 30 years for someone to analyze our current situation as acutely as Ganz has in this book?
Anyone with doubts about what was behind the 2016 US presidential election or Trump’s current campaign will find this illuminating reading. Even if you have a general idea about the causes, Ganz’ book is likely to open your eyes to ideas and connections that may have passed you by.
For my own part, although I was alive and reasonably alert during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and familiar with the most well-known people and events of the time, the names of many of the far right political theorists Ganz writes about were new to me. Sam Francis and Murray Rothbard, for instance, published in periodicals I didn’t read and so their radical right intellectualism was new to me.
But if Ganz had simply written about these ideologues this book would have been far less compelling than it is. The interest and the energy come from his skill at weaving these people into the major political and cultural stories of the early 1990s, with a primary focus on the presidential election of 1992.
Ganz’ message, in summary, is that the ideas propounded by David Duke, Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot did not come out of nowhere and definitely did not disappear following the election, which was handily won by Bill Clinton after G.H.W. Bush (“born to govern, not to lead”) and his team self-destructed. Ganz shows us how the concerns went back decades (see Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism for more detail on the anti-semitism issue) and how the frustrations of the farmers, former blue collar workers and others who felt they were poorly served by the political and economic establishments continued to simmer.
Filling out the story are a chapter on the Randy Weaver family, culminating with the Ruby Ridge “incident”, and other sections on the police, race relations and politics in L.A. and NYC. I have to say that after reading about his relationship with the corrupt NYC police during his second mayoral campaign, Rudy Giuliani’s involvement with all of the Trump shenanigans, up to and including January 6, 2021, does not seem out of character.
The “culture wars” that were first identified in the early 1990s - the desire to reclaim purported traditional American values vs. what seems to be an updated version of those values - are very obviously still with us today. I wonder if it will take another 30 years for someone to analyze our current situation as acutely as Ganz has in this book?
January 13, 2024
First, as someone whose first political memories come from the 1992 election and surrounding events, I was really interested in this book. I'd also add that while scholarship about the 1990s is really now just starting, there had not been up to this point an analysis of the early 1990s and the changes that occurred. The shift from silent generation to baby boomer led government is a key factor for the ways in which America is governed, and the ensuing culture wars/political divisions throughout the decade.
The usual characters pop up here: presidential contenders, especially the losers of those contests, such as Patrick Buchanan. Buchanan's populist rhetoric has come more into focus with current events but Ganz does a great job looking at the surrounding context of his influence and message about the political discourse of the time. The analysis of David Duke was both useful and relevant, as I think he provided a template for some of the extremism that comes later.
Ganz's overarching message is that if we want to see where the metaphorical wheels come off, it has not just been in the past 10 years, or even this century. We have to see the late years of the 1900s as a bridge to the 21st in more than one way. We may not have recognized it at the time, but that is the power of history. The political tensions and divisions, along racial and socio-economic, as well as cultural, lines slowly developed into the "cold Civil War" as some refer to it today.
The usual characters pop up here: presidential contenders, especially the losers of those contests, such as Patrick Buchanan. Buchanan's populist rhetoric has come more into focus with current events but Ganz does a great job looking at the surrounding context of his influence and message about the political discourse of the time. The analysis of David Duke was both useful and relevant, as I think he provided a template for some of the extremism that comes later.
Ganz's overarching message is that if we want to see where the metaphorical wheels come off, it has not just been in the past 10 years, or even this century. We have to see the late years of the 1900s as a bridge to the 21st in more than one way. We may not have recognized it at the time, but that is the power of history. The political tensions and divisions, along racial and socio-economic, as well as cultural, lines slowly developed into the "cold Civil War" as some refer to it today.
August 30, 2024
4.5.
In the late 1980’s and early ‘90s, an economist named Murray Rothbard became a prominent voice in libertarian circles. He demanded a new, more aggressive and daring kind of Libertarian Conservatism, a movement that came to be known as Paleolibertarianism. In one speech, he spoke of being informed that American socialism was inevitable, given the success of the New Deal/Great Society Left in shaping American culture, politics, and the economy. "You can't turn back the clock!" he was told again and again. Pausing dramatically, Rothbard told his audience that history was now proving otherwise: "With the inspiration of the death of the Soviet Union before us, we now know that it can be done. With Pat Buchanan as our leader, we shall break the clock of social democracy. We shall break the clock of the Great Society. We shall break the clock of the New Deal... We shall repeal the twentieth century." Rothbard's audience, we are told, leapt to their feet, raucously cheering, "ready to storm the capital.”*
Many words have been said about how our present political landscape — with it’s Trumpian lies and excesses, QAnon conspiracies, racist violence, anti-government violence from the far right, and so on — is “unprecedented.” But as John Ganz shows in this book, there is precedence aplenty in our recent history, particularly in the 1990s. A chart could be made of parallels: Covid in 2020 and AIDS in the 90s; Trump today and Pat Buchanan then; Attorney General Bill Barr quashing investigations of the president then... and then again now; January 6, 2021, and Waco/Ruby Ridge/Timothy McVeigh then; the 2008 economic crisis and the deep recession of the early 90s; Rodney King (and others) then, BLM now; a war in Iraq; growing wealth inequality, culture wars, and efforts to overturn Roe v Wade, White supremacists, anti-immigrant movements, and something called "voter rage".
Ganz isn’t explicit in pointing out the parallels but he really doesn’t have to be. The uncertainties of the early 90s, most of them still with us, set the stage for what’s taking place today. The country was an unhappy, unsettled place. The American Dream seemed to have been a lie after all. Jobs were disappearing, moving to other countries. The collapse of the Soviet Union, along with the economic turndown and other factors, led to a movement to deep dissatisfaction with the GOP and so-called Conservativism. As a consequence, an effort began to completely redefine the Conservative movement in America — to shift from a platform for preserving old world views and values, and create instead an aggressive reshaping of the country. Murray Rothbard and the Paleolibertarians were calling for the repeal of the twentieth century, by which they meant the New Deal, Great Society, civil rights, women’s rights, welfare, etc. Each day's news today bears echoes of this movement.
Ganz begins the book by noting that while history is written by the winners, “Clock” is a “history of losers: candidates who lost their elections, movements that bubbled up and fizzled out, protests that exploded and dissipated… figures who became briefly famous or infamous and then were forgotten.” Some still recognized, others less so or not at all, but all of them were instrumental in shaping the country today.
We read, for example, about David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who was running for political office and getting positive national attention. And Ross Perot, a billionaire outsider who portrayed his business “success” as the model for what he could so as President of the United States, and who was very good at tapping into the economic resentments of the time. And Rush Limbaugh gaining an expanding national audience.
The book covers a lot of ground, too much for me to cover here without my review turning into an essay (which it will regardless). A few people and events particularly stood out for me; some I remember, others I’m not sure I even knew about at the time. Pat Buchanan, for example. Once a speech writer for Richard Nixon, he became the spokesman for an ugly form of American populism. It was Buchanan who coined the terms “silent majority” and “culture wars” (originally, “cultural wars”). He called for a “new nationalism” that would put “America first” (“…our Western heritage is going to be handed down to future generations, not dumped onto some land fill called multi-culturalism.”) His speeches and TV appearances were peppered with not very well disguised antisemitic tropes.
