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The People, No: The War on Populism and the Fight for Democracy
From the prophetic author of the now-classic What’s the Matter with Kansas? and Listen, Liberal, an eye-opening account of populism, the most important—and misunderstood—movement of our time.
Rarely does a work of history contain startling implications for the present, but in The People, No Thomas Frank pulls off that explosive effect by showing us that everything we think we know about populism is wrong. Today “populism” is seen as a frightening thing, a term pundits use to describe the racist philosophy of Donald Trump and European extremists. But this is a mistake.
The real story of populism is an account of enlightenment and liberation; it is the story of American democracy itself, of its ever-widening promise of a decent life for all. Taking us from the tumultuous 1890s, when the radical left-wing Populist Party—the biggest mass movement in American history—fought Gilded Age plutocrats to the reformers’ great triumphs under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Frank reminds us how much we owe to the populist ethos. Frank also shows that elitist groups have reliably detested populism, lashing out at working-class concerns. The anti-populist vituperations by the Washington centrists of today are only the latest expression.
Frank pummels the elites, revisits the movement’s provocative politics, and declares true populism to be the language of promise and optimism. The People, No is a ringing affirmation of a movement that, Frank shows us, is not the problem of our times, but the solution for what ails us.
224 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 23, 2020
289 people are currently reading
3072 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Frank
43 books714 followersThomas Frank is the author of Pity the Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew, and What's the Matter with Kansas? A former columnist for The Wall Street Journal and Harper's, Frank is the founding editor of The Baffler and writes regularly for Salon. He lives outside Washington, D.C.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 183 reviews
September 12, 2020
A very interesting book that attempts to argue:
(1) that modern Democratic Party perceptions of populism are wrong to say that populism is necessarily related to anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian movements
and (2) that populism (particularly embracing economic justice and moving away from elite consensus) are the ways to advance liberal political goals.
I find the historical survey in in the book fascinating and enlightening, but don't think his point (1) is valid. It doesn't matter what populism was, it matters what it is today. That said, I found his point 2 utterly convincing. Concerns around economic justice are absent in the mainstream for either party, and class and income and economic concerns have been short circuited by culture war issues. Frank seems to put equal weight on liberal twitter cancel culture and conservative social wedge issues, which seems like a false equivalence to me, especially since he is pretty light in his citations in that section. That said, I think the overall point makes sense that a coalition for a just society must include economic justice and the full inclusion of the entire working class.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
(1) that modern Democratic Party perceptions of populism are wrong to say that populism is necessarily related to anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian movements
and (2) that populism (particularly embracing economic justice and moving away from elite consensus) are the ways to advance liberal political goals.
I find the historical survey in in the book fascinating and enlightening, but don't think his point (1) is valid. It doesn't matter what populism was, it matters what it is today. That said, I found his point 2 utterly convincing. Concerns around economic justice are absent in the mainstream for either party, and class and income and economic concerns have been short circuited by culture war issues. Frank seems to put equal weight on liberal twitter cancel culture and conservative social wedge issues, which seems like a false equivalence to me, especially since he is pretty light in his citations in that section. That said, I think the overall point makes sense that a coalition for a just society must include economic justice and the full inclusion of the entire working class.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
May 29, 2024
Do you ever get the vague-yet-nagging feeling that this isn't what you signed up for?
Frank's book helped me put my finger on it, even if I've known generally about his thesis since reading Taibbi's review a few years ago. I honestly can't recall what I thought, if anything, of the word "populism" before that, but soon afterwards I realized Frank was right- it was everywhere. Clearly it was meant to be understood as a synonym for racist demagoguery, fascism, etc. It appeared so often with the ominous word "rise" that they may as well have been collocations. The fate of the world seemed to depend on whether we could defeat populism. But Frank's book takes us back to what populism actually was, at least in the American context- an alliance of farmers started in 1890s Kansas, also known as The People's Party, who were against the gold standard and the general plutocracy of the Gilded Age. The People's Party furthermore, contrary to today's ambient wisdom that populists are bigots, encouraged class solidarity across race, which seemed to them the only means of having a strong enough voting bloc to make fundamental change. But since this is a history of what Frank calls anti-populism, he focuses at least as much on the responses the Populists provoked- in short, they were largely demonized by the wealthy, educated class and seen as driven by irrational impulses rather than genuine economic concerns, a dynamic whose basic structure Frank tracks through the New Deal and beyond (it was actually a little shocking for me- considering how reverentially FDR is looked back on today- to read just how many professional economists and "experts" lined up against him and his New Deal heresy). A learned economist explaining to the proles that, actually, hard times don't exist- or that depressions just happen according to the immutable laws of economics, and nothing can be done to alleviate them- is a perfect example of what Frank means by anti-populism, just as a modern-day version might be a columnist like Paul Krugman taking it upon himself to "fix" the public's perception of the economy.
Well, so what? The meanings of words change. What matters, I'm sure some would say, is what populism supposedly means now, as defined by The Atlantic and The Guardian. But at one point Frank mentions Citizen Kane, a movie I happened to rewatch not too long ago. Not having seen it or absorbed much commentary about it since college, I needed to sit with it for a while. I think that was partly because Welles is so charismatic, especially as the younger Kane, and because the movie really does pay some sentimental deference to the importance of his personal tragedy. In a way, it does center the life of one titanic figure above the lives of ordinary people, and is entranced by that figure. But of course the critique is there as well, of what Frank calls pseudo-populism, a political art in which someone or some political party adopts the language of appealing to the common person while in fact striving for power, personal enrichment, etc. One of the key scene for Frank is the one where Joseph Cotten tells Welles, "You used to write an awful lot about the working man. Well, he's turning into something called organized labor. You're not going to like that one little bit when you find out your working man expects something as his right, not as your gift." Without a distinction between populism and its disingenuous appropriation (a distinction that doesn't really exist in today's mainstream discourse), I think it'd be easy to watch Citizen Kane, notice details like the way Kane has accusations of voter fraud ready to be printed the moment he loses the election, and to conclude that all these populists have to be resisted. But it might be harder to recognize the real and noble tradition that Cotten's character is talking about. Without a word for that tradition, we might forget that it exists. And it's telling, isn't it, that the word we now use to describe irrational resentment was a word used initially in the service of trying to reform a grotesquely unequal economic system, under which we also live today.
It also strikes me as important because I think what Frank is really talking about here, for all intents and purposes, is the tradition of liberalism, or at least one of its more valuable strains. As far as I can tell after an admittedly brief Youtube search, Frank appeared on the flagship "liberal" network MSNBC a number of times before 2016, and never afterwards. It makes sense, because the parallel he draws between the haughty anti-populism of the Gilded Age and that of today amounts to a pretty devastating critique of the Democratic Party. It's a critique that in one form or another he's been making for a while now, and which, in broad summary, traces the party's progression away from working-class concerns and unions, and towards the embrace of Wall Street and corporate interests. He's far from the only one to make this critique; but since 2016, it no longer seems to be grudgingly tolerated. Now it's more like heretical (of course, the admittedly idealistic conception I had of liberalism while growing up was that it wasn't really supposed to have heresies and heresy-hunting- I had enough of that sort of thing in Catholic school), heeding it an indulgence that's too risky; unless, as I think Frank would say, you believe that heeding at least some part of it is the only real solution. The reflexive and defensive reaction here usually seems to be to ask if Frank talks about Republicans as well. Is there a chapter where he pats us all on the back and reassures us that Republicans are still worse? The answer is that he doesn't waste a lot of the reader's time with that, though he does point out that, for decades now, liberalism has ceded the rhetorical ground of populism to Republicans (the substantive ground not covered by either party), thereby enabling a form of pseudo-populism via which- through tax cuts, union-busting, deregulation- we've seen a dramatic redistribution of wealth upwards, the exact opposite of what a real populist would want.
In Frank's view, instead of countering pseudo-populism with the real deal, Democrats have adopted a scolding and haughty (increasingly class-based- just not the same class that it used to be) anti-populism that expresses contempt for voters. It's anecdotal, but I've noticed that contempt in the culture, more and more. I've noticed it in myself, at times. But that kind of contempt, I've realized, is in large part a lack of humility about the limits of my ability to understand lives very different from mine. It's also an enormously convenient and self-serving way of thinking, because it functions as a way to avoid all self-reflection. If voters are dumb, irrational bigots, driven only by mindless "rural rage" (to cite the title of a recent book whose author was celebrated by MSNBC), or hopelessly brainwashed by Putin, we can't do anything except wag our fingers at them and feel superior. It's a great excuse for doing nothing. If that is the case, it doesn't matter that we de-industrialized the Midwest, stood lockstep with Bush in the invasion of Iraq, bailed out the banks, or enacted a toothless healthcare reform. It's the kind of lukewarm ideology that obliviously allows right-wing bullshit artists to swipe the anger and desire for change that should belong to liberalism. And now it doesn't seem to matter that we're helping a foreign country indiscriminately murder civilians and starve kids to death. Is it irrational for people to look at that and feel a) fucking morally disgusted beyond words, and b) that maybe, instead of helping drop bombs on kids, we could use some of that money domestically, on the things we're told we can never have?
December 28, 2021
If you are at all a bit of a jerk like me, the indiscriminate use of certain words not only makes you cringe, it also makes you instantly evaluate whether or not the user of them could ever be your friend. Like kicking your dog, or reserving a special corner of your library (or "heart") for the "novels" of the "philosopher" Ayn Rand, the deployment of words and phrases like begs the question, moderate Democrat, or even impact (as a verb*, or do-able**, O my would-be, could-be brothers and sisters), or any noun-turned-verb you so much as care to name, and youse is persona non grata round here, mes anciens amis….
Thing is, though, Thomas frank would not have us stop there, and the mocking, judgy place I would most likey and lazily have us stop. No siree ma'am. He would have us dive deep into US history (imagine!) and examine just where that term came from, what it meant in its original contexts, and how it got turned into the political bogeyman which allows us to tar/same-brush the likes of social democrat Bernie Sanders and wingnut
Frank has a precise date and time for when "Populism" was first coined, though no precise location for the occasion, as the neologism was invented by the reformist, agrarian People's Party (no honest relation to the xenophobic, pseudo-Trumpist, betimes libertarian, Q-Anonny Canadian party of that name) on a train somewhere between Kansas City and Topeka on May 28th, 1891.
The first Populists attempted to wrest political power away from the banks and railroad companies which held sway over their lives—and over political life in Washington. They created educational libraries and programs to bring their neighbours up to speed, and advocated the regulation of finance and of monopolies, along with women's suffrage and the secret ballot—and were largely free from the racism and anti-Semitism which were commonplace in American society of the period (or, OK, of pretty much any period).
They also advocated getting off of the gold standard, which hamstrung the US economy until the days of FDR in the mid-to-late 1930s, as it kept the money supply artificially tight, limiting capitalist expansion (or in the 1890s and 1930s, recovery) and exacerbated the deflation endemic to recessions and depressions.
So many forward-looking new ideas, then, and yet anti-populists (the majority of them "moderate" or "centrist" Democrats) charge the movement with being nostalgic for a lost, glorious and mythical past! And far from being authoritarian or proto-fascist, they were scrupulous participatory small-d democrats who also wished to enlarge the "sphere" of popular sovereignty to include the economic—meaning not only the right to form trade unions, but the political smarts to keep those unions "honest" (i.e. truly representative of their members' needs) by keeping them organizationally or structurally in touch with their "grass roots" rather than allowing them to retreat into professionalized insularity, as they did during Peak Keynesianism after World War II
But I get ahead of myself: the Populist credo was revived and made even stronger during the Great Depression, in the face of a virulently anti-worker Hoover administration. If FDR's subsequent New Deal kept Communism at bay (by giving workers new rights as well as work/infrastructure programs and a social safety net), it also overturned orthodox Capitalist economics, not only by finally taking the US off of the gold standard and making the dollar a fiat currency but also by inserting the government into the previously "free market" economy so as to prevent any more of its recent swings (called "Panics" because they were as violent as they were a regular feature of pre- [and, with 1926, post-] World War I economic life).
Mr. Frank goes into a (ha-ha, I know) wealth of detail about all of this, but writes about it in such a disarming and charming way that you never feel you are being lectured-at in these pages—we are almost halfway through the book before we leave the 1930s, and I for one was thankful to learn about the demotic traditions of the 1890s, as well as to realise that I knew less about the 1930s that I had previously thought. But it is in the book's second half where we learn how all that was so promising from those two earlier eras gets twisted almost beyond all recognition by—no, not by such dinosaurs as Barry Goldwater or William F. Buckley, but by liberal academics, Washington-consensus technocrats, and the machinery of Democratic party itself.
This is where the book really opens up and takes off, in my opinion. I won't get into it too much here, except to say: the real enemy of the liberal imagination isn't the Republican Party, but the American people, who must in no circumstances ever be allowed any real say in how "their" country is run. Bernie Sanders, for example, is a far greater danger to the plutocrat-funded Beltway consensus than…well (until fairly recently, anyway), almost any Republican candidate you care to name.
From the sidelining of Martin Luther King's emphasis on economic justice to the erasure of the very notion of Class in American political life during the social upheavals of 1968-75 (beginning with the SDS or Students for a Democratic Society and ending with Hilary Clinton's "Basket of Deplorables" moment), Mr. Frank weaves a powerful argument concerning just where, how, and when America's left went wrong in allowing or rather enabling the hijacking of the venerable political tradition which Populism certainly is. And if it (most certainly) deserves better spokespeople, it also deserves a renaissance, or a new dawn, or something. How about "It's morning in America," then? Or…?
*
**
(And as for political "moderate", who even qualifies for that label, and why, and who gets to qualify'em, too (and why?))?Anyhow, author Thomas Frank would have you feel pretty much the same way about the manner in which most media-types employ the "pejorative" term (ahem) Populist, which we in the audience have been trained to decode, these days at least, as specifically Trumpist or more widely connoting the courting of the rural/working class/undereducated/over-emotional/secretly-racist-xenophobic-nationalist voter's unreconstructed Id.
(((And does even asking any of that make me some kind of Extremist, Venti-sized jerk, then? Or just a regular, Grande one?)))
Thing is, though, Thomas frank would not have us stop there, and the mocking, judgy place I would most likey and lazily have us stop. No siree ma'am. He would have us dive deep into US history (imagine!) and examine just where that term came from, what it meant in its original contexts, and how it got turned into the political bogeyman which allows us to tar/same-brush the likes of social democrat Bernie Sanders and wingnut
Frank has a precise date and time for when "Populism" was first coined, though no precise location for the occasion, as the neologism was invented by the reformist, agrarian People's Party (no honest relation to the xenophobic, pseudo-Trumpist, betimes libertarian, Q-Anonny Canadian party of that name) on a train somewhere between Kansas City and Topeka on May 28th, 1891.
The first Populists attempted to wrest political power away from the banks and railroad companies which held sway over their lives—and over political life in Washington. They created educational libraries and programs to bring their neighbours up to speed, and advocated the regulation of finance and of monopolies, along with women's suffrage and the secret ballot—and were largely free from the racism and anti-Semitism which were commonplace in American society of the period (or, OK, of pretty much any period).
They also advocated getting off of the gold standard, which hamstrung the US economy until the days of FDR in the mid-to-late 1930s, as it kept the money supply artificially tight, limiting capitalist expansion (or in the 1890s and 1930s, recovery) and exacerbated the deflation endemic to recessions and depressions.
So many forward-looking new ideas, then, and yet anti-populists (the majority of them "moderate" or "centrist" Democrats) charge the movement with being nostalgic for a lost, glorious and mythical past! And far from being authoritarian or proto-fascist, they were scrupulous participatory small-d democrats who also wished to enlarge the "sphere" of popular sovereignty to include the economic—meaning not only the right to form trade unions, but the political smarts to keep those unions "honest" (i.e. truly representative of their members' needs) by keeping them organizationally or structurally in touch with their "grass roots" rather than allowing them to retreat into professionalized insularity, as they did during Peak Keynesianism after World War II
But I get ahead of myself: the Populist credo was revived and made even stronger during the Great Depression, in the face of a virulently anti-worker Hoover administration. If FDR's subsequent New Deal kept Communism at bay (by giving workers new rights as well as work/infrastructure programs and a social safety net), it also overturned orthodox Capitalist economics, not only by finally taking the US off of the gold standard and making the dollar a fiat currency but also by inserting the government into the previously "free market" economy so as to prevent any more of its recent swings (called "Panics" because they were as violent as they were a regular feature of pre- [and, with 1926, post-] World War I economic life).
Mr. Frank goes into a (ha-ha, I know) wealth of detail about all of this, but writes about it in such a disarming and charming way that you never feel you are being lectured-at in these pages—we are almost halfway through the book before we leave the 1930s, and I for one was thankful to learn about the demotic traditions of the 1890s, as well as to realise that I knew less about the 1930s that I had previously thought. But it is in the book's second half where we learn how all that was so promising from those two earlier eras gets twisted almost beyond all recognition by—no, not by such dinosaurs as Barry Goldwater or William F. Buckley, but by liberal academics, Washington-consensus technocrats, and the machinery of Democratic party itself.
This is where the book really opens up and takes off, in my opinion. I won't get into it too much here, except to say: the real enemy of the liberal imagination isn't the Republican Party, but the American people, who must in no circumstances ever be allowed any real say in how "their" country is run. Bernie Sanders, for example, is a far greater danger to the plutocrat-funded Beltway consensus than…well (until fairly recently, anyway), almost any Republican candidate you care to name.
From the sidelining of Martin Luther King's emphasis on economic justice to the erasure of the very notion of Class in American political life during the social upheavals of 1968-75 (beginning with the SDS or Students for a Democratic Society and ending with Hilary Clinton's "Basket of Deplorables" moment), Mr. Frank weaves a powerful argument concerning just where, how, and when America's left went wrong in allowing or rather enabling the hijacking of the venerable political tradition which Populism certainly is. And if it (most certainly) deserves better spokespeople, it also deserves a renaissance, or a new dawn, or something. How about "It's morning in America," then? Or…?
*
**
March 19, 2020
Thomas Frank has discovered that the term populism is fungible.
Since its invention in the late 1800s, when it meant the native intelligence of the populace at large to correct the ills and corruption of the USA, it has been hijacked numerous times in different eras. Like everything else in the universe, it doesn’t stay fixed for long.
Populism started out as anger over property taxes, injustice, corruption and inequality in the Gilded Age, all of which were actually worse in the 1890s than they are today. Groups and movements formed. Authors began exposing abuses. The country slowly came around to seeing things weren’t as the founders had envisioned. To boil it down to a phrase, populism valued human rights over property rights.
Inevitably, the rich fired back. They portrayed populists not as reasoned citizens with legitimate positions, but as ignorant hayseeds, unfit to even speak let alone govern. Governing was for the governing class, made up of the rich and the credentialed, not farmers and laborers, women or nonwhites. Academics in particular showed themselves to be narrowminded, selfish and power-mad in their denunciations of populism.
As time wore on, they assigned populism to ever more evil traits. It didn’t matter how crazy the attack was. The elites lashed out in all directions, fighting to keep their exclusive domain of governing and pillaging. They attached it to Nazism, for example, when until that point populism had always been considered a leftist disease. It had been associated with the rise of labor unions, not fascists.
But, despite the battering and the haranguing by newspapers and magazines against it, the movement had a profound effect. It resulted in FDR’s unprecedented four terms as president, in which he established regulating agencies, old age pensions, works projects and numerous other egalitarian institutions for all, much to the continuing horror of the establishment. It was, as Noam Chomsky posited of such movements, a “Democracy Scare”.
The scales tipped back in the 1960s, when populism began to fade. There were numerous reasons, most of which Frank does not go into. People became weary of conformity and equality. They wanted to break out, to move ahead of the pack, not nestle in it. The cult of the individual arose and government receded. Populism became a sneeringly bad concept, assigned to crackpot Argentine dictators and buffoonish Italian prime ministers of the extreme right.
Now, in the Trump era, the concept has mutated into something that makes no sense at all – a corrupt billionaire president making himself and his class even richer, while claiming to represent the long-aggrieved and deceived working class. Frank says “If this is populism, the word has truly come to mean nothing.”
Frank has definitely done the research. He has found long forgotten leaders, long forgotten tracts, and long forgotten events - and rehabilitated them. Even the book’s title, The People, No is a takeoff on a long forgotten 1936 booklength poem by populist Carl Sandburg – The People, Yes.
Today, the term populism is shackled to bigotry, white supremacy, the patriarchy, and nothing at all to do with its roots in human rights and equality. It makes the book a wild ride.
For some reason, this is the season for books on populism. This is at least the fourth one I’ve seen so far, and the second I have read. The other, Robert Putnam’s Upswing, puts populism in perspective instead of exhaustive examination. Putnam shows the record inequality of the Gilded Age, the remarkable pendulum swing to the New Deal, the rise of the individual and decline of protections - as waves. He asks, can America break free of this stranglehold again? Can populism (the original version) return? Frank, on the other hand, is total immersion in the rise and perversion of populism. Two books, each with important messages not to be overlooked.
David Wineberg
Since its invention in the late 1800s, when it meant the native intelligence of the populace at large to correct the ills and corruption of the USA, it has been hijacked numerous times in different eras. Like everything else in the universe, it doesn’t stay fixed for long.
Populism started out as anger over property taxes, injustice, corruption and inequality in the Gilded Age, all of which were actually worse in the 1890s than they are today. Groups and movements formed. Authors began exposing abuses. The country slowly came around to seeing things weren’t as the founders had envisioned. To boil it down to a phrase, populism valued human rights over property rights.
Inevitably, the rich fired back. They portrayed populists not as reasoned citizens with legitimate positions, but as ignorant hayseeds, unfit to even speak let alone govern. Governing was for the governing class, made up of the rich and the credentialed, not farmers and laborers, women or nonwhites. Academics in particular showed themselves to be narrowminded, selfish and power-mad in their denunciations of populism.
As time wore on, they assigned populism to ever more evil traits. It didn’t matter how crazy the attack was. The elites lashed out in all directions, fighting to keep their exclusive domain of governing and pillaging. They attached it to Nazism, for example, when until that point populism had always been considered a leftist disease. It had been associated with the rise of labor unions, not fascists.
But, despite the battering and the haranguing by newspapers and magazines against it, the movement had a profound effect. It resulted in FDR’s unprecedented four terms as president, in which he established regulating agencies, old age pensions, works projects and numerous other egalitarian institutions for all, much to the continuing horror of the establishment. It was, as Noam Chomsky posited of such movements, a “Democracy Scare”.
The scales tipped back in the 1960s, when populism began to fade. There were numerous reasons, most of which Frank does not go into. People became weary of conformity and equality. They wanted to break out, to move ahead of the pack, not nestle in it. The cult of the individual arose and government receded. Populism became a sneeringly bad concept, assigned to crackpot Argentine dictators and buffoonish Italian prime ministers of the extreme right.
Now, in the Trump era, the concept has mutated into something that makes no sense at all – a corrupt billionaire president making himself and his class even richer, while claiming to represent the long-aggrieved and deceived working class. Frank says “If this is populism, the word has truly come to mean nothing.”
Frank has definitely done the research. He has found long forgotten leaders, long forgotten tracts, and long forgotten events - and rehabilitated them. Even the book’s title, The People, No is a takeoff on a long forgotten 1936 booklength poem by populist Carl Sandburg – The People, Yes.
Today, the term populism is shackled to bigotry, white supremacy, the patriarchy, and nothing at all to do with its roots in human rights and equality. It makes the book a wild ride.
For some reason, this is the season for books on populism. This is at least the fourth one I’ve seen so far, and the second I have read. The other, Robert Putnam’s Upswing, puts populism in perspective instead of exhaustive examination. Putnam shows the record inequality of the Gilded Age, the remarkable pendulum swing to the New Deal, the rise of the individual and decline of protections - as waves. He asks, can America break free of this stranglehold again? Can populism (the original version) return? Frank, on the other hand, is total immersion in the rise and perversion of populism. Two books, each with important messages not to be overlooked.
David Wineberg
August 5, 2020
This was a really good history of the populist movement and its erasure. I think Frank makes some oversimplistic assertions on some fronts (on racism, it's not super clearcut; on anti-science, he completely leaves out Bryan's scopes monkey trial defense), but he's right that populism has gotten an overly bad wrap because it does threaten the status quo. In a way, I was hoping that someone would write this book because it is an update to C Van Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow and that one is not read as much as it should be.
September 12, 2020
The best piece on the topic, by Matt Taibbi: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/kansas-...
This book is a worthy sequel to Listen, Liberal, and an excellent example for the "know your history" argument.
Frank gives us a very astute analysis of the current situation, and how it got here (starting with 1890s). It's all very depressing, with some unexpected rays of hope and faith in working class people. I'll try to hang on that optimistic thread as I read The War on Normal People.
This book is a worthy sequel to Listen, Liberal, and an excellent example for the "know your history" argument.
Frank gives us a very astute analysis of the current situation, and how it got here (starting with 1890s). It's all very depressing, with some unexpected rays of hope and faith in working class people. I'll try to hang on that optimistic thread as I read The War on Normal People.
June 23, 2020
TL;DR
Thomas Frank’s The People, No should be required reading for VP Joe Biden’s campaign and anyone wanting to know how the Democratic party abdicated the working class. Highly recommended!
Disclaimer: I received a free eARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
To read more reviews like this, please, visit Primmlife.com.
Review: The People, No
One of the pleasures of reading non-fiction is finding new authors directly in the text. Earlier this year, I read Matt Taibbi’s Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another (uneven but interesting) and Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzl (excellent). Both referred to Thomas Frank’s What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America as a book that tells the liberal political machine what they’re doing wrong. Seeing this referral in two books about vastly different subjects, it piqued my interest. So, when I saw Frank’s The People, No on NetGalley, I was curious. When I read the description, I was hooked. Frank looks at Populism and how it shifted from an egalitarian movement to be today’s movement of racists and extremists. This was a frustrating and enlightening book. I can’t think of the last time a book made me angry in one paragraph then had me agreeing in another with such regularity as The People, No.
Thomas Frank’s The People, No tracks the populist movement from its inception as a political party in the late 1800s to the twisting of its meaning in the 1950s to the adoption and twisting by Republicans in the1970s to the fake populism of the Trump campaign in 2016. The majority of the book is historical analysis hitting the important points in populism’s journey. Mr. Frank catalogues populism’s high points and lasting policies, such as the New Deal and fiat currency, for example. He also shows populism’s low points like McCarthyism, the academic reframing of populist actions, and Steve Bannon’s use of populism as a vehicle of rage. (Though, Frank says that McCarthyism wasn’t really populism.) It’s a fascinating journey through history showing how the term changed and why. He analyzes the elite’s responses to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, the anti-populist historians of the 50s, and much more. The book ends with a discussion of populism as a vehicle of change. It’s well written, thorough, and frustrating.
What really frustrated me was that I didn’t really understand the point the book was making until the final chapters. From the beginning that Frank was attempting to rehabilitate the phrase populism, to change the popular usage of it. That is a goal of the book, but it’s also seems like a one man crusade against the way languages change. Why does it matter that the original usage is no longer relevant? The People, No is in reality another critique of the modern Democratic party. It’s yet another rage against identity politics, sort of. I thought this would be one of those ‘liberal’ book in the vein of Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi where there’s hand-waving and lip service in the form of ‘Republicans are bad, sure, but the real problem is the Democrats.’ Frank does blame the Democrats, but later in the book, he unloads on Republicans in a way that I found refreshing. But the purpose of rehabilitating the term is quite noble. Frank wants a political party that focuses on the people, not the elites (Democrats) or the rich (Republicans).
Elites versus the Masses
Mr. Frank is most effective showing how politics shifted from the concerns of the masses to that of the elites. Liberals squandered the heritage of FDR and the New Deal by looking to the ‘Educated Class’ instead of remaining with the working class. Partly, this book feels like an argument against expertise. I’m hesitant here because look at the incompetent administration that is currently in the White House. It abdicated leadership in face of Covid-19 and the response to George Floyd’s murder. Expertise has its place, and distrusting someone because they went to college to study politics or foreign policy is just the reversal of what Mr. Frank advocates for. He shows how the liberal elites stopped listening to the masses and began to listen to experts only. In this, he’s correct.
What was clear late in the book is that Mr. Frank is not anti-education. His discussion of the Little Blue Books shows that he wants education to be even more egalitarian than it is. Currently, higher education is big business, and historically it was limited to the upper classes. But higher education isn’t the only path to enlightenment. The Little Blue Books democratized knowledge. In a manner, these books were like the internet, only curated. Mr. Frank thinks education should not be limited to the ivory towers of academia. In this he is correct, but part of losing this education comes from the change in the media landscape.