Ganz also covers racially motivated police violence in Los Angeles, New York City, and elsewhere. Police departments vigorously fighting against civilian oversight or interference, against accountability. And the invention of the phrase “thin blue line.” What really struck me was what was going on in New York where the police were very publicly working to undermine the city’s Black mayor, David Dinkins. There came a time when thousands of NYC cops, many of them drunk, attacked city hall, and others called in sick and blocked traffic on bridges. And carrying signs that read “HEY DINKINS, WE’LL PAY FOR YOUR FUNERAL” AND “DUMP THE WASHROOM ATTENDANT.” Before all this was done, a former US Attorney named Rudy Giuliani (whom journalist Mike McAlary called “the human scream machine”) began making a name for himself as a public figure eager for election to office.
Along with this Ganz writes about organized crime and the changing perception of the Mob in the American public and how this too fed into a stream visible today. Most prominent here is John Gotti, whose trial captivated the country. Giuliani played a role here too, as did a celebrity businessman named Donald Trump.
As “When the Clock Broke” demonstrates again and again, it’s not difficult to use the anger, resentment, and frustration of the American people as a way to manipulate them — for power, money, fame, or even violence. There were some, in fact, who viewed this as a good thing. Invoking the movie “The Magnificent Seven,” white supremacist Samuel Francis said that Americans needed to relearn how to fight: ”If there remain today any Americans who are not sheep, they’ll stop tying to hire phony populist gunfighters to save them from the wolfish bandits who run the country, and in the next four years they’ll start learning how to shoot from themselves.”
Familiar words. As they should be because we’re still hearing them again. The broad outlines of what we’re seeing in America today were certainly with us from the beginning (see, for example, Heather Cox Richardson’s “Democracy Awakening” or Robert Kagan’s “Rebellion,” among other books), the more concrete shapes and tropes we see today found expression in the 90s. Ganz has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of what and who we are now.
*It’s not in this book but I have to share it. Noam Chomsky once described Rothbard's ideal society as "a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it ... First of all, it couldn't function for a second—and if it could, all you'd want to do is get out, or commit suicide or something.”
In the late 1980’s and early ‘90s, an economist named Murray Rothbard became a prominent voice in libertarian circles. He demanded a new, more aggressive and daring kind of Libertarian Conservatism, a movement that came to be known as Paleolibertarianism. In one speech, he spoke of being informed that American socialism was inevitable, given the success of the New Deal/Great Society Left in shaping American culture, politics, and the economy. "You can't turn back the clock!" he was told again and again. Pausing dramatically, Rothbard told his audience that history was now proving otherwise: "With the inspiration of the death of the Soviet Union before us, we now know that it can be done. With Pat Buchanan as our leader, we shall break the clock of social democracy. We shall break the clock of the Great Society. We shall break the clock of the New Deal... We shall repeal the twentieth century." Rothbard's audience, we are told, leapt to their feet, raucously cheering, "ready to storm the capital.”*
Many words have been said about how our present political landscape — with it’s Trumpian lies and excesses, QAnon conspiracies, racist violence, anti-government violence from the far right, and so on — is “unprecedented.” But as John Ganz shows in this book, there is precedence aplenty in our recent history, particularly in the 1990s. A chart could be made of parallels: Covid in 2020 and AIDS in the 90s; Trump today and Pat Buchanan then; Attorney General Bill Barr quashing investigations of the president then... and then again now; January 6, 2021, and Waco/Ruby Ridge/Timothy McVeigh then; the 2008 economic crisis and the deep recession of the early 90s; Rodney King (and others) then, BLM now; a war in Iraq; growing wealth inequality, culture wars, and efforts to overturn Roe v Wade, White supremacists, anti-immigrant movements, and something called "voter rage".
Ganz isn’t explicit in pointing out the parallels but he really doesn’t have to be. The uncertainties of the early 90s, most of them still with us, set the stage for what’s taking place today. The country was an unhappy, unsettled place. The American Dream seemed to have been a lie after all. Jobs were disappearing, moving to other countries. The collapse of the Soviet Union, along with the economic turndown and other factors, led to a movement to deep dissatisfaction with the GOP and so-called Conservativism. As a consequence, an effort began to completely redefine the Conservative movement in America — to shift from a platform for preserving old world views and values, and create instead an aggressive reshaping of the country. Murray Rothbard and the Paleolibertarians were calling for the repeal of the twentieth century, by which they meant the New Deal, Great Society, civil rights, women’s rights, welfare, etc. Each day's news today bears echoes of this movement.
Ganz begins the book by noting that while history is written by the winners, “Clock” is a “history of losers: candidates who lost their elections, movements that bubbled up and fizzled out, protests that exploded and dissipated… figures who became briefly famous or infamous and then were forgotten.” Some still recognized, others less so or not at all, but all of them were instrumental in shaping the country today.
We read, for example, about David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who was running for political office and getting positive national attention. And Ross Perot, a billionaire outsider who portrayed his business “success” as the model for what he could so as President of the United States, and who was very good at tapping into the economic resentments of the time. And Rush Limbaugh gaining an expanding national audience.
The book covers a lot of ground, too much for me to cover here without my review turning into an essay (which it will regardless). A few people and events particularly stood out for me; some I remember, others I’m not sure I even knew about at the time. Pat Buchanan, for example. Once a speech writer for Richard Nixon, he became the spokesman for an ugly form of American populism. It was Buchanan who coined the terms “silent majority” and “culture wars” (originally, “cultural wars”). He called for a “new nationalism” that would put “America first” (“…our Western heritage is going to be handed down to future generations, not dumped onto some land fill called multi-culturalism.”) His speeches and TV appearances were peppered with not very well disguised antisemitic tropes.
Ganz also covers racially motivated police violence in Los Angeles, New York City, and elsewhere. Police departments vigorously fighting against civilian oversight or interference, against accountability. And the invention of the phrase “thin blue line.” What really struck me was what was going on in New York where the police were very publicly working to undermine the city’s Black mayor, David Dinkins. There came a time when thousands of NYC cops, many of them drunk, attacked city hall, and others called in sick and blocked traffic on bridges. And carrying signs that read “HEY DINKINS, WE’LL PAY FOR YOUR FUNERAL” AND “DUMP THE WASHROOM ATTENDANT.” Before all this was done, a former US Attorney named Rudy Giuliani (whom journalist Mike McAlary called “the human scream machine”) began making a name for himself as a public figure eager for election to office.
Along with this Ganz writes about organized crime and the changing perception of the Mob in the American public and how this too fed into a stream visible today. Most prominent here is John Gotti, whose trial captivated the country. Giuliani played a role here too, as did a celebrity businessman named Donald Trump.
As “When the Clock Broke” demonstrates again and again, it’s not difficult to use the anger, resentment, and frustration of the American people as a way to manipulate them — for power, money, fame, or even violence. There were some, in fact, who viewed this as a good thing. Invoking the movie “The Magnificent Seven,” white supremacist Samuel Francis said that Americans needed to relearn how to fight: ”If there remain today any Americans who are not sheep, they’ll stop tying to hire phony populist gunfighters to save them from the wolfish bandits who run the country, and in the next four years they’ll start learning how to shoot from themselves.”