The demise of local news media or alternate presses – newspapers, TV, – has had a profound effect on the country. The consolidation of media has replaced local concerns with national ones. While right wing media stars who make millions of dollars per year or who are scions of wealthy families rail against the East and West coast elites, the masses have no real representation in media. (Also, right wing media looks down upon its audience just the same as left wing media does.)
Race and Populism
Thomas Frank makes a good argument that populists are the working class and that it’s true inheritors are the labor movement. But like the labor movement and like Bernie Sander’s populist campaign in two democratic primaries, Mr. Frank believes that class struggle should supersede movements based around identity. Even more frustrating is that he discusses Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement during the Civil Rights era. Mr. Frank comes so close to understanding the problem. So close. In it, he correctly notes that MLK Jr began discussing labor and economic equality in the later years of his life. He even mentions that phase two of MLK’s plans was to unify labor across racial lines. I found this analysis of MLK’s plans for the labor movement quite enjoyable. It’s well sourced with powerful quotations, but it misses an essential element. Frank’s erroneous assumption is that phase one of MLK’s plans succeeded.
MLK’s goal was to elevate the African-American’s place in U.S. society to one of equality. Voting rights, spot-lighting police brutality, peaceful protests, and the Civil Rights Act are King’s legacy. His presence, his actions live on today. Unfortunately, the very things he worked for are still being fought over to this day. John Roberts’ politicization of the Supreme Court by gutting the Voting Rights Act has led to the GOP engaging in as much voter suppression as they can get away with, and these efforts target minorities with clear intent. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Martin Gugino show that police brutality is still a problem, and the violent confrontation of the police with the protesters are reminiscent of the brutality of the civil rights era. Peaceful protests for civil rights continue (though, the media lets violent rioting overshadow the peaceful protests). All the successes that MLK achieved are not set in stone. Complacency by the left has let the GOP chip away at the advances of MLK’s phase one. And many of the working class applaud the GOPs efforts to protect the racial hierarchy of the U.S. The question that Frank fails to answer is how to unite the working class across racial lines when the Republican elite has so effectively set each side against the other.
The reason that Frank doesn’t have an answer is because the populists didn’t have an answer. While parts of the Populist party did reach across racial lines in various places around the country, it failed to make in-roads with the Southern, white working class. (To be fair, Mr. Frank has an excellent discussion of this.) Populist movements that ignore racial issues and focus only on class issues – I’m looking at you Bernie Sanders – fail. The African-American voting block is loyal, and for a long time, they’ve propped up the Democratic party. Each year, their patience wears a little thinner, and they exert their presence more. Sanders candidacy failed for one reason and one reason only; his outreach to the black community was not convincing to its members. Focus only on class struggle ignores the very real racial disparities in each class and its structure.
Liberal Elites and Labor
Parts of the book, small parts, read like an old guy shaking his fists at those kids and their identity politics. He is, however, spot on by pointing out that the focus has shifted to identity politics at the cost of labor politics. For a political movement that seeks to be inclusive, the Democratic party ignores labor. Mr. Frank shows how the liberal elite expected the working class to fall in line but failed to notice that Republicans stepped into the void left by liberal elites. While the Republican party talks a good game for the working class, they fail to deliver any real change. But at least the Republican party acknowledges that these people have problems. The Democratic party takes the working class for granted, which is why it fractured. While Bernie’s campaign and supporters do not pay enough attention to race, their focus on labor is welcome and necessary. Bernie and his supporters have undoubtedly pushed the Democratic party to the left and back towards labor movements. Liberals have a difficult job ahead to determine how to integrate racial and labor policies to maximize both. And here’s the thing, racial equality means more labor opportunity, and advances in labor’s goals means more prosperity for minorities. But it must be both; focus on one and not the other alienates voters. Mr. Frank’s discussion of MLK provides a starting point. Liberal elites should take heed.
Populism Rehabilitated?
In The People, No, Frank attempts to return the term populism to its democratic origin. He wishes to undo the work of liberal elites and the Learned Class, such as Richard Hofstadter. Does he pull it off? I don’t think so. It’s a wonderful effort, and I enjoyed learning how the term was purposefully turned on its head. But that’s language, right? Words change over time, and definitions evolve. Is it fair? No, it isn’t. But this book is worth reading just to watch the evolution of the term from an egalitarian movement to a totalitarian one.
Populism and the Tea Party
There is a glaring omission from the book that undermines Frank’s effort at rehabilitation. He doesn’t discuss the Tea Party movement at all. For many of the negative populist movements in the past, Frank refers to those as led by demagogues and not true populism. Even if I accept this argument, no one could call the Tea Party movement the same as McCarthyism. The Tea Party movement was a loose coalition of conservative groups. Some were astroturfed; some were not. Because this movement had different goals than the populists of the 1800s, Frank must not consider it a populist movement. But it fits his populist definition because it was mainly groups of the working class who leaned right, who organized not at the behest of the GOP elite, but on their own prerogative. Leaving them out is fortunate for the author because the Tea Party was clearly a racist backlash against the first black president. Frank tries to show that populist movements are inclusive and not racist as the current usage implies. Discussion of the Tea Party would undermine this effort. Their policy goals weren’t to improve the working class; they feared the liberal elite’s handling of their healthcare. They peacefully protested, and through grassroots efforts, they organized. I would call the Tea Party a populist movement, but I can see how the author would say they’re not. However, I think he’s wrong.
Conclusion
Thomas Frank’s The People, No is an ambitious book. It seeks to correct the historical misunderstanding of populism’s meaning. While he fails to rehabilitate the phrase, he, once again, shows how the Left abdicated its historical position of supporting the working class for an infatuation with the expert, elitist class. The historical analysis and discussion is top notch, and while I don’t always agree with him, I respect his arguments. They made me think; they made me examine my own assumptions. Other than one glaring omission, this book makes a powerful argument for populism. The People, No should be required reading for VP Joe Biden, his campaign, and the entire DNC. While he didn’t win me over to the populist movement, Thomas Frank won me as a fan. I highly recommend The People, No.
Thomas Frank’s The People, No is available from Henry Holt and Co. on July 14th, 2020.
Thomas Frank’s The People, No should be required reading for VP Joe Biden’s campaign and anyone wanting to know how the Democratic party abdicated the working class. Highly recommended!
Disclaimer: I received a free eARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
To read more reviews like this, please, visit Primmlife.com.
Review: The People, No
One of the pleasures of reading non-fiction is finding new authors directly in the text. Earlier this year, I read Matt Taibbi’s Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another (uneven but interesting) and Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzl (excellent). Both referred to Thomas Frank’s What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America as a book that tells the liberal political machine what they’re doing wrong. Seeing this referral in two books about vastly different subjects, it piqued my interest. So, when I saw Frank’s The People, No on NetGalley, I was curious. When I read the description, I was hooked. Frank looks at Populism and how it shifted from an egalitarian movement to be today’s movement of racists and extremists. This was a frustrating and enlightening book. I can’t think of the last time a book made me angry in one paragraph then had me agreeing in another with such regularity as The People, No.
Thomas Frank’s The People, No tracks the populist movement from its inception as a political party in the late 1800s to the twisting of its meaning in the 1950s to the adoption and twisting by Republicans in the1970s to the fake populism of the Trump campaign in 2016. The majority of the book is historical analysis hitting the important points in populism’s journey. Mr. Frank catalogues populism’s high points and lasting policies, such as the New Deal and fiat currency, for example. He also shows populism’s low points like McCarthyism, the academic reframing of populist actions, and Steve Bannon’s use of populism as a vehicle of rage. (Though, Frank says that McCarthyism wasn’t really populism.) It’s a fascinating journey through history showing how the term changed and why. He analyzes the elite’s responses to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, the anti-populist historians of the 50s, and much more. The book ends with a discussion of populism as a vehicle of change. It’s well written, thorough, and frustrating.
What really frustrated me was that I didn’t really understand the point the book was making until the final chapters. From the beginning that Frank was attempting to rehabilitate the phrase populism, to change the popular usage of it. That is a goal of the book, but it’s also seems like a one man crusade against the way languages change. Why does it matter that the original usage is no longer relevant? The People, No is in reality another critique of the modern Democratic party. It’s yet another rage against identity politics, sort of. I thought this would be one of those ‘liberal’ book in the vein of Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi where there’s hand-waving and lip service in the form of ‘Republicans are bad, sure, but the real problem is the Democrats.’ Frank does blame the Democrats, but later in the book, he unloads on Republicans in a way that I found refreshing. But the purpose of rehabilitating the term is quite noble. Frank wants a political party that focuses on the people, not the elites (Democrats) or the rich (Republicans).
Elites versus the Masses
Mr. Frank is most effective showing how politics shifted from the concerns of the masses to that of the elites. Liberals squandered the heritage of FDR and the New Deal by looking to the ‘Educated Class’ instead of remaining with the working class. Partly, this book feels like an argument against expertise. I’m hesitant here because look at the incompetent administration that is currently in the White House. It abdicated leadership in face of Covid-19 and the response to George Floyd’s murder. Expertise has its place, and distrusting someone because they went to college to study politics or foreign policy is just the reversal of what Mr. Frank advocates for. He shows how the liberal elites stopped listening to the masses and began to listen to experts only. In this, he’s correct.
What was clear late in the book is that Mr. Frank is not anti-education. His discussion of the Little Blue Books shows that he wants education to be even more egalitarian than it is. Currently, higher education is big business, and historically it was limited to the upper classes. But higher education isn’t the only path to enlightenment. The Little Blue Books democratized knowledge. In a manner, these books were like the internet, only curated. Mr. Frank thinks education should not be limited to the ivory towers of academia. In this he is correct, but part of losing this education comes from the change in the media landscape.
The demise of local news media or alternate presses – newspapers, TV, – has had a profound effect on the country. The consolidation of media has replaced local concerns with national ones. While right wing media stars who make millions of dollars per year or who are scions of wealthy families rail against the East and West coast elites, the masses have no real representation in media. (Also, right wing media looks down upon its audience just the same as left wing media does.)
Race and Populism
Thomas Frank makes a good argument that populists are the working class and that it’s true inheritors are the labor movement. But like the labor movement and like Bernie Sander’s populist campaign in two democratic primaries, Mr. Frank believes that class struggle should supersede movements based around identity. Even more frustrating is that he discusses Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement during the Civil Rights era. Mr. Frank comes so close to understanding the problem. So close. In it, he correctly notes that MLK Jr began discussing labor and economic equality in the later years of his life. He even mentions that phase two of MLK’s plans was to unify labor across racial lines. I found this analysis of MLK’s plans for the labor movement quite enjoyable. It’s well sourced with powerful quotations, but it misses an essential element. Frank’s erroneous assumption is that phase one of MLK’s plans succeeded.
MLK’s goal was to elevate the African-American’s place in U.S. society to one of equality. Voting rights, spot-lighting police brutality, peaceful protests, and the Civil Rights Act are King’s legacy. His presence, his actions live on today. Unfortunately, the very things he worked for are still being fought over to this day. John Roberts’ politicization of the Supreme Court by gutting the Voting Rights Act has led to the GOP engaging in as much voter suppression as they can get away with, and these efforts target minorities with clear intent. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Martin Gugino show that police brutality is still a problem, and the violent confrontation of the police with the protesters are reminiscent of the brutality of the civil rights era. Peaceful protests for civil rights continue (though, the media lets violent rioting overshadow the peaceful protests). All the successes that MLK achieved are not set in stone. Complacency by the left has let the GOP chip away at the advances of MLK’s phase one. And many of the working class applaud the GOPs efforts to protect the racial hierarchy of the U.S. The question that Frank fails to answer is how to unite the working class across racial lines when the Republican elite has so effectively set each side against the other.
The reason that Frank doesn’t have an answer is because the populists didn’t have an answer. While parts of the Populist party did reach across racial lines in various places around the country, it failed to make in-roads with the Southern, white working class. (To be fair, Mr. Frank has an excellent discussion of this.) Populist movements that ignore racial issues and focus only on class issues – I’m looking at you Bernie Sanders – fail. The African-American voting block is loyal, and for a long time, they’ve propped up the Democratic party. Each year, their patience wears a little thinner, and they exert their presence more. Sanders candidacy failed for one reason and one reason only; his outreach to the black community was not convincing to its members. Focus only on class struggle ignores the very real racial disparities in each class and its structure.
Liberal Elites and Labor
Parts of the book, small parts, read like an old guy shaking his fists at those kids and their identity politics. He is, however, spot on by pointing out that the focus has shifted to identity politics at the cost of labor politics. For a political movement that seeks to be inclusive, the Democratic party ignores labor. Mr. Frank shows how the liberal elite expected the working class to fall in line but failed to notice that Republicans stepped into the void left by liberal elites. While the Republican party talks a good game for the working class, they fail to deliver any real change. But at least the Republican party acknowledges that these people have problems. The Democratic party takes the working class for granted, which is why it fractured. While Bernie’s campaign and supporters do not pay enough attention to race, their focus on labor is welcome and necessary. Bernie and his supporters have undoubtedly pushed the Democratic party to the left and back towards labor movements. Liberals have a difficult job ahead to determine how to integrate racial and labor policies to maximize both. And here’s the thing, racial equality means more labor opportunity, and advances in labor’s goals means more prosperity for minorities. But it must be both; focus on one and not the other alienates voters. Mr. Frank’s discussion of MLK provides a starting point. Liberal elites should take heed.
Populism Rehabilitated?
In The People, No, Frank attempts to return the term populism to its democratic origin. He wishes to undo the work of liberal elites and the Learned Class, such as Richard Hofstadter. Does he pull it off? I don’t think so. It’s a wonderful effort, and I enjoyed learning how the term was purposefully turned on its head. But that’s language, right? Words change over time, and definitions evolve. Is it fair? No, it isn’t. But this book is worth reading just to watch the evolution of the term from an egalitarian movement to a totalitarian one.