Familiar words. As they should be because we’re still hearing them again. The broad outlines of what we’re seeing in America today were certainly with us from the beginning (see, for example, Heather Cox Richardson’s “Democracy Awakening” or Robert Kagan’s “Rebellion,” among other books), the more concrete shapes and tropes we see today found expression in the 90s. Ganz has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of what and who we are now.
*It’s not in this book but I have to share it. Noam Chomsky once described Rothbard's ideal society as "a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it ... First of all, it couldn't function for a second—and if it could, all you'd want to do is get out, or commit suicide or something.”
Read
June 30, 2024DNF
I was looking forward to reading this because I wanted to see how the book matched my memories of this time period and my early days of forming political and social views.
As it turns out, I didn’t enjoy reading this as it was nothing I didn’t already know and it covered many of the characters in politics and beyond that I have never liked. This is not meant as an insult to the author, there may be many people who glean a lot of helpful information from the book. About all I can pass on is that the author makes a good case for Louisiana being a bellwether for our current situation in the U.S., and that’s not a good thing.
However, I am of the thinking that whatever we as a society are facing, it’s nothing new. We forget our history and regurgitate the same mistakes over and over again.
I see my own country as the rich white men who have from the very beginning treated America like their own exclusive country club, while the rest of us have been fighting for our rights and dignity, and always fighting against one another. In that respect then, warnings and analyses of recent history won’t change this paradigm.
I was looking forward to reading this because I wanted to see how the book matched my memories of this time period and my early days of forming political and social views.
As it turns out, I didn’t enjoy reading this as it was nothing I didn’t already know and it covered many of the characters in politics and beyond that I have never liked. This is not meant as an insult to the author, there may be many people who glean a lot of helpful information from the book. About all I can pass on is that the author makes a good case for Louisiana being a bellwether for our current situation in the U.S., and that’s not a good thing.
However, I am of the thinking that whatever we as a society are facing, it’s nothing new. We forget our history and regurgitate the same mistakes over and over again.
I see my own country as the rich white men who have from the very beginning treated America like their own exclusive country club, while the rest of us have been fighting for our rights and dignity, and always fighting against one another. In that respect then, warnings and analyses of recent history won’t change this paradigm.
February 15, 2025
I can't imagine someone making a more thorough inquiry into how this Bozosphere came into existence... multibook blogpost to come, i hope
September 4, 2025
A well-researched, witty, micro look at end of century American history (leading up to the 1992 election) that hooked me from the first chapter.
Ganz starts his forensic analysis with the populist, corrupt and authoritarian concentration of wealth and power that was the early 20th century New Orleans political machine of Huey Long, aka “The Kingfish.” (Note: Long’s reign became the basis for two famous novels, “It Can’t Happen Here” and “All the King’s Men.”) The charismatic Huey “Every-Man-is-a-King” Long, his evangelistic mouthpiece, Father Coughlin, and their many adherents were dead set on overturning FDR’s New Deal and replacing it with a sort of updated feudal system of patronage, of the kind that Long ran in Louisiana. This desire to destroy the economic safety nets and structures that were built in reaction to the economic damage wrought by the Great Depression is a recurring theme among the precursors to the Trump administration, that is now attempting to implement their destruction.
After a brief stop at Long, Ganz fast-forwards a half-century to the “bulletproof” campaign of David Duke, of KKK fame. Duke ran for Governor of Louisiana in 1991 and nearly won on a platform that white taxes were paying for the “rising welfare underclass.” Duke sought office by stoking populist sentiment against minorities. And he nearly won. Duke managed to win 39% of the statewide vote and 55% of the white vote. Exploring the motivations of those voters, Ganz reaches back in Louisiana history:
“The seeds of dictatorship and autocracy were sown even before Huey Long’s reign, when the reactionary Bourbon oligarchs effectively ended democracy in the state for a generation. They had wanted to preserve their economic predominance and, with it, the predominance of the white race, and in doing so, they scarred the state with indelible furrows of caste rule that divided the population long after plantations had become museums and macabre tourist attractions. When democratic demand did express itself from below, it came in the form of a personalistic, charismatic, and vindictive regime: a champion of the people who would punish and humble the arrogant old ruling classes. Huey Long’s deft manipulations of the state’s poor and disaffected attracted admirers and hangers-on—from would-be fascist chieftains to gangsters. He institutionalized a corrupt bargain that deepened the cynicism of the state’s voters and politicians, furthering the state’s paradoxical combination of populist anger with a let-it-be tolerance.” (emphasis added)
With this paragraph, I was hooked.
Ganz then turns to the Republican Party of the late Reagan and Bush I years and pulls out a name I had never heard of, a deputy editor of the Washington Times, Samuel T. Francis, aka the “fearsome toad.” This Tennessean and descendent of the slave-owning Todd family of Civil War/Lincoln’s in-laws fame worked for Jesse Helms and then moved to the Heritage Foundation where he remained entranced by the potential for race-based politics.
As background to the 1992 presidential election year, Ganz summarizes the economic devastation wrought by the deregulation of the Reagan era. The 1980s blew an even bigger hole in America’s industrial sector than the 1970s, to the benefit of the CEOs and C-Suite managers at all those Fortune 500 companies, and their rolling in money, fat-cat, owners.
Did Samuel Francis’s ideas address this situation? Here he is:
---“Middle American Radicals—Sunbelt interests require a strong governmental role in maintaining economic privileges for the elderly and for organized labor (where it now exists).” … The smaller producers of this coalition would also “require protection against cheap imports and access to raw materials and resources of the Third World, and they are less committed to international stability than to the continued predominance of the United States.” … “The New Right will favor a populist-based presidency able to cut through the present oligarchical establishment … whose values and interests are hostile to the traditional American ethos and which is a parasitical tumor on the body of Middle America.”
Well, he does mention that it was an economic oligarchy, so he was on the right track. But his solution, electing a populist, is a desperate measure.
Ganz segues from the fearsome toad to a close pal of the toad, the television loudmouth, Pat Buchannan, who had been watching the David Duke phenomenon with close attention. Buchannan runs against the incumbent, Bush senior, in the Republican primary and gets good traction for his populist, anti-liberal, anti-minority rights message. So much so, that the Republicans end up making him a deal: if he will endorse Bush, he can have the opening speech at the Republican National Convention.
Here is a piece of that speech:
--“My friends, this election is about more than who gets what. [Apparently, to Pat, elections were about who gets what—not about principles or the greater good.] It is about who we are. It is about what we believe, and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.”
Why did Buchanan go after liberals instead of the powerful people whose wealth increased with every turn of the economic cycle, and who in general didn’t give a damn about the rest of us? Note his “who gets what” of that speech. He was from a poor family, so perhaps it had something to do with money. As much as rose-colored glasses can obscure clear seeing, green is a color that can obscure clear thinking. Or perhaps liberalism was just an easier target. Fighting money is hard, but attacking liberalism is easy, and liberals don’t effectively fight back. The culture war resonated with the Reagan Democrats—but they did not see where this was going to lead.