Populism and the Tea Party
There is a glaring omission from the book that undermines Frank’s effort at rehabilitation. He doesn’t discuss the Tea Party movement at all. For many of the negative populist movements in the past, Frank refers to those as led by demagogues and not true populism. Even if I accept this argument, no one could call the Tea Party movement the same as McCarthyism. The Tea Party movement was a loose coalition of conservative groups. Some were astroturfed; some were not. Because this movement had different goals than the populists of the 1800s, Frank must not consider it a populist movement. But it fits his populist definition because it was mainly groups of the working class who leaned right, who organized not at the behest of the GOP elite, but on their own prerogative. Leaving them out is fortunate for the author because the Tea Party was clearly a racist backlash against the first black president. Frank tries to show that populist movements are inclusive and not racist as the current usage implies. Discussion of the Tea Party would undermine this effort. Their policy goals weren’t to improve the working class; they feared the liberal elite’s handling of their healthcare. They peacefully protested, and through grassroots efforts, they organized. I would call the Tea Party a populist movement, but I can see how the author would say they’re not. However, I think he’s wrong.
Conclusion
Thomas Frank’s The People, No is an ambitious book. It seeks to correct the historical misunderstanding of populism’s meaning. While he fails to rehabilitate the phrase, he, once again, shows how the Left abdicated its historical position of supporting the working class for an infatuation with the expert, elitist class. The historical analysis and discussion is top notch, and while I don’t always agree with him, I respect his arguments. They made me think; they made me examine my own assumptions. Other than one glaring omission, this book makes a powerful argument for populism. The People, No should be required reading for VP Joe Biden, his campaign, and the entire DNC. While he didn’t win me over to the populist movement, Thomas Frank won me as a fan. I highly recommend The People, No.
Thomas Frank’s The People, No is available from Henry Holt and Co. on July 14th, 2020.
March 1, 2021
Thomas Frank is probably the best contemporary writer on American politics today, and his latest work, TPN, builds to some degree off his previous work, but works just fine as a stand-alone. Frank's focus is, not surprisingly, contemporary 'anti-populism', something 'in the air' so to speak and used by media and the cultural elite to basically denigrate anything to do with Trump.
To counter this narrative, Frank explores the history of populism in the USA, from its origins in Kansas in the late 19th century, to its reemergence during the New Deal, and finally, its role in the 1960s civil rights movements. In its most basic form, populism answers the question 'For whom does America Exist' with 'the people'. So simple! Yet, the powers that be (PTB) have consistently feared and denigrated populist movements. Frank takes us to late 19th century, when farmers and others challenged the idea that the US needed to back its currency with gold. The gold standard was very difficult for farmers as it led to persistent deflation, making their debt harder to pay off even while the cash value of their crops fell. Populists also challenged the giant trust companies (robber barons) for basically sucking all the profits out of production to line their own pockets.
What is amusing (and frustrating) is how cultural elites and politicians represented populists then, and how the same 'democracy scare' tactic is alive and well after over 100 years. Populism, for Frank, is basically a proxy for class, and real populists utilize issues of class to build mass movements for the reform of capitalism and democracy. Populism probably reached its heyday under the New Deal, when the government under FDR enacted wide sweeping reforms of the system of capitalism itself-- legalizing mass unions, providing jobs for the unemployed, aiding farmers with price floors for their goods, and oh so much more. The goal was to end the depression of course, but rather than 'wait this one out' as was conventional wisdom of the day (policy makers and elites), FDR proposed action now. The PTB of course were not very happy, but FDR's popularity was massive; if you wanted to run for office and win in the US, you basically had to at least give lip service to the New Deal and its reforms. The anti-New Deal rhetoric is, once again, surprisingly similar to what emerged in the 19th century-- leave it to the common man to not understand how things really work; put your trust in the 'experts', etc.
Frank does a masterful job here, and I will not even attempt to explore all the ways he defends his thesis here. What Frank takes real issue with, however, is how the right picked up some of the populist rhetoric and used that 'lip service' to get into office, while at the same time Democrats wanted to put the New Deal behind them, embracing the 'new economy' instead. Meanwhile, government public policy shifted in the last 40 years to decidedly anti-populist, with the answer to the aforementioned question being not the people, but the elite.
This is no apologia for Trump, but Frank is quick to note that he ran on a much more worker friendly platform than HRC (even if he did not do what he promised), railing about trade deals that deindustrialized American (Thanks Bill!), the bank bailouts, and so forth. HRC's disdain of the multitude, e.g., the 'deplorables', was so obvious that even Trump appeared to at least care for our disappearing middle class and the growing ranks of poverty than she did. The US is the richest nation in the history of the world but you would not know it from how the fruits of labor are divided today.
Tie together the rich analysis with Frank's customary snark and you get a text that poses and addresses big issues in an accessible way. Frank's analysis of the democratic party contained in Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People is alluded to here, but is not really necessary to read before this. Perhaps the best history of the populist tradition I have ever read. 5 stars!!
To counter this narrative, Frank explores the history of populism in the USA, from its origins in Kansas in the late 19th century, to its reemergence during the New Deal, and finally, its role in the 1960s civil rights movements. In its most basic form, populism answers the question 'For whom does America Exist' with 'the people'. So simple! Yet, the powers that be (PTB) have consistently feared and denigrated populist movements. Frank takes us to late 19th century, when farmers and others challenged the idea that the US needed to back its currency with gold. The gold standard was very difficult for farmers as it led to persistent deflation, making their debt harder to pay off even while the cash value of their crops fell. Populists also challenged the giant trust companies (robber barons) for basically sucking all the profits out of production to line their own pockets.
What is amusing (and frustrating) is how cultural elites and politicians represented populists then, and how the same 'democracy scare' tactic is alive and well after over 100 years. Populism, for Frank, is basically a proxy for class, and real populists utilize issues of class to build mass movements for the reform of capitalism and democracy. Populism probably reached its heyday under the New Deal, when the government under FDR enacted wide sweeping reforms of the system of capitalism itself-- legalizing mass unions, providing jobs for the unemployed, aiding farmers with price floors for their goods, and oh so much more. The goal was to end the depression of course, but rather than 'wait this one out' as was conventional wisdom of the day (policy makers and elites), FDR proposed action now. The PTB of course were not very happy, but FDR's popularity was massive; if you wanted to run for office and win in the US, you basically had to at least give lip service to the New Deal and its reforms. The anti-New Deal rhetoric is, once again, surprisingly similar to what emerged in the 19th century-- leave it to the common man to not understand how things really work; put your trust in the 'experts', etc.
Frank does a masterful job here, and I will not even attempt to explore all the ways he defends his thesis here. What Frank takes real issue with, however, is how the right picked up some of the populist rhetoric and used that 'lip service' to get into office, while at the same time Democrats wanted to put the New Deal behind them, embracing the 'new economy' instead. Meanwhile, government public policy shifted in the last 40 years to decidedly anti-populist, with the answer to the aforementioned question being not the people, but the elite.
This is no apologia for Trump, but Frank is quick to note that he ran on a much more worker friendly platform than HRC (even if he did not do what he promised), railing about trade deals that deindustrialized American (Thanks Bill!), the bank bailouts, and so forth. HRC's disdain of the multitude, e.g., the 'deplorables', was so obvious that even Trump appeared to at least care for our disappearing middle class and the growing ranks of poverty than she did. The US is the richest nation in the history of the world but you would not know it from how the fruits of labor are divided today.
Tie together the rich analysis with Frank's customary snark and you get a text that poses and addresses big issues in an accessible way. Frank's analysis of the democratic party contained in Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People is alluded to here, but is not really necessary to read before this. Perhaps the best history of the populist tradition I have ever read. 5 stars!!
December 22, 2020
Here’s a novel idea: maybe people know what’s best for themselves.
Author of Listen Liberal, Frank offers another scathing analysis of not only the switch and bait of the modern day Republican Party but a timely repudiation of the liberal intelligentsia.
Here we get a refocusing of populism. The author asserts that the current definitions are wrong referring to the populist part of the 1890s. I’m not convinced it matters at this point if we’re all using the term populism wrong but his point is solid: we need to stop believing in the infallibility of meritocracy. Frank argues that populism is the well informed, organized labor class not necessarily rejecting expertise but rather the orthodoxy that maintains the current power structures.
And this is where the New Deal succeeded: it rejected conventional wisdom despite a powerful corporate class and technocratic elites. The populists were correct to get rid of the gold standard.
Elite liberalism has learned to deplore working class movements and call it populism, sanitizing it of its roots. There was a liberal consensus in the 1950s that all societal problems could be solved by professionals. Mass movements were and are considered irrational and dangerous. Anti populism embodies the carefully cultivated professional class of the Clinton and Obama administrations. Attacking populism is to defend the elite power structure.
Even Jimmy Carter deregulated the airlines and was entrenched in anti populism sentiment. Labor and and union rights have no place in the current liberal zeitgeist. Liberals now scold instead of listen and validate.
Enter Trump who offered populist rhetoric but pulled a clear bait and switch with his corporate friendly 2017 tax plan. Liberal scolding will solve nothing, only serve for individual righteousness. Democrats have totally turned away from the idea of the people.
Populism is optimistic about people and has faith in them to be informed and to know what is best for themselves. The major flaw with this book is that Frank too easily compared the populism of the 1890s with today. There’s a huge elephant in the room: disinformation and propaganda are an enormous force today with siloed information and media bubbles. This creates a lethal brand of populism where ignorance has been amplified. I’m not as optimistic about Frank’s trust in the average American to know what public policy is best.
However it’s clear that the solutions are rooted in populism: regulate business, break up monopolies and strengthen the labor force.
Author of Listen Liberal, Frank offers another scathing analysis of not only the switch and bait of the modern day Republican Party but a timely repudiation of the liberal intelligentsia.
Here we get a refocusing of populism. The author asserts that the current definitions are wrong referring to the populist part of the 1890s. I’m not convinced it matters at this point if we’re all using the term populism wrong but his point is solid: we need to stop believing in the infallibility of meritocracy. Frank argues that populism is the well informed, organized labor class not necessarily rejecting expertise but rather the orthodoxy that maintains the current power structures.
And this is where the New Deal succeeded: it rejected conventional wisdom despite a powerful corporate class and technocratic elites. The populists were correct to get rid of the gold standard.
Elite liberalism has learned to deplore working class movements and call it populism, sanitizing it of its roots. There was a liberal consensus in the 1950s that all societal problems could be solved by professionals. Mass movements were and are considered irrational and dangerous. Anti populism embodies the carefully cultivated professional class of the Clinton and Obama administrations. Attacking populism is to defend the elite power structure.
Even Jimmy Carter deregulated the airlines and was entrenched in anti populism sentiment. Labor and and union rights have no place in the current liberal zeitgeist. Liberals now scold instead of listen and validate.
Enter Trump who offered populist rhetoric but pulled a clear bait and switch with his corporate friendly 2017 tax plan. Liberal scolding will solve nothing, only serve for individual righteousness. Democrats have totally turned away from the idea of the people.
Populism is optimistic about people and has faith in them to be informed and to know what is best for themselves. The major flaw with this book is that Frank too easily compared the populism of the 1890s with today. There’s a huge elephant in the room: disinformation and propaganda are an enormous force today with siloed information and media bubbles. This creates a lethal brand of populism where ignorance has been amplified. I’m not as optimistic about Frank’s trust in the average American to know what public policy is best.
However it’s clear that the solutions are rooted in populism: regulate business, break up monopolies and strengthen the labor force.
July 23, 2024
I was drawn to this book because of the backlash from mainstream media on the topic of "Populism" and what it stands for. I have watched numerous outlets that even feature Silicon Valley elites that all refer to populism with the same agitation, fear and negativity. It is always intriguing to see people from the same economic class all agree in unison despite political affiliation. Alarms should be going off in your head in these instances as they can be quite revealing when both upper echelons of the political classes agree. Usually when they agree it's not something thats lock step with the rest of the country, like increasing military defense spending, tax cuts for donors/corporations and trade deals which hallow out an already abysmal manufacturing sector.
When mainstream media talks about populist movements, they describe it almost as a pack of zombies foaming out the mouth, something thats inherently bad for the "country" when by country they mean the status quo. It's true there has and always will be leaders who grift on the pain and anger of millions of voters who have suffered through harsh economic pains (One recently). You can go back to Rome and see this in full display but I am also not sure how this is any different from any other political candidate. Whether it be from Regan, to Clinton, to Bush JR, to Obama and Biden. None of them have been referred to as populist however they all have manipulated voters in one sense to believe they were going to create some sort of economic change. None of them have even remotely challenged the power structure in Washington. It's interesting to sit back from afar and examine how political leaders movements that grow a ground swell of support from voters who are not well liked by their own political party or the establishment of Washington are viewed by the pundit class.
Look at their coverage and see how they describe their movements. Mainstream media successfully vilified Sanders and his voters as sexist, I believe the term was "bernie bro". The candidate that was actually arrested for protesting segregation and has been for trans rights since the 80's is being labeled as sexist and his voters are being labeled as 'bros'. Whether you like this candidate or not, you have to admit this is quite odd given the facts of his career. Look at Trump, a reality TV star who still is and was so desperate to be viewed as part of the political elite class was vehemently denied by the Republican party at the start. Theres maybe billions of negative critique's you could make about Trump. I avoid making them here because he is so polarizing that he distracts from the substance of my point. The only point I make here is that he was never accepted by the elite political class, still to this day he is not accepted. They only put up with him because they fear the base and he controls the base with the ease.
Thomas Frank gives us a tour de france of the history of populism, where its movement originated from and how they were successful. For instance Frank, points to the gilded age where significant economic concentration and deflation lead to a peoples movement where individuals would ban together to discuss economic concerns in their respective communities, this is well before the culture war age where it was so easy to divide us from the political class. From that movement a leader sprang up Name William Jennings Bryan. it was interesting to see that almost all publications were against him almost immediately. You see the same striking difference with FDR when he was set for office, the elite class tried to orchestrate a literal coup against a setting US president. He too was hated by the media and political class and rightfully so, he would be one of the first presidents to ever implement systematic change that gave power back to the working class. You see a common theme no matter the year or level of technology, the media genuinely hates a candidate that is well liked by the people but not accepted by the political figures to be.
Populism is not something that one can write off as simply people being manipulated, populism arises when political leaders, institutions and democratic processes have been compromised by the elite class. It is a direct reaction to the corruption in the political system, healthy democracies where voters feel empowered that their vote matters do not have political candidates come out of nowhere to win elections. This is a reflection of the political system itself, to not heed this movement and give them credibility and acknowledge the reasons the movement formed is to misrepresent the scope of the issue. It's a way to obfuscate the issue and demonize voters who are fed up with the current political status quo. This is a one of the reasons why the gap between mainstream and citizens is increasingly become larger and larger. Voters are right to be skeptical of mainstream media pundits, they fail to correctly call out the problem, they're constantly receiving ad money from organizations that may pull into question the conflict of interest that exists. MSNBC currently has pro Ukraine interventionist on their program who are also paid lobbyist for defense contractors who profit off of prolonged involvement. It's not just this network that has this type of conflict its all of them, literally all of them. You can be pro Ukraine interventionist as your view, I don't agree with it but then you cant be a lobbyist and make money from that point of view and your network cant accept ad money from defense contractors either. Again this is one conflict of interest out of thousands.