At the end of the decade Ross Perot thrusts himself into the limelight. Ross Perot is all kinds of wacky. He made most of his money through data processing contracts with the federal government when they started outsourcing social security check producing work in the late 70s. Perot glams on to an emotional anti-government conspiracy about US soldiers left behind in Vietnam. It was a stupid war, and a lot of people are still angry—and Perot just stokes this idea about a government conspiracy to cover up MIAs still being held in Vietnam. His last-minute condemnation of NAFTA resonated with me (I was a supporter), but his authoritarianism was too much for most people (at that time).
Ganz then turns to the farmers of the great plains and shows how their families and livelihoods were destroyed, starting with Nixon’s and later Reagan’s economic policies. These farmers were turned first into debtors by the banks, and then into renters, and then just laborers, as the big money swallowed ever more of the old American economy. Ganz links the loss of livelihoods across the American West with the standoff between the FBI and the family they killed at Ruby Ridge. Trust in government in middle America is dead or dying. This anti-government feeling can be used by populists, and boy-oh-boy, will they ever!
Ganz adds two cities, L.A. and New York, to his background. Both cities were devastated in the 1970s and 1980s with steep job losses from business departing to countries with cheaper labor. After a deep dive into the twisted postwar history of LAPD leadership, the beating of Rodney King and the ensuing riots, Ganz turns eastward to New York City and the popularity of the mafia kingpin John Gotti, and his erstwhile opponent, Rudy Giuliani. Rudy tried and failed to put the popular kingpin away, and later, when running for mayor against Dinkins in 1992, leaned heavily on pro-police, anti-minority, populist rhetoric to try to win the crowd. Ganz notes that the mobster was a governing American myth on the level of the cowboy. To the fearsome toad, Samuel Francis: “The Prince is not only above the law but the source of the law and all social and political order, so in the Corleone universe, the Don is ‘responsible’ for his family, a responsibility that authorizes him to do virtually anything except violate the obligations of the family bond.”
During all this, David Duke travels to Moscow and praises Russia: “I want Russia to be a strong power,” he said. “In my opinion, the destruction of white Russia would be a great explosion for all of Europe. It would be the end of the European blood heritage. If Russia is destroyed, all of us—including Americans—will be destroyed.” [huh?] David Duke had totally fallen for the Russian propaganda of getting the Soviet Union back together—a program which the FSB was already hard at work on, hiding billions in oil money for future operations. Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West
After the 1992 election, which the Democrats won on a pro-business platform, in May 1993, Sam Francis (that fearsome toad again) gave a presentation at a Buchannan sponsored conference about “Winning the Culture” where he advocated for Germany’s national socialist (i.e, Nazi) strategy of supporting grassroots movements, “independent of both the federal state and its cultural tentacles … with their own vision of culture,” to grow their supporter numbers, using issues like “abortion … homosexuality, school curricula and gun control” to “raise consciousness” and “inform previously inactive citizens and groups of how they are all victims of an alien domination and of what they can do to resist it.” (emphasis added)
Ganz closes with a telling scene of Donald Trump in a limo with Philip Johnson, pioneer of ugly postmodernism, where Johnson listens to Trump rant and rave all the way to Atlantic City. Johnson tells Trump he sounds like a mob boss. To which Donald replies….
A very well-told tale of schemers, conmen, bullies and loudmouths, all united by nostalgia for a make-believe world of yesteryear.
Ganz starts his forensic analysis with the populist, corrupt and authoritarian concentration of wealth and power that was the early 20th century New Orleans political machine of Huey Long, aka “The Kingfish.” (Note: Long’s reign became the basis for two famous novels, “It Can’t Happen Here” and “All the King’s Men.”) The charismatic Huey “Every-Man-is-a-King” Long, his evangelistic mouthpiece, Father Coughlin, and their many adherents were dead set on overturning FDR’s New Deal and replacing it with a sort of updated feudal system of patronage, of the kind that Long ran in Louisiana. This desire to destroy the economic safety nets and structures that were built in reaction to the economic damage wrought by the Great Depression is a recurring theme among the precursors to the Trump administration, that is now attempting to implement their destruction.
After a brief stop at Long, Ganz fast-forwards a half-century to the “bulletproof” campaign of David Duke, of KKK fame. Duke ran for Governor of Louisiana in 1991 and nearly won on a platform that white taxes were paying for the “rising welfare underclass.” Duke sought office by stoking populist sentiment against minorities. And he nearly won. Duke managed to win 39% of the statewide vote and 55% of the white vote. Exploring the motivations of those voters, Ganz reaches back in Louisiana history:
“The seeds of dictatorship and autocracy were sown even before Huey Long’s reign, when the reactionary Bourbon oligarchs effectively ended democracy in the state for a generation. They had wanted to preserve their economic predominance and, with it, the predominance of the white race, and in doing so, they scarred the state with indelible furrows of caste rule that divided the population long after plantations had become museums and macabre tourist attractions. When democratic demand did express itself from below, it came in the form of a personalistic, charismatic, and vindictive regime: a champion of the people who would punish and humble the arrogant old ruling classes. Huey Long’s deft manipulations of the state’s poor and disaffected attracted admirers and hangers-on—from would-be fascist chieftains to gangsters. He institutionalized a corrupt bargain that deepened the cynicism of the state’s voters and politicians, furthering the state’s paradoxical combination of populist anger with a let-it-be tolerance.” (emphasis added)
With this paragraph, I was hooked.
Ganz then turns to the Republican Party of the late Reagan and Bush I years and pulls out a name I had never heard of, a deputy editor of the Washington Times, Samuel T. Francis, aka the “fearsome toad.” This Tennessean and descendent of the slave-owning Todd family of Civil War/Lincoln’s in-laws fame worked for Jesse Helms and then moved to the Heritage Foundation where he remained entranced by the potential for race-based politics.
As background to the 1992 presidential election year, Ganz summarizes the economic devastation wrought by the deregulation of the Reagan era. The 1980s blew an even bigger hole in America’s industrial sector than the 1970s, to the benefit of the CEOs and C-Suite managers at all those Fortune 500 companies, and their rolling in money, fat-cat, owners.
Did Samuel Francis’s ideas address this situation? Here he is:
---“Middle American Radicals—Sunbelt interests require a strong governmental role in maintaining economic privileges for the elderly and for organized labor (where it now exists).” … The smaller producers of this coalition would also “require protection against cheap imports and access to raw materials and resources of the Third World, and they are less committed to international stability than to the continued predominance of the United States.” … “The New Right will favor a populist-based presidency able to cut through the present oligarchical establishment … whose values and interests are hostile to the traditional American ethos and which is a parasitical tumor on the body of Middle America.”
Well, he does mention that it was an economic oligarchy, so he was on the right track. But his solution, electing a populist, is a desperate measure.
Ganz segues from the fearsome toad to a close pal of the toad, the television loudmouth, Pat Buchannan, who had been watching the David Duke phenomenon with close attention. Buchannan runs against the incumbent, Bush senior, in the Republican primary and gets good traction for his populist, anti-liberal, anti-minority rights message. So much so, that the Republicans end up making him a deal: if he will endorse Bush, he can have the opening speech at the Republican National Convention.
Here is a piece of that speech:
--“My friends, this election is about more than who gets what. [Apparently, to Pat, elections were about who gets what—not about principles or the greater good.] It is about who we are. It is about what we believe, and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.”