You have this type of corruption going on while pundits are chastising voters as 'misinformed' while essentially coddling up to power and failing to hold power accountable. This is why I feel like this book is important because it begins to describe what exactly populism means. In the upcoming years, populism will continue to grow for bad or for worse, it is a result of a failed democratic system. We should never bemoan populism, we should learn why its there in the first place so we can solve the root issues but this never happens. Covering the source of the root issues will take us directly back to both of our political parties. No one in power wants that.
5 Stars.
When mainstream media talks about populist movements, they describe it almost as a pack of zombies foaming out the mouth, something thats inherently bad for the "country" when by country they mean the status quo. It's true there has and always will be leaders who grift on the pain and anger of millions of voters who have suffered through harsh economic pains (One recently). You can go back to Rome and see this in full display but I am also not sure how this is any different from any other political candidate. Whether it be from Regan, to Clinton, to Bush JR, to Obama and Biden. None of them have been referred to as populist however they all have manipulated voters in one sense to believe they were going to create some sort of economic change. None of them have even remotely challenged the power structure in Washington. It's interesting to sit back from afar and examine how political leaders movements that grow a ground swell of support from voters who are not well liked by their own political party or the establishment of Washington are viewed by the pundit class.
Look at their coverage and see how they describe their movements. Mainstream media successfully vilified Sanders and his voters as sexist, I believe the term was "bernie bro". The candidate that was actually arrested for protesting segregation and has been for trans rights since the 80's is being labeled as sexist and his voters are being labeled as 'bros'. Whether you like this candidate or not, you have to admit this is quite odd given the facts of his career. Look at Trump, a reality TV star who still is and was so desperate to be viewed as part of the political elite class was vehemently denied by the Republican party at the start. Theres maybe billions of negative critique's you could make about Trump. I avoid making them here because he is so polarizing that he distracts from the substance of my point. The only point I make here is that he was never accepted by the elite political class, still to this day he is not accepted. They only put up with him because they fear the base and he controls the base with the ease.
Thomas Frank gives us a tour de france of the history of populism, where its movement originated from and how they were successful. For instance Frank, points to the gilded age where significant economic concentration and deflation lead to a peoples movement where individuals would ban together to discuss economic concerns in their respective communities, this is well before the culture war age where it was so easy to divide us from the political class. From that movement a leader sprang up Name William Jennings Bryan. it was interesting to see that almost all publications were against him almost immediately. You see the same striking difference with FDR when he was set for office, the elite class tried to orchestrate a literal coup against a setting US president. He too was hated by the media and political class and rightfully so, he would be one of the first presidents to ever implement systematic change that gave power back to the working class. You see a common theme no matter the year or level of technology, the media genuinely hates a candidate that is well liked by the people but not accepted by the political figures to be.
Populism is not something that one can write off as simply people being manipulated, populism arises when political leaders, institutions and democratic processes have been compromised by the elite class. It is a direct reaction to the corruption in the political system, healthy democracies where voters feel empowered that their vote matters do not have political candidates come out of nowhere to win elections. This is a reflection of the political system itself, to not heed this movement and give them credibility and acknowledge the reasons the movement formed is to misrepresent the scope of the issue. It's a way to obfuscate the issue and demonize voters who are fed up with the current political status quo. This is a one of the reasons why the gap between mainstream and citizens is increasingly become larger and larger. Voters are right to be skeptical of mainstream media pundits, they fail to correctly call out the problem, they're constantly receiving ad money from organizations that may pull into question the conflict of interest that exists. MSNBC currently has pro Ukraine interventionist on their program who are also paid lobbyist for defense contractors who profit off of prolonged involvement. It's not just this network that has this type of conflict its all of them, literally all of them. You can be pro Ukraine interventionist as your view, I don't agree with it but then you cant be a lobbyist and make money from that point of view and your network cant accept ad money from defense contractors either. Again this is one conflict of interest out of thousands.
You have this type of corruption going on while pundits are chastising voters as 'misinformed' while essentially coddling up to power and failing to hold power accountable. This is why I feel like this book is important because it begins to describe what exactly populism means. In the upcoming years, populism will continue to grow for bad or for worse, it is a result of a failed democratic system. We should never bemoan populism, we should learn why its there in the first place so we can solve the root issues but this never happens. Covering the source of the root issues will take us directly back to both of our political parties. No one in power wants that.
5 Stars.
August 25, 2020
Thomas Frank deserves more credit than he gets in left-leaning circles. Much of his reputation comes from his 2004 breakout book, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” This is a problem for two reasons. One is that while it’s a fun, fast book, it’s not Frank at his best. The other is that a lot of people, many of whom should know better, seemingly failed to read beyond the title. “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” isn’t a screed at the expense of the people of the Sunflower State (Frank himself is a Kansan), as has been widely alleged and assumed. The book is largely an attack on the contemporary Democratic Party for abandoning the people of Kansas to the cruel whims of global market forces. Criticism of those same forces, the politicians who abet them, and the culture the whole gestalt produces, has been Frank’s project for decades. His magazine, The Baffler, formed an oasis of biting criticism during the gauzy, end-of-history 1990s. He deserves, at the very least, a fairer hearing than he’s gotten, which is one based largely on one line from his copious works.
Alas, Frank’s latest work, “The People, NO,” is not the book to fix this problem. The premise sounds promising: a scathing critique of the anti-populism that has reared its head prominently since Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election. There is some of that, and a range of elitist figures from Mark Hanna to Jason Brennan get what’s coming to them in Frank’s fine prose. What is also present, predominant for much of the book, is an extended effort to rescue the reputation of the People’s Party, the original Populists in the American context, from an obloquy whose origins and persistence Frank makes sound close to conspiracy. More than conspiratorial, Frank’s defense of the original Populists and their contemporary relevance goes beyond impassioned and becomes, frankly, injured and myopic.
Like Frank, the American Populists deserve more credit than they get in many circles. Indeed, they have gotten it, from major historians who Frank cites, such as Lawrence Goodwyn and Charles Postel. These historians depict the People’s Party, an American third-party effort that lived and died in the last decade of the nineteenth century, as a noble effort to bring meaningful democracy to America’s political system. They were forward-looking reformers, promulgators of ideas such as regulation of railroads, the income tax, popular referenda, the direct election of Senators, and more. Populists made an effort to break single-party white supremacist rule in the post-Reconstruction South by making alliances between white and black farmers and workers, which were only defeated by force. Their ideas inspired future generations of American reformers, including the Progressives, the New Dealers, and portions of the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. This is what Frank refers to as “our native radical tradition.”
The opponents of this native radicalism are predictably elitist and slimy. The original Populists were done in by the presidential campaign of William McKinley, who pulled out all of the stops to present the Populists as insane, foreign, dirty, motivated by madness and rapine. The New Dealers faced the Liberty League and others who decried the Roosevelt administration as a totalitarian disaster of the first order. The tone-deafness and often open racism of these attacks clang through the book.
Later attacks were more subtle, sufficiently subtle that the thread begins to get lost. Frank, along with his historiographical inspirations Goodwyn and Postel, fought (and continue to fight) against the long shadow made by Richard Hofstadter and his cohort. Hofstadter, godfather of the liberal consensus school of American history, depicted the American Populists as angry hayseeds frightened of modernity. He made bogus charges, such as laying American anti-semitism at the feet of the People’s Party, as though the elite of nineteenth century America needed any instructions in bigotry from farmers and workers. Social scientists aligned with the consensus school such as Edward Shils and Seymour Martin Lipset conflated populism and McCarthyism, declaring that the goal of politics was to maintain democracy while containing or eliminating such dangerous mass movements as populism, which stirred people to intolerance and illiberalism.
This is where the problem of definitions begins to become glaring, not coincidentally where it starts entering into contemporary debates on populism. Conflating the Populists and the New Deal is enough to raise historiographical hackles, but in a book for a broad audience can be granted a pass- the Populism was, after all, a prominent strand in the New Deal’s DNA. But, always and everywhere, Frank argues, we should see the word “populist” as referring to the People’s Party and those whom Frank designates as its successors, such as the New Dealers. Other uses are illegitimate, he posits, either the product of elite anti-populism (academia especially plays a devilish role here by introducing other definitions of the term) or by those looking to hijack populism for right-wing ends. This wasn’t Frank’s position when he wrote about “market populism,” enthusiasm for the market as a supposed expression of the popular will, in his best work, “One Market Under God.” But it is his position now.
The major problem with this is that the term “populism” was never, even in the nineteenth century, confined to the People’s Party or its heirs designate. There were other populist movements going on at the same time in other parts of the world, most notably the Narodniki of Russia and the Volkisch movement of Germany. There were many differences between these movements and the People’s Party, and some similarities. But however one splits the populist definitional pie, scholars engaged in an international conversation on populism cannot restrict themselves to a definition made up solely by the example of one American party that existed for less than a decade. Say what one will about structural functionalist social scientists like Shils and Lipset, but they were part of an international conversation. Indeed, their anti-populism was heavily influenced by figures such as German sociologist Max Weber and the Italian Elitist school of political science. The idea that American social science decided to define populism the way it did — even if it’s wrong and wrong-headed — as a backlash against the People’s Party is a claim that does not pass muster. This is especially obvious when you consider their real target: the anticapitalist left of socialists and communists.
This definitional problem looms over the rest of the book and jeopardizes Frank’s ability to analyze the right, the center, and the left. We can’t criticize right-wing populism as populism because doing so dishonors the good name of “Sockless Jerry” Simpson and the decent plain folk of the People’s Party. Anyone so doing, no matter what their pretenses or intellectual lineage, are anti-populists, elitists, scolds, enemies of the people, in the bitter world of “The People, NO.” That such scholars might be engaging in a larger project than either upholding or sabotaging the legacy of the People’s Party — the only two options we seem to get — doesn’t enter into Frank’s considerations at all.
The damnable thing is that Frank isn’t entirely wrong. Why not use words such as “fascist” or “authoritarian” or “nationalist” instead of muddying the name of “populist” as in “right-wing populist?” Liberal anti-populists like Cas Mudde, even when they get into it with antifascist intentions, often get things glaringly wrong about the populist tradition. Alas, this all gets into thorny definitional issues of all of these terms and the unfortunate overuse of “fascism” in certain decades. But the idea that figures analyzing Latin American or European populisms use the term because they want to abuse a late-nineteenth century US political formation is deeply provincial and verges into conspiracy theory.
In Frank’s insistence on his definition of populism, non-populist leftists disappear, or worse, become revealed as elitist, antipopulist liberals. The People’s Party was a party that had workers in it but, like the Democrats, were not a worker’s party; its social base was small property owners, farmers, shopkeepers, etc. This doesn’t mean they couldn’t contribute to the left. But it does mean insisting that they are the left leaves a critical part of the story out.
Frank never addresses why the Democrats — who swallowed and disposed of the original People’s Party without so much as a backwards glance — all of a sudden came over so common-people-friendly in the 1930s. It was because of agitation to their left- much of it well to the left of the People’s Party. This is what pushed Franklin Roosevelt into adopting the reforms he did.
In “The People, NO,” Frank places his emphasis on Roosevelt’s populist rhetoric. This is a classical critical lapse and an odd one for a sharp writer like Frank. Paying attention to what Roosevelt actually did, as opposed to his soaring rhetoric, shows that he put in place many of his most important measures after massive pressure from his left. This was (and to the extent it exists, is) an anticapitalist left with its own lineage, of which the People’s Party is a small or negligible part. This is the same force that has pushed the Democratic party to do every worthwhile thing it has ever done, often dragging it kicking and screaming and leaving the draggers thinking that there has to be a better way.
Frank doesn’t come out and cast those to the left of populism in with the elitist anti-populists. He does so by implication, in his penultimate chapter where he reserves the term “the left” for the censorious liberals who dominate the contemporary Democratic party and who make such noise on twitter and on op-ed pages. Indeed, Bernie Sanders, who got nearly as much of their ire as Donald Trump did, doesn’t appear until one reference in the conclusion. Frank sees Sanders as a populist, a glimmer of hope. Let the populists make liberalism great again, is essentially Frank’s battle cry. The idea that we can do better than populism or liberalism is presumably the property of dreamers or scolds.
But the Democratic party and liberalism were never great. They occasionally did great things, but only under massive pressure and despite their instincts. The Democrats haven’t moved right because they had a beef with a long-dead third party. They moved right after the nineteen-seventies in large part because liberalism was and is terrified of the left. Antisocialism, anticommunism, and anti-Marxism animated both liberals and the right wing during the twentieth century. Enemies of the left used all of the tools once used against the People’s Party, and many more. There’s good reason for this. To take an example from the global history of his subject that Frank steadfastly ignores, the Russian populists killed a Czar. Russian communists killed Czardom.
The Democrats really did abandon whatever pretense of working for ordinary people they once had. Their anti-populism is motivated by class interest and, post-2016, a refusal to look reality in the face. That our elite is as worried about populism as it is is a sign of their decay, and that we need to keep pushing for what the Populists wanted and beyond. That Thomas Frank wrote a book about the matter with the flaws “The People, NO” has is a sign that his issue isn’t wondering “what’s the matter with Kansas?” It’s his refusal to follow anticapitalism where it leads. ***
Alas, Frank’s latest work, “The People, NO,” is not the book to fix this problem. The premise sounds promising: a scathing critique of the anti-populism that has reared its head prominently since Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election. There is some of that, and a range of elitist figures from Mark Hanna to Jason Brennan get what’s coming to them in Frank’s fine prose. What is also present, predominant for much of the book, is an extended effort to rescue the reputation of the People’s Party, the original Populists in the American context, from an obloquy whose origins and persistence Frank makes sound close to conspiracy. More than conspiratorial, Frank’s defense of the original Populists and their contemporary relevance goes beyond impassioned and becomes, frankly, injured and myopic.