Why did Buchanan go after liberals instead of the powerful people whose wealth increased with every turn of the economic cycle, and who in general didn’t give a damn about the rest of us? Note his “who gets what” of that speech. He was from a poor family, so perhaps it had something to do with money. As much as rose-colored glasses can obscure clear seeing, green is a color that can obscure clear thinking. Or perhaps liberalism was just an easier target. Fighting money is hard, but attacking liberalism is easy, and liberals don’t effectively fight back. The culture war resonated with the Reagan Democrats—but they did not see where this was going to lead.
At the end of the decade Ross Perot thrusts himself into the limelight. Ross Perot is all kinds of wacky. He made most of his money through data processing contracts with the federal government when they started outsourcing social security check producing work in the late 70s. Perot glams on to an emotional anti-government conspiracy about US soldiers left behind in Vietnam. It was a stupid war, and a lot of people are still angry—and Perot just stokes this idea about a government conspiracy to cover up MIAs still being held in Vietnam. His last-minute condemnation of NAFTA resonated with me (I was a supporter), but his authoritarianism was too much for most people (at that time).
Ganz then turns to the farmers of the great plains and shows how their families and livelihoods were destroyed, starting with Nixon’s and later Reagan’s economic policies. These farmers were turned first into debtors by the banks, and then into renters, and then just laborers, as the big money swallowed ever more of the old American economy. Ganz links the loss of livelihoods across the American West with the standoff between the FBI and the family they killed at Ruby Ridge. Trust in government in middle America is dead or dying. This anti-government feeling can be used by populists, and boy-oh-boy, will they ever!
Ganz adds two cities, L.A. and New York, to his background. Both cities were devastated in the 1970s and 1980s with steep job losses from business departing to countries with cheaper labor. After a deep dive into the twisted postwar history of LAPD leadership, the beating of Rodney King and the ensuing riots, Ganz turns eastward to New York City and the popularity of the mafia kingpin John Gotti, and his erstwhile opponent, Rudy Giuliani. Rudy tried and failed to put the popular kingpin away, and later, when running for mayor against Dinkins in 1992, leaned heavily on pro-police, anti-minority, populist rhetoric to try to win the crowd. Ganz notes that the mobster was a governing American myth on the level of the cowboy. To the fearsome toad, Samuel Francis: “The Prince is not only above the law but the source of the law and all social and political order, so in the Corleone universe, the Don is ‘responsible’ for his family, a responsibility that authorizes him to do virtually anything except violate the obligations of the family bond.”
During all this, David Duke travels to Moscow and praises Russia: “I want Russia to be a strong power,” he said. “In my opinion, the destruction of white Russia would be a great explosion for all of Europe. It would be the end of the European blood heritage. If Russia is destroyed, all of us—including Americans—will be destroyed.” [huh?] David Duke had totally fallen for the Russian propaganda of getting the Soviet Union back together—a program which the FSB was already hard at work on, hiding billions in oil money for future operations. Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West
After the 1992 election, which the Democrats won on a pro-business platform, in May 1993, Sam Francis (that fearsome toad again) gave a presentation at a Buchannan sponsored conference about “Winning the Culture” where he advocated for Germany’s national socialist (i.e, Nazi) strategy of supporting grassroots movements, “independent of both the federal state and its cultural tentacles … with their own vision of culture,” to grow their supporter numbers, using issues like “abortion … homosexuality, school curricula and gun control” to “raise consciousness” and “inform previously inactive citizens and groups of how they are all victims of an alien domination and of what they can do to resist it.” (emphasis added)
Ganz closes with a telling scene of Donald Trump in a limo with Philip Johnson, pioneer of ugly postmodernism, where Johnson listens to Trump rant and rave all the way to Atlantic City. Johnson tells Trump he sounds like a mob boss. To which Donald replies….
A very well-told tale of schemers, conmen, bullies and loudmouths, all united by nostalgia for a make-believe world of yesteryear.
June 22, 2024
I’ve been listening to Ganz on his movie/politics podcast, following him on social media, and reading his newsletter for a while, so I was jazzed when the book was announced and preordered it immediately. It came this week, and I devoured it. It started out in the first chapter, looking at the phenomenon of David Duke, and I was a bit worried that the whole thing would be based on these pocket biographies of people from the early 90s. It is partially that, but Ganz is able to weave a narrative from these people and their times to examine the period and its influence on today’s society – Trump being in the background but present. We get a lot of hits from Duke to Buchannan and Ruby Ridge (still mad the feds killed Weaver’s dog), as well as some more New York-centric pages in John Gotti and Rudy Giuliani.
One exciting thing for me was reading about this period as history. I was young when the events covered were happening, but I was a precocious child. I stole my dad’s Times and Newsweeks from the mailbox and read through them before he had a chance to, but I think I was missing a lot of historical context. I’ve gained it since, but it was something that took time, and this book covers the water hose of events that I was experiencing as I was coming of age and trying to see the world through adult eyes. I tore through this book as it was both familiar ground and fun to learn more about Perot’s background or dredge up the manufactured controversy about Murphy Brown’s out-of-wedlock child.
One exciting thing for me was reading about this period as history. I was young when the events covered were happening, but I was a precocious child. I stole my dad’s Times and Newsweeks from the mailbox and read through them before he had a chance to, but I think I was missing a lot of historical context. I’ve gained it since, but it was something that took time, and this book covers the water hose of events that I was experiencing as I was coming of age and trying to see the world through adult eyes. I tore through this book as it was both familiar ground and fun to learn more about Perot’s background or dredge up the manufactured controversy about Murphy Brown’s out-of-wedlock child.
June 30, 2024
(4.5 stars)
impressively interesting, insightful, and delightful. When the Clock Broke makes today make sense in new ways. Gantz does a great job mirroring our current political landscape through history without skimping out on the past but leaving the reader to largely draw their own conclusions. don’t worry about doing all the mental work though, because he also provides incredible insights along the way that really reframes the “how we got here” issue. spoiler alert: American politics has literally always been this frustrating and there’s no golden era to look back on when things were just better! it’s honestly comforting. this year i’ve been reading a lot of books about post WW2 american politics and this is by far the best one. (i’m excited to someday read a copy that isn’t missing pages and has all the pages ordered correctly).
impressively interesting, insightful, and delightful. When the Clock Broke makes today make sense in new ways. Gantz does a great job mirroring our current political landscape through history without skimping out on the past but leaving the reader to largely draw their own conclusions. don’t worry about doing all the mental work though, because he also provides incredible insights along the way that really reframes the “how we got here” issue. spoiler alert: American politics has literally always been this frustrating and there’s no golden era to look back on when things were just better! it’s honestly comforting. this year i’ve been reading a lot of books about post WW2 american politics and this is by far the best one. (i’m excited to someday read a copy that isn’t missing pages and has all the pages ordered correctly).
August 20, 2024
In When the Clock Broke, John Ganz explores the perfect storm of despair, disillusionment, and economic factors that made the early nineties such an opportune time for racist backlash, populist movements, and right-wing radicalization of formerly middle-of-the-road citizens. The book's main focus is the 1992 presidential election, in which Pat Buchanan made a damaging primary challenge to George Bush's reelection prospects, and Ross Perot threw a wrench in the whole election machine by mounting an unexpectedly successful third-party campaign. Along the way, Ganz offers background on FCC deregulation during the Reagan era; the failure of trickle-down economics; the Rodney King beating, verdict and riots; the FBI debacle with the off-the-grid Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, the farm crisis, and more.
This wasn't for me. I thought I was signing on for a broader retrospective on events of the 1990s, something more in the vein of Chuck Klosterman's The Nineties. But everything in When the Clock Broke ladders up to politics in some way. As a reader who was a teenager in the early nineties, I was interested when the book covered figures and events I remember, less interested when Ganz got really into the weeds on journalist Sam Francis or the POW/MIA movement. I do think the book is well-researched and written. I just don't feel like I have the context or the interest level to fully appreciate it.
This wasn't for me. I thought I was signing on for a broader retrospective on events of the 1990s, something more in the vein of Chuck Klosterman's The Nineties. But everything in When the Clock Broke ladders up to politics in some way. As a reader who was a teenager in the early nineties, I was interested when the book covered figures and events I remember, less interested when Ganz got really into the weeds on journalist Sam Francis or the POW/MIA movement. I do think the book is well-researched and written. I just don't feel like I have the context or the interest level to fully appreciate it.
Read
January 16, 2025Really great piece of near-past history writing that effortlessly weaves between social, cultural, economic, and political ideas. Feels quite important for understanding the seeds of the current conservative movement.
June 29, 2024
John Ganz, author of the Substack Unpopular Front, has published his first book which explores the political culture of the early 1990s. Primarily focused on the years 1990-1992, Ganz weaved an engaging narrative of how various historical, economic, and cultural forces put America on a political trajectory that helps make sense of the current moment.
The end of the Cold War had a dramatic impact on domestic politics in America, bringing to bear forces that were suppressed and largely ignored since the 1940s. If Anti-communism was the glue that presented the semblance of bipartisanship of the mid-late 20th Century, the collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed new paranoias, and eventually a new type of politics. Ganz focuses on several figures who were harbingers of things to come.
Ganz's writing skillfully combines biographical sketches, historical context, and intellectual underpinnings. Anxiety and anger over economic forces and demographic change were starting to shift attitudes of the white middle class. An early sign was the rise of David Duke, former Klansman and proud white supremacist, who gained the GOP nomination for Louisiana Governor. A lifelong misfit with antisocial tendencies, Duke emerged as a voice for struggling lower-middle class whites. Ganz deftly explains the corrupt political structures of Louisiana and connects Duke to the populism of 1930s figure Huey Long who also championed lower class whites and ran the state like an autocrat. Although Duke lost his bid for Governor, he predicted that if the economic fortunes of the white middle class continued to erode, his brand of politics would own the future.
Duke's reactive brand of populist and identity politics trickled their way into the 1992 election. The sitting President George Bush was riding the crest of the First Gulf War victory with a 90% approval rating until the economy went into a gloomy recession. Bush found himself challenged from the Right by Patrick Buchannan, a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon who specialized in red meat rhetoric. By the 1990s, he had turned against the dogma of free trade and championed a new isolationism. Buchannan raged against "elites" who fleeced hard working Americans and took up the culture war mantle, seeing traditional American values under attack everywhere from public schools to rap music.
Conservative politics were changing, starting to lean into a radicalism that had always existed, but was oozing into the mainstream. For many, William F. Buckley was the face of the Conservative Movement, founder of National Review and host of the TV Show Firing Line, where his witty repartee with fellow conservatives and the occasional liberal offered the image of genteel conservatism. Buckley also dismissed the John Birch Society, the Anti-communist organization fueled by conspiracy theories, from the Conservative Movement. But the ground underneath conservatism was shifting by the early 1990s, traditionalists, libertarians, defense hawks, and supply side economics were somewhat adrift in the post-Cold War world. Buchannan proudly called himself a paleoconservative, a radical rightist modeled on Franco and Mussolini.
Intellectual paleoconservatives loom large in the book. Samuel T. Francis and Murray Rothbard, one a white nationalist and the other an anarcho-capitalist, gave voice to the new currents. They despised the limited government mantra of the Reagan era. They hated democracy, Rothbard spoke of repealing the 20th Century and "breaking the clock" of democracy. Francis advocated for a strong state not unlike the Mafia, The Godfather was his ideal "right wing utopia." For Conservatives to win, they must champion culture above all else, a strange blend of confederacy worship and Anglo-Saxon fetishization. Francis identified the growth of militias and militancy in 1980s America as the first stirrings of a new culture war, a sign of people starting to wake up in the heartland.
Ganz explains how the farming crisis of the 1980s radicalized many whites in the Great Plains. A chapter on Ruby Ridge, the botched Federal raid on armed militants in Idaho that led to the loss of innocent life, becoming a cause celebre for antigovernmental forces spreading like wildfire. Economic displacement fueled the new militancy, often fueled by crackpot theories, xenophobia, and antisemitism. The 1992 candidacy of Texas mogul Ross Perot (another major character in the book), which captured the imagination of many by promising he could fix everything with smarts and hard work was a foreshadowing of Trump.
The central question of the book, in the words of Ganz:
We are still working to answer why the loss of faith in the old order has registered an intensified anti-egalitarianism rather than a renewed egalitarianism, why perceptions of public corruption and criminality have led to the open embrace of corruption and criminality rather than its rejection, and why discontent with the distribution of wealth and power has fostered closer popular identification with certain types of capitalism and capitalists (22).
Part of the answer lies in the lack of imagination of liberal politicians. Ganz never quite argues the notion but suggests it. It's in his critique of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Governor of Arkansas, Clinton hammered Bush's economic policies while his folksy persona exuded charm and intelligence. But he was also temperamental and sensitive to criticism from the left of his own party, especially from the more progressive Jesse Jackson wing. Clinton liked the perks of being a statesman, he enjoyed rubbing shoulders with power brokers and celebrities a bit too much. His two terms as President saw him make many compromises with the Right on economic policy.
Ganz points out how the populists' movements on the Left such as Jesse Jackson's attempt to build a multi-racial working-class movement and Bernie Sanders championing social democracy never got their proper chance. The malaise of the Democratic Party, Robert Altman's TV series Tanner '88 is an excellent example, is another part of this story.
In a way, Trump is the main character in the book even though he only makes a few appearances in the chapter on 1990s New York City politics and the popularity of the gangster John Gotti. Trump's psychic connection with middle America did not happen overnight, he's like a Frankenstein the radical right envisioned promising to fix everything, stopping illegal immigration, casually endorsing conspiracy theories, talking like a mobster, famous for being famous, and promising retribution to all internal enemies.
With the 2024 Presidential election looming, the Right has their radical plans in place for Day 1. The world of a year from now would look ominously different. When the Clock Broke illustrates how the fringe becomes the norm due to economic and cultural forces. But even if the immediate existential crisis of democracy is averted this time around, the problem of wealth distribution will remain, and it will rest on the shoulders of those who believe in democracy to prove they are up to the challenge.