Like Frank, the American Populists deserve more credit than they get in many circles. Indeed, they have gotten it, from major historians who Frank cites, such as Lawrence Goodwyn and Charles Postel. These historians depict the People’s Party, an American third-party effort that lived and died in the last decade of the nineteenth century, as a noble effort to bring meaningful democracy to America’s political system. They were forward-looking reformers, promulgators of ideas such as regulation of railroads, the income tax, popular referenda, the direct election of Senators, and more. Populists made an effort to break single-party white supremacist rule in the post-Reconstruction South by making alliances between white and black farmers and workers, which were only defeated by force. Their ideas inspired future generations of American reformers, including the Progressives, the New Dealers, and portions of the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. This is what Frank refers to as “our native radical tradition.”
The opponents of this native radicalism are predictably elitist and slimy. The original Populists were done in by the presidential campaign of William McKinley, who pulled out all of the stops to present the Populists as insane, foreign, dirty, motivated by madness and rapine. The New Dealers faced the Liberty League and others who decried the Roosevelt administration as a totalitarian disaster of the first order. The tone-deafness and often open racism of these attacks clang through the book.
Later attacks were more subtle, sufficiently subtle that the thread begins to get lost. Frank, along with his historiographical inspirations Goodwyn and Postel, fought (and continue to fight) against the long shadow made by Richard Hofstadter and his cohort. Hofstadter, godfather of the liberal consensus school of American history, depicted the American Populists as angry hayseeds frightened of modernity. He made bogus charges, such as laying American anti-semitism at the feet of the People’s Party, as though the elite of nineteenth century America needed any instructions in bigotry from farmers and workers. Social scientists aligned with the consensus school such as Edward Shils and Seymour Martin Lipset conflated populism and McCarthyism, declaring that the goal of politics was to maintain democracy while containing or eliminating such dangerous mass movements as populism, which stirred people to intolerance and illiberalism.
This is where the problem of definitions begins to become glaring, not coincidentally where it starts entering into contemporary debates on populism. Conflating the Populists and the New Deal is enough to raise historiographical hackles, but in a book for a broad audience can be granted a pass- the Populism was, after all, a prominent strand in the New Deal’s DNA. But, always and everywhere, Frank argues, we should see the word “populist” as referring to the People’s Party and those whom Frank designates as its successors, such as the New Dealers. Other uses are illegitimate, he posits, either the product of elite anti-populism (academia especially plays a devilish role here by introducing other definitions of the term) or by those looking to hijack populism for right-wing ends. This wasn’t Frank’s position when he wrote about “market populism,” enthusiasm for the market as a supposed expression of the popular will, in his best work, “One Market Under God.” But it is his position now.
The major problem with this is that the term “populism” was never, even in the nineteenth century, confined to the People’s Party or its heirs designate. There were other populist movements going on at the same time in other parts of the world, most notably the Narodniki of Russia and the Volkisch movement of Germany. There were many differences between these movements and the People’s Party, and some similarities. But however one splits the populist definitional pie, scholars engaged in an international conversation on populism cannot restrict themselves to a definition made up solely by the example of one American party that existed for less than a decade. Say what one will about structural functionalist social scientists like Shils and Lipset, but they were part of an international conversation. Indeed, their anti-populism was heavily influenced by figures such as German sociologist Max Weber and the Italian Elitist school of political science. The idea that American social science decided to define populism the way it did — even if it’s wrong and wrong-headed — as a backlash against the People’s Party is a claim that does not pass muster. This is especially obvious when you consider their real target: the anticapitalist left of socialists and communists.
This definitional problem looms over the rest of the book and jeopardizes Frank’s ability to analyze the right, the center, and the left. We can’t criticize right-wing populism as populism because doing so dishonors the good name of “Sockless Jerry” Simpson and the decent plain folk of the People’s Party. Anyone so doing, no matter what their pretenses or intellectual lineage, are anti-populists, elitists, scolds, enemies of the people, in the bitter world of “The People, NO.” That such scholars might be engaging in a larger project than either upholding or sabotaging the legacy of the People’s Party — the only two options we seem to get — doesn’t enter into Frank’s considerations at all.
The damnable thing is that Frank isn’t entirely wrong. Why not use words such as “fascist” or “authoritarian” or “nationalist” instead of muddying the name of “populist” as in “right-wing populist?” Liberal anti-populists like Cas Mudde, even when they get into it with antifascist intentions, often get things glaringly wrong about the populist tradition. Alas, this all gets into thorny definitional issues of all of these terms and the unfortunate overuse of “fascism” in certain decades. But the idea that figures analyzing Latin American or European populisms use the term because they want to abuse a late-nineteenth century US political formation is deeply provincial and verges into conspiracy theory.
In Frank’s insistence on his definition of populism, non-populist leftists disappear, or worse, become revealed as elitist, antipopulist liberals. The People’s Party was a party that had workers in it but, like the Democrats, were not a worker’s party; its social base was small property owners, farmers, shopkeepers, etc. This doesn’t mean they couldn’t contribute to the left. But it does mean insisting that they are the left leaves a critical part of the story out.
Frank never addresses why the Democrats — who swallowed and disposed of the original People’s Party without so much as a backwards glance — all of a sudden came over so common-people-friendly in the 1930s. It was because of agitation to their left- much of it well to the left of the People’s Party. This is what pushed Franklin Roosevelt into adopting the reforms he did.
In “The People, NO,” Frank places his emphasis on Roosevelt’s populist rhetoric. This is a classical critical lapse and an odd one for a sharp writer like Frank. Paying attention to what Roosevelt actually did, as opposed to his soaring rhetoric, shows that he put in place many of his most important measures after massive pressure from his left. This was (and to the extent it exists, is) an anticapitalist left with its own lineage, of which the People’s Party is a small or negligible part. This is the same force that has pushed the Democratic party to do every worthwhile thing it has ever done, often dragging it kicking and screaming and leaving the draggers thinking that there has to be a better way.
Frank doesn’t come out and cast those to the left of populism in with the elitist anti-populists. He does so by implication, in his penultimate chapter where he reserves the term “the left” for the censorious liberals who dominate the contemporary Democratic party and who make such noise on twitter and on op-ed pages. Indeed, Bernie Sanders, who got nearly as much of their ire as Donald Trump did, doesn’t appear until one reference in the conclusion. Frank sees Sanders as a populist, a glimmer of hope. Let the populists make liberalism great again, is essentially Frank’s battle cry. The idea that we can do better than populism or liberalism is presumably the property of dreamers or scolds.
But the Democratic party and liberalism were never great. They occasionally did great things, but only under massive pressure and despite their instincts. The Democrats haven’t moved right because they had a beef with a long-dead third party. They moved right after the nineteen-seventies in large part because liberalism was and is terrified of the left. Antisocialism, anticommunism, and anti-Marxism animated both liberals and the right wing during the twentieth century. Enemies of the left used all of the tools once used against the People’s Party, and many more. There’s good reason for this. To take an example from the global history of his subject that Frank steadfastly ignores, the Russian populists killed a Czar. Russian communists killed Czardom.
The Democrats really did abandon whatever pretense of working for ordinary people they once had. Their anti-populism is motivated by class interest and, post-2016, a refusal to look reality in the face. That our elite is as worried about populism as it is is a sign of their decay, and that we need to keep pushing for what the Populists wanted and beyond. That Thomas Frank wrote a book about the matter with the flaws “The People, NO” has is a sign that his issue isn’t wondering “what’s the matter with Kansas?” It’s his refusal to follow anticapitalism where it leads. ***
June 25, 2024
I tend to choose the books I read quite carefully so I end up giving a lot of 5 star ratings. But I rarely STRONGLY encourage people to read a particular book. I strongly encourage people to read this book. Frank provides a relatively brief but thorough history of populism. He explains what it is and what it is not and how it has come to be misunderstood and the term misused of late.
When listening to commentators or reading books, I have often heard people described as being a populist and it has very negative connotations, This has always made me slightly uncomfortable because I remember learning and reading about the Populist Era in U.S. history as a positive force in the country. As Thomas Frank points out, Populists of the 1890's, 1930's, and 1960's (Civil rights era) that the emphasis was on the common people and what they should be able to expect from their government. They supported science (as it was understood at the time) and technology and were fiercely democratic in their view. They are suspicious of big banks, big corporations, and big agriculture. Reform was their goal and very often and/or over time, many of those goals were realized. So when I have heard Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and Joseph McCarthy described as populists, that has always made me uncomfortable. Today, Trump is often times called a populist. The problem here is that none of these people are populist. Populism is an ideology that involves the common people and is optimistic. Those mentioned, and others like them are anti-populists.
Moreover, the left as well as the right have been guilty of this mischaracterizing populism. Populists strongly believe in democracy and unfortunately, the party that has held that belief the strongest and the longest is the Democratic Party but over the last 50 years, that has not been the case. Believing that only elitists and experts should make decisions for the people, they have made decisions and held beliefs that do not benefit the people. Bill Clinton comes to mind. He made NAFTA a priority and passed it without regard to what effect it might have on the average blue collar worker.
During times when populism was on the rise, as in the 1930's, FDR encouraged workers to organize into unions. The New Deal provided benefits unknown to the common people previously- Social Security came into being. Perhaps the biggest failure of the New Deal was that African Americans were not allowed to share equally in the benefits afforded (although many benefits did accrue to them), and FDR and the Supreme Court listened to the bigoted fools who demanded that Japanese Americans were placed in camps through out the war. Republicans have almost always been the party of big business and against regulation so while it is not surprising that they are not populists, they have painted themselves as populists, particularly under Trump. The problem is that while trump preached his support for the common people, in office most of what he did was against them. Huge tax cuts for the wealthiest was only the beginning. Sadly, too many people believed him and have supported him.
Franks' book ends on an optimistic note. He refers to a populist who wrote and published what were called "Little Blue Books" which were small, cheap, and readily available. They featured a variety of topics which usually included topics usually read by elitists and they were amazingly successful. The author and his wife believed in democracy and in the ability of the common people to understand that which had previously been presented only to high brow people. As an example of a current day populist, Frank refers to Bernie Sanders who extolls the virtues of a populist. Perhaps we need more politicians like him.
When listening to commentators or reading books, I have often heard people described as being a populist and it has very negative connotations, This has always made me slightly uncomfortable because I remember learning and reading about the Populist Era in U.S. history as a positive force in the country. As Thomas Frank points out, Populists of the 1890's, 1930's, and 1960's (Civil rights era) that the emphasis was on the common people and what they should be able to expect from their government. They supported science (as it was understood at the time) and technology and were fiercely democratic in their view. They are suspicious of big banks, big corporations, and big agriculture. Reform was their goal and very often and/or over time, many of those goals were realized. So when I have heard Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and Joseph McCarthy described as populists, that has always made me uncomfortable. Today, Trump is often times called a populist. The problem here is that none of these people are populist. Populism is an ideology that involves the common people and is optimistic. Those mentioned, and others like them are anti-populists.
Moreover, the left as well as the right have been guilty of this mischaracterizing populism. Populists strongly believe in democracy and unfortunately, the party that has held that belief the strongest and the longest is the Democratic Party but over the last 50 years, that has not been the case. Believing that only elitists and experts should make decisions for the people, they have made decisions and held beliefs that do not benefit the people. Bill Clinton comes to mind. He made NAFTA a priority and passed it without regard to what effect it might have on the average blue collar worker.
During times when populism was on the rise, as in the 1930's, FDR encouraged workers to organize into unions. The New Deal provided benefits unknown to the common people previously- Social Security came into being. Perhaps the biggest failure of the New Deal was that African Americans were not allowed to share equally in the benefits afforded (although many benefits did accrue to them), and FDR and the Supreme Court listened to the bigoted fools who demanded that Japanese Americans were placed in camps through out the war. Republicans have almost always been the party of big business and against regulation so while it is not surprising that they are not populists, they have painted themselves as populists, particularly under Trump. The problem is that while trump preached his support for the common people, in office most of what he did was against them. Huge tax cuts for the wealthiest was only the beginning. Sadly, too many people believed him and have supported him.
Franks' book ends on an optimistic note. He refers to a populist who wrote and published what were called "Little Blue Books" which were small, cheap, and readily available. They featured a variety of topics which usually included topics usually read by elitists and they were amazingly successful. The author and his wife believed in democracy and in the ability of the common people to understand that which had previously been presented only to high brow people. As an example of a current day populist, Frank refers to Bernie Sanders who extolls the virtues of a populist. Perhaps we need more politicians like him.
August 8, 2020
Less useful than I'd hoped. The topic is certainly very important to explore, and worth exploring, even if this has already been done in great detail by authors Frank probably wouldn't read, like Marx, and Michael Parenti in the US context. That said, Frank doesn't go into how the anti-populists went about their destroying the populist movements of their times, and as a result, the book doesn't really have a great deal to add over Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People.
If I had to guess, this is mostly because Frank hasn't really understood the significance of the post-ww2 expansion of access to tertiary education -- namely: greatly enlarging the cohort of people sensitive to 'the liberal mindset'. That is, to meritocratic reasoning, to thinking of the 'uncredentialed' as at best second-class citizens, and to not believing in solidarity with your peers, let alone with your fellow workers broadly. (I've said more about this e.g. here.)
Second, Frank barely mentions how the owning class has used its wealth and power to destroy working class presses and entertainment (by creating huge media and "news" empires), and to push reactionary views (as discussed by Michael Parenti in his two-part analysis of how the media function: Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media and Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment). Even as they used the state and the laws to promote sexism, racism, classism and so on. A decent stab at this was made by Corey Robin in Fear: The History of a Political Idea, but a broader history of how capitalists combined state and private (corporate) power to destroy the US populist and communist movements would've been very welcome, because as it is, what passes for the 'left' in the US is way too naive when it comes to understanding how the people who have to work are played by those who own.
If I had to guess, this is mostly because Frank hasn't really understood the significance of the post-ww2 expansion of access to tertiary education -- namely: greatly enlarging the cohort of people sensitive to 'the liberal mindset'. That is, to meritocratic reasoning, to thinking of the 'uncredentialed' as at best second-class citizens, and to not believing in solidarity with your peers, let alone with your fellow workers broadly. (I've said more about this e.g. here.)
Second, Frank barely mentions how the owning class has used its wealth and power to destroy working class presses and entertainment (by creating huge media and "news" empires), and to push reactionary views (as discussed by Michael Parenti in his two-part analysis of how the media function: Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media and Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment). Even as they used the state and the laws to promote sexism, racism, classism and so on. A decent stab at this was made by Corey Robin in Fear: The History of a Political Idea, but a broader history of how capitalists combined state and private (corporate) power to destroy the US populist and communist movements would've been very welcome, because as it is, what passes for the 'left' in the US is way too naive when it comes to understanding how the people who have to work are played by those who own.