January 22, 2025
This is yet another attempt to explain the state of American politics, namely the rise of Donald Trump. We didn't really need another one of these, but this is done in the Ron Perlstein style (i.e. Nixonland or Reaganland), meaning it provides a fast-paced narrative history with journalistic distance and brevity. This style engages readers while largely disguising the intentions and biases of the author. It's an effective but somewhat deceptive way of doing history, creating a misleading coherence among disparate figures and events. It also allows the author to dispense with a rigorous analysis of sociological data in favor of pronouncement that are persuasive on a superficial level (as are a number of alternative narratives). I think this is an oversight in this case because the 90s are not some ancient epoch. There are tons of data available. A historian should reach for at least some of it instead of simply cherry-picking well-known political weirdos and pretending they represent something. I could make an exception for certain types of political and/or intellectual history, which perhaps some of this work functions as, but a major premise of the work rests on material claims that aren't well substantiated.
Ganz's goal is to do a revisionist history of a purported popular front of Middle-American Radicals. He aims to do this by doing a series of mini-biographies on relevant figures in a loose chronology. This includes profiling populist leaders (demagogues) like Huey Long through Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot and their Rasputins, figures like Samuel Francis and Murray Rothbard. The underlying argument is that these figures (however historically marginal) successively cut a path toward mainstream political appeal. This was given a boosts thanks to fundamental shifts in the 1980s/90s political economy and cultural moment (i.e. end of the Cold War liberalism, End of History malaise). Together, these supposedly heralded the coming (and now second coming) of the great clock breaker of American New Deal liberalism, Donnie from Queens.
Ganz is an intelligent and articulate dude, but these efforts seem futile and wrongheaded. He is yet another one of the twee lefty types who want to cut their teeth by dipping into the deep dark corners of the American right. He's here to hock his little ditty about how the baddies took over, but has conveniently decided to leave almost all of the left-wing populism out of the story and to pretend like there is something especially concerning or idol shattering about this history. It just seems self-serving and doesn't really add anything to well-known existing record. It was perhaps interesting to learn some things about figures that mainstream public life had summarily dismissed as cranks and tried to consign to the dustbin of history, but I'm also not actually convinced they deserve (that much of) our attention either.
Ganz's goal is to do a revisionist history of a purported popular front of Middle-American Radicals. He aims to do this by doing a series of mini-biographies on relevant figures in a loose chronology. This includes profiling populist leaders (demagogues) like Huey Long through Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot and their Rasputins, figures like Samuel Francis and Murray Rothbard. The underlying argument is that these figures (however historically marginal) successively cut a path toward mainstream political appeal. This was given a boosts thanks to fundamental shifts in the 1980s/90s political economy and cultural moment (i.e. end of the Cold War liberalism, End of History malaise). Together, these supposedly heralded the coming (and now second coming) of the great clock breaker of American New Deal liberalism, Donnie from Queens.
Ganz is an intelligent and articulate dude, but these efforts seem futile and wrongheaded. He is yet another one of the twee lefty types who want to cut their teeth by dipping into the deep dark corners of the American right. He's here to hock his little ditty about how the baddies took over, but has conveniently decided to leave almost all of the left-wing populism out of the story and to pretend like there is something especially concerning or idol shattering about this history. It just seems self-serving and doesn't really add anything to well-known existing record. It was perhaps interesting to learn some things about figures that mainstream public life had summarily dismissed as cranks and tried to consign to the dustbin of history, but I'm also not actually convinced they deserve (that much of) our attention either.
July 1, 2024
A valuable addition to the "How did we end up here?" (i.e. Trump, etc.) genre of books. Ganz's signature humor and sharp prose is on display here (though the content is unpleasant enough (David Duke, etc.) that it's hardly pleasure-reading. Focused on the early 1990s, the book is also well-structured in how its chapters move from one major figure/event to the next. It's definitely in the spirit of Rick Perlstein's important histories of the conservative movement (Nixonland, etc.).
January 6, 2025
This is a smorgasbord of 90s political nostalgia. Mostly centering around the 1992 presidential election, it covers a wide span of topics, from paleoconservatism and rap music to shock radio, Christian Identity, and New York City politics. Characters include presidential candidates (Bill Clinton, George Bush, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan) and other polarizing figures (like David Duke, Sam Francis, Sister Souljah, and Bo Gritz). The author John Ganz, who is Jewish, seems to have set out to explain the zeitgeist of the 2010s and 2020s by examining their origin in the 1990s. There's certainly much to be examined there, but he leaves a lot of analysis undone. Perhaps this is fortunate, given his liberal views. However, this does leave you with the feeling that you haven't been given what the title promises. With the central thesis abandoned, it's just a recounting of a bunch of stuff that happened. And while it's interesting stuff well written, it ends up feeling like more of a montage.
March 29, 2025
The subtitle describes the book which is basically a collection of essays about various topics which prefigure the fascistic white, Christian nationalism of such right-wing populists as Steve Bannon. The author is published in various magazines and newspapers so one presumes that much of this consists of reworked, shorter pieces. The essays cover such figures as Rudy Guliani, John Gotti, David Duke, Ross Perot and Randy Weaver, and such organizations as Christian Identity, the Mafia, Posse Comitatus and the Republican and Populist parties. The benefit of reading it all was to better appreciate how deep the roots of the MAGA movement are.
June 9, 2025
Super well written, great look at where a lot of the modern right-wing US playbook calcified (and where it came from before, history repeating over and over as it does i.e. insert true detective ‘time is a flat circle’ speech here)
September 10, 2024
The attempts to link the early 90s moment to 2016 Trump are ultimately unpersuasive, but they don't make up more than 1% of the book. The strength of the book is not in uncovering new material - its source base is largely contemporary media and secondary scholarship - but rather in the stimulating connections it draws between seemingly disparate cultural forces, shedding new light on seemingly very familiar topics in very crisp prose.
Rather than presaging 2016, what I most took away from Ganz's book was how unique the early 90s moment was - the one of a kind product of the end of the Cold War and the accompanying economic dislocations. Once America navigated the end of mass defense related manufacturing, the 90s took off and 92 feels like a foreign country from the perspective of 2000, let alone 2024.
Rather than presaging 2016, what I most took away from Ganz's book was how unique the early 90s moment was - the one of a kind product of the end of the Cold War and the accompanying economic dislocations. Once America navigated the end of mass defense related manufacturing, the 90s took off and 92 feels like a foreign country from the perspective of 2000, let alone 2024.
June 23, 2024
Superb, clear-eyed, frequently surprising if you think you know the history well already.
October 20, 2024
The story of the American Right staph infection and how it turned into sepsis. Utterly depressing but essential reading.
July 14, 2024
The 90s have a nostalgic reputation for being the “Last Great Decade.” The Cold War was over. The economy was booming. Technology was improving rapidly and making lives easier, but there was just enough of it so that you didn’t feel always online. Pop Culture never felt more vital, everyone felt like they were watching the same TV shows and listening to the same music. The 1996 US Presidential Election between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole is often called the least important election of our lives, an election where it didn’t really matter who won.
Since the 2004 Presidential Election, every election has been called “the most important election of our times.” In recent years, the language has gotten more combative, with elections being called a “Battle for the soul of the nation.” The electorate seems more polarized, more motivated by an intense dislike of the other side than in any conviction in their beliefs and principles.
What happened? Most people would probably say 911 kicked off a chain reaction of events that led us to this point. In hindsight, the 2000 Presidential Election might have been the election that mattered the most even though it didn’t seem like it at the time. In When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s John Ganz makes a persuasive case that the current politics of division and resentment can be traced back to the politics of the early 1990s. He profiles figures like David Duke, Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Rush Limbaugh, Rudy Giuliani, and uses the 1992 election as a backdrop.
Donald Trump is treated here almost like Voldemort in the first Harry Potter book (“he-who-must-not-be-named”). There are little mentions of Trump here and there, but you can tell Ganz was careful not to use him too much. A less confident writer would have been constantly adding in references to what Trump said or did at the time, but Ganz trusts his readers to get his message without needing to say it out loud. I think the main thesis of this book is that Trump is the perfect vehicle and spokesperson for a divisive brand of politics that predated him. He might not (almost surely doesn’t) believe everything he says, but he’s effective at synthesizing the beliefs of many people on the far right and packaging them in a way that appeals to a broad range of the electorate, parts of the electorate that would dismiss the David Dukes and Pat Buchanans as too extremist and intolerant. Trump’s destructive superpower is that he can take lies and build them into myths (which are stories and easier to spread) and nurture these myths (like Birtherism, QAnon, election fraud) until they metastasize into conspiracies. People will listen to lies, but they can mobilize around myths and conspiracies.
This is the best book I’ve read since George Packer’s The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America at explaining these “cracked-up” times.
Since the 2004 Presidential Election, every election has been called “the most important election of our times.” In recent years, the language has gotten more combative, with elections being called a “Battle for the soul of the nation.” The electorate seems more polarized, more motivated by an intense dislike of the other side than in any conviction in their beliefs and principles.
What happened? Most people would probably say 911 kicked off a chain reaction of events that led us to this point. In hindsight, the 2000 Presidential Election might have been the election that mattered the most even though it didn’t seem like it at the time. In When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s John Ganz makes a persuasive case that the current politics of division and resentment can be traced back to the politics of the early 1990s. He profiles figures like David Duke, Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Rush Limbaugh, Rudy Giuliani, and uses the 1992 election as a backdrop.
Donald Trump is treated here almost like Voldemort in the first Harry Potter book (“he-who-must-not-be-named”). There are little mentions of Trump here and there, but you can tell Ganz was careful not to use him too much. A less confident writer would have been constantly adding in references to what Trump said or did at the time, but Ganz trusts his readers to get his message without needing to say it out loud. I think the main thesis of this book is that Trump is the perfect vehicle and spokesperson for a divisive brand of politics that predated him. He might not (almost surely doesn’t) believe everything he says, but he’s effective at synthesizing the beliefs of many people on the far right and packaging them in a way that appeals to a broad range of the electorate, parts of the electorate that would dismiss the David Dukes and Pat Buchanans as too extremist and intolerant. Trump’s destructive superpower is that he can take lies and build them into myths (which are stories and easier to spread) and nurture these myths (like Birtherism, QAnon, election fraud) until they metastasize into conspiracies. People will listen to lies, but they can mobilize around myths and conspiracies.
This is the best book I’ve read since George Packer’s The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America at explaining these “cracked-up” times.
July 1, 2025
(3.5 stars) enjoyed this! I liked the insights into the right wing of American politics and its media theory (especially in the beginning of the book) but thought it got lost in its details and struggled to get back into a groove with its thesis. still a very good analysis and an insightful view into explaining why the American right is the way it is today.
November 22, 2025
Not even the point of this book at all but how is this book about the 1992 election full of the same ancient freaks we are dealing with today???? It’s not even a “oh this is where the ideas and political trends we see today originated” argument— it’s literally the same people. Everyone over the age of like 50 in US politics needs to be lovingly relocated to a compound where they can do model UN every day but it doesn’t actually impact policy
June 19, 2024
Very likely to be my favorite non-fiction book of the year.
January 4, 2025
Geweldig geschreven boek dat heel mooi laat zien hoe veel van de ontwikkelingen die ons nu Trump hebben gegeven al veel eerder zijn gestart (en in een alternatieve werkelijkheid ook eerder tot een Trump-esque figuur hadden kunnen leiden). Veel geleerd over bekende figuren als Ross Perot en Pat Buchanan, maar ook over veel obscuurder rechtse ideologen (en John Gotti). Aanrader - wel hardcore Amerikaanse politieke geschiedenis dus dat moet je wel leuk vinden :)
February 6, 2025
Introduction alone makes it worth reading
January 21, 2025
Finishing this book on January 20, 2025 was a choice
July 9, 2025
Ett mästerverk detta. En briljant beskrivning av det som skulle lägga grunden till det vi idag ser i full, säregen blom under Trump — den nykonservativa/högerpopulistiska/revanschistiska/konspirativa vågen i USA i början av 90-talet. Ganz skriver ledigt, citatrikt och med en känsla för det humoristiska i absurditeten, men samtidigt med ett oerhört precist och analytiskt (inte teoretiskt) språk. Det är raskravaller, Ross Perots vansinnigheter, David Duke som erbjuder en koppling mellan KKK och GOP, korrupt politik i New York och ideologer som inte kommit över utfallet i inbördeskriget. Rekommenderas varmt.
June 24, 2024
On a superficial level: of all the history books I've read in memory, this is by far the best prose read. Simply a joy to go through the thing word by word. 5 stars for that reason alone.
On a more substantive level: the argument of this book is implicit rather than explicit; certainly, it definitively demonstrates how so much of the early 90s "rhymed" with the concerns of today, and strongly suggests that this is due to institutional decay initiated by the neoliberal turn through the 1970s. The remaining questions are: 1) would you have been able to throw a dart at an "American history through time" poster and have been able to write the same book, or was there something distinct about the 1990s? and 2) what makes our present moment different from the 1990s, if all the things centrists worry about had already been there in the moment they look back to?
Re (1), I feel like Rick Perlstein's ouvre shows that you could do something similar with American political culture for most of the postwar period, although I feel less certain about other aspects.
Re (2), meditating on these themes raised my confidence that the issue here is primarily one of the decay or weakening of establishment institutions, or really any kind of institution. The two political parties, broadcast news, and sundry civil society orgs (the NAACP, labor unions, churches, and so on) had incredible gatekeeping power over their respective constituencies and an interest in a relatively stable, corrupt, consensual status quo. That's obviously neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but it marks a difference with today.
On a more substantive level: the argument of this book is implicit rather than explicit; certainly, it definitively demonstrates how so much of the early 90s "rhymed" with the concerns of today, and strongly suggests that this is due to institutional decay initiated by the neoliberal turn through the 1970s. The remaining questions are: 1) would you have been able to throw a dart at an "American history through time" poster and have been able to write the same book, or was there something distinct about the 1990s? and 2) what makes our present moment different from the 1990s, if all the things centrists worry about had already been there in the moment they look back to?
Re (1), I feel like Rick Perlstein's ouvre shows that you could do something similar with American political culture for most of the postwar period, although I feel less certain about other aspects.
Re (2), meditating on these themes raised my confidence that the issue here is primarily one of the decay or weakening of establishment institutions, or really any kind of institution. The two political parties, broadcast news, and sundry civil society orgs (the NAACP, labor unions, churches, and so on) had incredible gatekeeping power over their respective constituencies and an interest in a relatively stable, corrupt, consensual status quo. That's obviously neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but it marks a difference with today.
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