January 5, 2021
1.5 / 5.0
I think I would probably qualify as one of Thomas Frank's elites. Among the other privileges I hold in life, I work as a government attorney and generally value science and technology as means to address issues, rather than bottom-up solutions proffered by the people. But, then again, what exactly does Thomas Frank think populism is? In "The People, No," Thomas Frank offers a peripatetic history of populism (and anti-populism) in America, without truly defining the term. Is it a hodgepodge of goals from the late 1890s (e.g., leaving the gold standard, ensuring fair employment generally and fair wages specifically)? A bottom-up approach to problem-solving and policy-making? An anti-elitism perspective? Frank makes it extremely clear that anti-populism--to him, elitism--is a problem, that anti-populism increasingly defines both of America's political party's today, and that he is anti-anti-populism; but instead of making the case for populism, he uses "The People, No" to make the case against anti-populism. It doesn't leave the reader believing in, or caring about, much, and reads as more condemning than convincing.
This all wouldn't be a problem were Frank not also, in arguing against anti-populism, criticizing its recent characterization of populism as racist and demagogic. Frank does a good job showing that this characterization isn't wholly new--anti-populists made this same argument at various times in the 20th century--and that populism, at its founding, was comparatively progressive on racial issues. At the same time, Frank seems generally clueless on race and avoids considering how populism might lead to racist and bad outcomes. Frank repeatedly uses the term "anti-racist" incorrectly, treating it as meaning "not racist" rather than "actively working against racism" (see, e.g., pp. 109, 200). And Frank doesn't consider how populism, even if not outwardly racist, might yield racist outcomes--e.g., through opposing environmental standards that hurt labor, through populist rhetoric seeming to correlate with the election of (faux populist) demagogues. Frank's desire to reclaim the term and remind us of its past meaning is understandable; but, in not fully considering its present role, that reclamation seems more semantic than substantive.
Frank subtitles "The People, No" as a brief history, and the book, as a chronicle, is disappointing. His recounting of the early days of anti-populism--from the founding of the People's Party in the 1890s, to its incomplete integration into the Democratic Party through William Jennings Bryan, to its heyday during the New Deal, and to its remnants during the New Left--is interesting, and Frank does a mostly OK job relating the early promise and eventual success of populism in America. But Frank's recounting of the recent history of anti-populism reads, in contrast, as lazy and scattered. Without much explanation, Frank lays populism's death at the feet of Jimmy Carter, calling him a centrist, deregulating conservative who relied on elite advisers and hurt ordinary Americans by raising interest rates. How did Carter deregulate? What elites did Carter rely on during his presidency? Frank doesn't really explain. Frank then argues that the presidents since Carter have governed as faux populists, campaigning as populists, but then governing as elites. Instinctively, this seems right--you can't really argue that a president that champions welfare reform (Clinton), or cuts taxes on the wealthy (Reagan, Bush), or bails out the banks (Obama) governs with the concerns of ordinary people as their lodestar. But, it's also simplistic and, again, under-developed. How was Obama's reliance on technocrats necessarily irreconcilable with populism? How did the policies of these presidents hurt the common man? Although I don't disagree that recent presidents have been generally anti-populist in policy, Frank doesn't bother to really explain or back up this assumption.
I think this book might have worked as a short essay. Frank could defend populism, recount the issues it championed in the past, castigate the rise of faux populism (i.e., its misappropriation by Bill Clinton and Trump) and the consistency of anti-populism (and its Democracy Scare arguments), and define populism in the present (although, again, I don't think Frank did this in "The People, No"). But, as a book-length work, it reads as both repetitive in its argument and superficial in its depth. I'm not sure I would read a Frank essay on populism, but I certainly won't read another Frank book on populism.
I think I would probably qualify as one of Thomas Frank's elites. Among the other privileges I hold in life, I work as a government attorney and generally value science and technology as means to address issues, rather than bottom-up solutions proffered by the people. But, then again, what exactly does Thomas Frank think populism is? In "The People, No," Thomas Frank offers a peripatetic history of populism (and anti-populism) in America, without truly defining the term. Is it a hodgepodge of goals from the late 1890s (e.g., leaving the gold standard, ensuring fair employment generally and fair wages specifically)? A bottom-up approach to problem-solving and policy-making? An anti-elitism perspective? Frank makes it extremely clear that anti-populism--to him, elitism--is a problem, that anti-populism increasingly defines both of America's political party's today, and that he is anti-anti-populism; but instead of making the case for populism, he uses "The People, No" to make the case against anti-populism. It doesn't leave the reader believing in, or caring about, much, and reads as more condemning than convincing.
This all wouldn't be a problem were Frank not also, in arguing against anti-populism, criticizing its recent characterization of populism as racist and demagogic. Frank does a good job showing that this characterization isn't wholly new--anti-populists made this same argument at various times in the 20th century--and that populism, at its founding, was comparatively progressive on racial issues. At the same time, Frank seems generally clueless on race and avoids considering how populism might lead to racist and bad outcomes. Frank repeatedly uses the term "anti-racist" incorrectly, treating it as meaning "not racist" rather than "actively working against racism" (see, e.g., pp. 109, 200). And Frank doesn't consider how populism, even if not outwardly racist, might yield racist outcomes--e.g., through opposing environmental standards that hurt labor, through populist rhetoric seeming to correlate with the election of (faux populist) demagogues. Frank's desire to reclaim the term and remind us of its past meaning is understandable; but, in not fully considering its present role, that reclamation seems more semantic than substantive.
Frank subtitles "The People, No" as a brief history, and the book, as a chronicle, is disappointing. His recounting of the early days of anti-populism--from the founding of the People's Party in the 1890s, to its incomplete integration into the Democratic Party through William Jennings Bryan, to its heyday during the New Deal, and to its remnants during the New Left--is interesting, and Frank does a mostly OK job relating the early promise and eventual success of populism in America. But Frank's recounting of the recent history of anti-populism reads, in contrast, as lazy and scattered. Without much explanation, Frank lays populism's death at the feet of Jimmy Carter, calling him a centrist, deregulating conservative who relied on elite advisers and hurt ordinary Americans by raising interest rates. How did Carter deregulate? What elites did Carter rely on during his presidency? Frank doesn't really explain. Frank then argues that the presidents since Carter have governed as faux populists, campaigning as populists, but then governing as elites. Instinctively, this seems right--you can't really argue that a president that champions welfare reform (Clinton), or cuts taxes on the wealthy (Reagan, Bush), or bails out the banks (Obama) governs with the concerns of ordinary people as their lodestar. But, it's also simplistic and, again, under-developed. How was Obama's reliance on technocrats necessarily irreconcilable with populism? How did the policies of these presidents hurt the common man? Although I don't disagree that recent presidents have been generally anti-populist in policy, Frank doesn't bother to really explain or back up this assumption.
I think this book might have worked as a short essay. Frank could defend populism, recount the issues it championed in the past, castigate the rise of faux populism (i.e., its misappropriation by Bill Clinton and Trump) and the consistency of anti-populism (and its Democracy Scare arguments), and define populism in the present (although, again, I don't think Frank did this in "The People, No"). But, as a book-length work, it reads as both repetitive in its argument and superficial in its depth. I'm not sure I would read a Frank essay on populism, but I certainly won't read another Frank book on populism.
October 6, 2020
Thomas Frank’s new book, “The People, NO,” a reversal of the title of Carl Sandburg’s poem, is written his typical style, full of an appropriate frustration and passion. The history is important; I leaned the most in the chapter about the Populists of the 1890s.
In the racism vs. economic anxiety battle for the correct interpretation of the disastrous 2016 election, Frank is decidedly on the side of economic anxiety, but he also points frequently, throughout history, to the trans-racial populist movements that have succeeded. In the end, his account of how principleless Republicans stole “populism” for their own corrupt cause is convincing.
In the racism vs. economic anxiety battle for the correct interpretation of the disastrous 2016 election, Frank is decidedly on the side of economic anxiety, but he also points frequently, throughout history, to the trans-racial populist movements that have succeeded. In the end, his account of how principleless Republicans stole “populism” for their own corrupt cause is convincing.
August 8, 2020
The People, No is a liberal version of a New Class War by Lind. The history on the turn of 19th century appears cherry picked and mid 20th century commentary ignores Conservative Coalition which allowed for Southern Democrat rule in the southern state and Democrats maintaining a majority in house and senate. Frank goes through 1930 and 40s economics without mentioning Keynes and ignores stagflation effects of working class in 1970s. The People, No leaves out FDR’s attack on the judiciary and the impact of New Deal policies on 1937-38 major depression. No mention of labor corruption and impact of the Mafia on labor in United States. Frank wants a liberal version of blue-collar worker party but wants liberal cultural values of the Democratic elite leading the coalition. The book is written for liberal elite audience who want light criticism but still be reassured of their cultural views. The most potent issue with Frank’s desire for a populist coalition is it would have a diverse set of social beliefs which require a federal government that does not regulate social beliefs but allows for states to have different laws and customs with the federal government largely responsible for regulating business and redistribution.
December 28, 2020
I have learned lots from this book. First of all, that populism does have noble origins, in Kansas, 1891, when We the People was still a noble concept. when the average citizen was, on average, a plus to his country.
Populism has been kidnapped. Kidnapped by those who have recognised the usefulness of its recipes, and used it to promote the new nativist movements we see the world over, centred on dishing out identity dreams. The Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban, Duterte of this planet.
Fighting these movements can't be done by accusing populism, and those who embrace them deplorable. Indeed, populism can also be the cure to the above, by returning to its erstwhile values.
Fascinating book.
Populism has been kidnapped. Kidnapped by those who have recognised the usefulness of its recipes, and used it to promote the new nativist movements we see the world over, centred on dishing out identity dreams. The Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban, Duterte of this planet.
Fighting these movements can't be done by accusing populism, and those who embrace them deplorable. Indeed, populism can also be the cure to the above, by returning to its erstwhile values.
Fascinating book.
December 17, 2020
I didn't enjoy this one very much.
Would not recommend.
1.9/5
Would not recommend.
1.9/5
July 25, 2020
Parts of this book really frustrated me. That's primarily due to the fact that I'm pretty familiar with the scholarly literature on populism--both the 19th-century People's Party variety as well as the contemporary discourse about it--and Frank's tendency throughout this book to use that literature to build a polemic sometimes struck me as unfair or even actually unhelpful to his argument. But he does have an argument, and it is one that I strongly agree with, and so as the book went along and I settled into his style, my frustration lessened and my appreciation grew. No, this is not a book that will likely change the particular conclusions that anyone really grounded in the theoretical and historical arguments about mass democracy, republicanism, progressive liberalism, democratic socialism, or any of the other political constructs that Frank essentially--if not explicitly--collapses together in his description of populism (basically, any popular uprising which attacks the economic privilege which invariably emerges under capitalism, and which seeks greater egalitarianism and the common good) may have come to. But it will provide a lot of excellent ammunition to those who have a clear--Frank would say "populist"--perspective on it all, and for that I really appreciate it.
If there is one thing that I could have told Frank to do before finishing this book, it would be to think again about restructuring his best chapters, the ones which focus on how "populism," as a term in American discourse, shifted from being a right-wing bogeyman to being something fearfully condescended to by many--certainly not all (Frank is, as ever, more crusading than careful here), but many--college-educated liberals. Specifically, I wish he had taken more seriously the concept of "working-class authoritarianism," rather than simply adding it to what he treats as a contemptible pile of excuses which post-1960s liberals came up with the explain why they can't trust "the people." It's not, I think, that he wasn't capable of engaging in such a deeper exploration; the language that he uses in his chapter on the "populist" art and literature of the 1930s does a good job acknowledging the reductive and simplistic binaries which such evocations often involve, and why people committed to economic egalitarianism ought to recognize its moral and political (if not aesthetic) value. And he quotes Christopher Lasch and Lawrence Goodwyn (both historians who were very conscious of how attached people can be--and arguably, rightly so--to traditional authorities and community traditions) enough that he clearly has an understanding of just what it is, besides good old-fashioned elitism, that makes the contemporary liberal worldview, with its appreciation of complexity and division and diversity, so often suspicious of working-class narratives. He gets to some of this in the end, when he spends two pages artfully and viciously skewering the woke for loving other people but apparently caring not all that much about whether or not they can unionize. But his failure to provide a respectful appreciation of, follow by (what I think would have been) a stronger critique of the pluralistic individualism of contemporary liberalism, and how that left the populist language available for conservatives to claim, was a missed opportunity, I suspect.
Anyway, a solid polemic, and one filled with excellent historical discoveries (Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech at the Alabama capitol after the march from Selma is tremendous; I'm going to use it in my classes this fall!). Not as deep as it should have been, but it does its job, and does it well.
If there is one thing that I could have told Frank to do before finishing this book, it would be to think again about restructuring his best chapters, the ones which focus on how "populism," as a term in American discourse, shifted from being a right-wing bogeyman to being something fearfully condescended to by many--certainly not all (Frank is, as ever, more crusading than careful here), but many--college-educated liberals. Specifically, I wish he had taken more seriously the concept of "working-class authoritarianism," rather than simply adding it to what he treats as a contemptible pile of excuses which post-1960s liberals came up with the explain why they can't trust "the people." It's not, I think, that he wasn't capable of engaging in such a deeper exploration; the language that he uses in his chapter on the "populist" art and literature of the 1930s does a good job acknowledging the reductive and simplistic binaries which such evocations often involve, and why people committed to economic egalitarianism ought to recognize its moral and political (if not aesthetic) value. And he quotes Christopher Lasch and Lawrence Goodwyn (both historians who were very conscious of how attached people can be--and arguably, rightly so--to traditional authorities and community traditions) enough that he clearly has an understanding of just what it is, besides good old-fashioned elitism, that makes the contemporary liberal worldview, with its appreciation of complexity and division and diversity, so often suspicious of working-class narratives. He gets to some of this in the end, when he spends two pages artfully and viciously skewering the woke for loving other people but apparently caring not all that much about whether or not they can unionize. But his failure to provide a respectful appreciation of, follow by (what I think would have been) a stronger critique of the pluralistic individualism of contemporary liberalism, and how that left the populist language available for conservatives to claim, was a missed opportunity, I suspect.
Anyway, a solid polemic, and one filled with excellent historical discoveries (Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech at the Alabama capitol after the march from Selma is tremendous; I'm going to use it in my classes this fall!). Not as deep as it should have been, but it does its job, and does it well.
Read
October 20, 2020With his usual verve, Frank skewers the elite voices of condescension that vilify the egalitarian and democratic strivings of working people. In so doing, he offers a passionate defense of populism, which he reveals as a deep and wide political tradition that remains as essential as ever for the hopes of a more just and equitable society.
Charles Postel, author of Equality: an American dilemma, 1866–1896
Political commentator Frank (Rendezvous with Oblivion) urges liberals to reclaim ‘the high ground of populism’ in this fervent and acerbically witty call to action … Frank blends diligent research with well-placed snark to keep readers turning the pages. Liberals will be outraged, enlightened, and entertained.
Publishers Weekly
The author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? returns with a study of populism … [H]e argues that historically populism has been focused on expanding opportunities for all, and he sees anti-populist sentiment today as being anti-working class. That will stir debate.
Library Journal
A provocative new book that encompasses historical analysis as well as the present.
Dan Shaw, Happy Magazine
Brilliantly written, eye-opening … From 1891 to the rise of Trumpism, Frank walks readers through a minefield of assumptions about populism’s nature and history … Throughout People Without Power, Frank takes pains to look at populism through a broad lens … His reflection on how the jeans-clad Jimmy Carter wrapped himself in populism to avoid being tagged as a socialist, liberal or conservative is spot-on.
Douglas Brinkley, The Washington Post
Anyone looking for a compact, highly readable history of the American political movement known as populism, and the determined efforts from both right and left to squelch it, will enjoy prominent progressive journalist Thomas Frank’s People Without Power … Credit goes to Frank for this admirable effort to reclaim the noblest parts of the populist legacy and make them relevant for contemporary Americans.
Harvey Freedenberg, BookPage
[A] sprightly crafted survey of populist philosophy over the past century as it contends with more established political forces that have considered its ideas to be backwards and undemocratic … A valuable history of an important political tradition, and what it means for the future.
Ed Goedeken, Library Journal
[A] fervent and acerbically witty call to action … Frank blends diligent research with well-placed snark to keep readers turning the pages. Liberals will be outraged, enlightened, and entertained.
Kirkus Reviews
Rarely do I encounter progressive tracts that I enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed this book … [Takes] aim at the myth of ‘populism’ … Frank has once again written an important book, that leftists everywhere should read in order or understand the moment in which they live.
Anthony Skews, Medium
Charles Postel, author of Equality: an American dilemma, 1866–1896
Political commentator Frank (Rendezvous with Oblivion) urges liberals to reclaim ‘the high ground of populism’ in this fervent and acerbically witty call to action … Frank blends diligent research with well-placed snark to keep readers turning the pages. Liberals will be outraged, enlightened, and entertained.
Publishers Weekly
The author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? returns with a study of populism … [H]e argues that historically populism has been focused on expanding opportunities for all, and he sees anti-populist sentiment today as being anti-working class. That will stir debate.
Library Journal
A provocative new book that encompasses historical analysis as well as the present.
Dan Shaw, Happy Magazine
Brilliantly written, eye-opening … From 1891 to the rise of Trumpism, Frank walks readers through a minefield of assumptions about populism’s nature and history … Throughout People Without Power, Frank takes pains to look at populism through a broad lens … His reflection on how the jeans-clad Jimmy Carter wrapped himself in populism to avoid being tagged as a socialist, liberal or conservative is spot-on.
Douglas Brinkley, The Washington Post
Anyone looking for a compact, highly readable history of the American political movement known as populism, and the determined efforts from both right and left to squelch it, will enjoy prominent progressive journalist Thomas Frank’s People Without Power … Credit goes to Frank for this admirable effort to reclaim the noblest parts of the populist legacy and make them relevant for contemporary Americans.
Harvey Freedenberg, BookPage
[A] sprightly crafted survey of populist philosophy over the past century as it contends with more established political forces that have considered its ideas to be backwards and undemocratic … A valuable history of an important political tradition, and what it means for the future.
Ed Goedeken, Library Journal
[A] fervent and acerbically witty call to action … Frank blends diligent research with well-placed snark to keep readers turning the pages. Liberals will be outraged, enlightened, and entertained.
Kirkus Reviews
Rarely do I encounter progressive tracts that I enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed this book … [Takes] aim at the myth of ‘populism’ … Frank has once again written an important book, that leftists everywhere should read in order or understand the moment in which they live.
Anthony Skews, Medium
June 26, 2021
Overall this is a great history of the populist movement, and it emphasizes the actual power in mass-movement based politics that focus on working-class solidarity. So for that history alone it is worth the read.
I don't think he is wrong that, generally speaking, the contemporary DNC has become a party of and for the elite, and that the term "populism" has become an invective that lumps all mass movements, or even the potential for them, into a category defined by the worst of what they can become. But up until his final chapter he doesn't seem willing to admit that the current GOP use the rhetoric of populism, and combine it with the demagoguery that has been the highlight of post 2016 GOP politicking, to win the support of nearly half the voting population. It doesn't matter that the GOP leadership have no intention to actually follow through with the promises their populist rhetoric makes, they still have the support of their voting base using such rhetoric, and therefor referring to their tactics as based in populism isn't necessarily misleading.
In his efforts to show the working-class, anti-elite basis for the development of first the Peoples' Party and then the concept of populist social action in general Frank really doesn't want to acknowledge that mass movements *can* be hoodwinked by charismatic hucksters who embody the elite class they pretend to rally against. I think the work would have benefited from a frank discussion about how mass movements that use the rhetoric of class-solidarity and populism do not always actually serve the will of the people. This wouldn't undermine the power of an actual populist movement that is actually focused on empowering the populace. In fact this would only have served to strengthen his claim about how a ruling elite/academic class has explicitly turned against populism, and how they spit that label as an invective against any movement challenging their power, because it shows that their claims can have a basis in truth, at least in terms of their opponents rhetoric, and not just in their desperate belief in their own meritocratic right to rule.
So, in short, it is a really useful history of the Peoples' Party and the populist movement within 20th and 21st century American politics. The criticisms he levels against those who use anti-populist rhetoric are valid and incredibly useful as a way of investigating why and how those in power work to maintain their power and denigrate their political and social opponents. It fell short in fully exploring the difference between the use of populist rhetoric and actual populist organizing, and the antagonism against each of those. But it is a quick read, never boring or lagging, and offers an important history without feeling either dry or preachy.
I don't think he is wrong that, generally speaking, the contemporary DNC has become a party of and for the elite, and that the term "populism" has become an invective that lumps all mass movements, or even the potential for them, into a category defined by the worst of what they can become. But up until his final chapter he doesn't seem willing to admit that the current GOP use the rhetoric of populism, and combine it with the demagoguery that has been the highlight of post 2016 GOP politicking, to win the support of nearly half the voting population. It doesn't matter that the GOP leadership have no intention to actually follow through with the promises their populist rhetoric makes, they still have the support of their voting base using such rhetoric, and therefor referring to their tactics as based in populism isn't necessarily misleading.
In his efforts to show the working-class, anti-elite basis for the development of first the Peoples' Party and then the concept of populist social action in general Frank really doesn't want to acknowledge that mass movements *can* be hoodwinked by charismatic hucksters who embody the elite class they pretend to rally against. I think the work would have benefited from a frank discussion about how mass movements that use the rhetoric of class-solidarity and populism do not always actually serve the will of the people. This wouldn't undermine the power of an actual populist movement that is actually focused on empowering the populace. In fact this would only have served to strengthen his claim about how a ruling elite/academic class has explicitly turned against populism, and how they spit that label as an invective against any movement challenging their power, because it shows that their claims can have a basis in truth, at least in terms of their opponents rhetoric, and not just in their desperate belief in their own meritocratic right to rule.
So, in short, it is a really useful history of the Peoples' Party and the populist movement within 20th and 21st century American politics. The criticisms he levels against those who use anti-populist rhetoric are valid and incredibly useful as a way of investigating why and how those in power work to maintain their power and denigrate their political and social opponents. It fell short in fully exploring the difference between the use of populist rhetoric and actual populist organizing, and the antagonism against each of those. But it is a quick read, never boring or lagging, and offers an important history without feeling either dry or preachy.
June 20, 2020
I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.
This is a book we need more now than ever. Forget what you learned in history class about William Jennings Bryan- this is the book you should be reading for the sake of the Republic.
This is a book we need more now than ever. Forget what you learned in history class about William Jennings Bryan- this is the book you should be reading for the sake of the Republic.
November 24, 2024
Written four years ago when Trump I had just begun, the lessons then apply now, as the Democratic Party hasn't learned anything from 2016. This book helped to de-program me from the liberal bubble I've been in for years. Highly recommended, especially if you find yourself revising your long-held beliefs in light of a Trump's win.
Though Frank doesn't make the point explicitly, I can't help but conclude that truly Progressive movements arise only in response to crisis (the Depression, race riots in the 1960's). A sobering idea.
Though Frank doesn't make the point explicitly, I can't help but conclude that truly Progressive movements arise only in response to crisis (the Depression, race riots in the 1960's). A sobering idea.
November 22, 2020
Excellent review of what populism means, as illustrated by various political movements in American history. It also distinguishes between populism and demagoguery, lest the two be confused. Frank's message is directed largely at the Democratic Party, which has strayed from the [economic] populism characterized by the New Deal (Franklin D. Roosevelt) and the Civil Rights movement (Martin Luther King, Jr.). Borderline 5-stars.
March 21, 2021
The author is angry...and for the most part, it's a readable angry. However, what frustrates me about this book is that I'm never quite sure what he's angry about...the appropriated definitions of populism and anti-populism? The people behind any of these movements? The need he feels to have to write this book in the first place? It alternates between historical analysis and stream-of-consciousness writing; separately they work well. Together it's just a recipe for...anger.
March 11, 2021
Ultimately shallow and unsatisfying. Very disappointing.
June 7, 2021
I really enjoyed this book and I think this should be required reading for those on the left. The book does a really great job articulating some ideas I've been having about how the left treats people and what we are missing. Fair warning, a lot of this book is about the history of populist movements in the United States. Be prepared to sit through several chapters on the ins and outs of political and policy movements from the 1850s, 1890s, early 1900s, and 1930s. With that said, the final few chapters do deal specifically with Trump's election and presidency. Frank is more interested in how the left responded to these developments. He believes that 2016 came about because the left failed to grasp the populism that Trump was calling for in his campaign and this cost them the election. He believes the left turned into a party of technocrats and elites who failed to support policies that benefit the vast number of voters who aren't highly educated. Frank goes out of his way to be clear that he doesn't believe that Trump was a populist. Just that he used common populist arguments in his campaign to build support from a cross-section of the electorate who might not normally support a Republican. But then, in office, he failed to live up to those promises or enacted policies opposed to the very ideas he ran on.
I think Democrats and people on the left can learn a lot from this book. The book challenges us to question the messages we are getting from the media and the talking heads that we see on TV. Frank does a good job making showing how the negative connotations around the term "populism" are unfounded and simply wrong. I would recommend this book to anyone wishing to learn more about the current environment we are living through and how we got here.
I think Democrats and people on the left can learn a lot from this book. The book challenges us to question the messages we are getting from the media and the talking heads that we see on TV. Frank does a good job making showing how the negative connotations around the term "populism" are unfounded and simply wrong. I would recommend this book to anyone wishing to learn more about the current environment we are living through and how we got here.
February 17, 2023
I don't hand out 5 stars easily, but still I'll grant them here for it being a different, balanced, middle of the political road book that both parties can/should be able to read, discuss, and perhaps change some mindsets on populism and how to get the power back to the people in America. In the past few years I read two books on anti-intellectualism and for the most part agree with a lot of what they had to say, yet this book has me rethinking my take-aways from those books. Reinforcing those ideas were the fact that I finished it the day after Biden's 2023 State of the Union Address where he spoke directly to the majority of Americans, perhaps getting back to populist roots? I found it interesting that early populist movements didn't partake in culture war issues, but focused on absolutely essential issues. That said, isn't it the role for Americans to stand up for the marginalized and oppressed? It's an honest question I don't have the answer to but this book stirs up those vital but complicated questions. I don't agree with everything stated as I think Frank downplayed the role of racism some, but there are really solutions or more chaos in these pages. So get a book club started, read this book and either: "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" by Richard Hofstadter (for a more academic read) or "Profiles in Ignorance" by Andy Borowitz (for more of a satire) for some very thoughtful but complicated discussions that really could produce some outcomes. If nothing else, read this book or a summary of this book to better understand the true origin of the world "populism."
May 31, 2022
This feels like the summation of so many of Thomas Frank's past books all rolled into one. He takes pains to redefine populism so that the reader understands its original meaning. As a counterpoint, anti-populism becomes a weird catch-all that somehow embodies elite resentment of anything that challenges its authority. Since people don't like elite domination, their impulse to fight back and join democratically to resist that domination is inherently wrong and bad - according to the elite classes that shape mass media opinion.
Hence "populism" has become a bad word that can mean anything from demagoguery to fascist tendencies to race-baiting... the precise opposite of what it was intended to mean. There has been a low-key attempt, basically, to create a negative connotation around this word because it is a threat, the same way that "communism" has been used as a scare word in this country for over a century now.
I found Frank's arguments persuasive and easy to understand. The history he presents is eye-opening and clear. Would highly recommend.
Hence "populism" has become a bad word that can mean anything from demagoguery to fascist tendencies to race-baiting... the precise opposite of what it was intended to mean. There has been a low-key attempt, basically, to create a negative connotation around this word because it is a threat, the same way that "communism" has been used as a scare word in this country for over a century now.
I found Frank's arguments persuasive and easy to understand. The history he presents is eye-opening and clear. Would highly recommend.
March 8, 2021
You have to enter into this book with an open mind. Or at least shift to one, you have to discard what you think you know of Populism and the hate you may have for it and allow for Frank to show you the reality of Populism. The good and the bad parts of it. How it is the very thing that ushered in the progress created by our most beloved leaders. This book surprised Me and even shocked me at times, but most importantly it changed the way I look at Populism. Frank is obviously not a fan of Trump but yet is an advocate for what Populism is at its core. A movement of people, for the people against an elite that does not care for them. If you do not embrace the position Frank is speaking from however you will get little from this book, if you go into it simply thinking Populism= bad because that's all you've ever been told and do not allow for a different explanation you will finish in the same position you started and will have missed the point entirely.
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