HomePoliticsPopulism Revisited

With apologies to some of my readers – another article by Chris Hedges, who I think is a very perceptive writer. Perhaps the central concern of this blog has been an attempt to understand the political landscape in this country, which is going to be an ongoing journey. While I am pleased that Barack Obama was elected President (only because of the financial crisis, not because of his ideology), I do not think that he is the Messiah or that he will be able to fix, unaided, the problems that this country faces. But he has made a start and in doing so, he has stirred up a tremendous amount of opposition. It is important to understand that opposition, which is the reason I am posting this article. The Christian Right, along with conspiracy theorists of various kinds, right-wing authoritarians and right-wing populists, constitute a grave danger to the foundations of this country. The more you know about them and their agendas, the better prepared you will be to act in a way that will lead to a better life for your children and grandchildren.

Published on Monday, October 27, 2008 by TruthDig.com

Populism Arising—but Will It Be the Killer Kind?

by Chris Hedges

The old assumptions and paradigms about capitalism and free markets are dead. A new, virulent populism, still inchoate, is slowly and painfully rising to take their place. This populism will determine the future of the country. It is as likely to be right-wing as left-wing.

I watched these competing populisms flicker Thursday night at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., when I moderated a debate between independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin. The two candidates come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Nader, in essence, is a democratic socialist in the mold of Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas. Baldwin, a founder and minister at the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., is an evangelical, right-wing populist.

Baldwin, like Nader, rails against corporatism and our involvement in foreign wars, wants to repeal NAFTA and denounces the curtailment of civil liberties. But Baldwin goes on to support the abolishment of whole departments of the federal government, such as the Department of Education. He calls for U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations and NATO, the elimination of the Food and Drug Administration, the outlawing of abortion and removing all restrictions on the purchasing of firearms. One of his catchier campaign slogans is: “To help keep your family safe and your country free, go buy a gun.” He wants to seal our borders, deny amnesty and social services to illegal immigrants and end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. He calls for dismantling the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service, overturning the 16th Amendment and the personal income tax, and returning the American monetary system to hard assets: gold and silver.

These candidates, while marginal figures in the current election, express the two forms of populism that will soon find a wide political currency. The anger toward our elites will morph into rage. These new populisms may not be articulated by Nader and Baldwin, but they will be articulated by people like Nader and Baldwin.

The ideological foundations of free-market economics and a consumer society have collapsed. This collapse is hard for us to fathom. We are still in shock and denial. We cling to old structures of meaning and outdated words to describe them. We have yet to realize that all our political science and economic textbooks have become junk. We have yet to formulate a vocabulary to describe our altered reality. We grasp, on a subliminal level, that laissez-faire capitalism is gone, but we have not viewed the corpse, scheduled the funeral and read the last rites.

“People get very clearly that Washington found hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out rich people in a way the government does not usually intervene,” said Anthony Pollina, The Progressive Party candidate for governor in Vermont. “They understand that the government came up with all this money to support the wrong group of people. People get that in their gut. There is anger. It is not rage yet. There is still a little bit of disbelief. I may be running for governor, but all people want to talk about is how did we come up with all this money to give to rich people on Wall Street and why didn’t they let them pay their mortgage off.”

Millions of people will lose their homes. Jobs and savings will vanish. The government will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis. The greed of huge corporations, especially as they continue to cannibalize the country, will see them, and our elites, become the enemy. Exxon, to give one example, made $40.61 billion in profits last year while we struggled to fill the tanks of our automobiles and trucks. Oil and gas corporations, despite these profits, ruthlessly refuse to fill furnaces in winter when people cannot pay the bills. AIG, the insurance giant, after being saved with an infusion of $85 billion in taxpayer money, squandered $440,000 on an executive visit to a California spa. It spent $86,000 for its executives to hunt partridges in the English countryside and then blithely asked the U.S. government for an additional $38 billion.

Elites, when they confuse the artificial court life of Versailles with the real world, die. These capitalist entities, grossly out of touch, incompetent, blinded by greed and power and morally and intellectually bankrupt, are committing collective suicide.

“People are beginning to understand that when the economy is weak you have to put people to work,” Pollina, who is now outpolling the Democratic candidate, said. “We have a crumbling infrastructure in the state and a need for affordable housing. I have put forward three or four different ways to raise revenue to put people to work, including closing a loophole in our capital gains tax. I think people are attracted to me because they are realizing that this is now the most important thing we can do. We have to put people to work. We cannot continue to abandon them.”

The flagrant corruption of our political system—hostage to the hundreds of millions of dollars handed out by the corporations and elites to Democratic and Republican candidates—will become clearer as our initial shock wears off. The new American will be about the basics—jobs, food, health care and a place to live. We will discard the old vocabulary, the one still used by the Democratic and Republic parties, and learn to speak in the fiery language of populism. We will turn with a vengeance on the 1 percent that has amassed more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. The populist conflict will see a battle between a frightened and dispossessed majority and the corporations and elites who seek to ruthlessly cling to power and wealth.

“Over the years people became disengaged,” Pollina said. “They stopped paying attention. This crisis has forced them to pay attention. It directly affects their economic future and ability to put food on the table. Outrage will lead to more involvement. This outrage could, however, fuel a right-wing populism around the country, although not in Vermont. Here I think people will move more to the left. In Vermont they have somewhere else to turn—I am here, Bernie Sanders is here, the Progressive Party is here—but on the national level this could see people turn to the right wing.”

A victory by Barack Obama may embolden right-wing populists. They will be able to use Obama and “liberal Democrats” as a lightning rod for the failings, growing poverty and incompetence of the state. The elite, as happens in all such moments of confusion, revolt and social chaos, will probably be forced to make an uncomfortable alliance with right-wing populists if they want to survive. The center of the political spectrum will melt.

“A lot of people feel the two parties have reached a consensus that all they have to do is support rich people to protect their hides,” Pollina said. “The two parties have come together to throw money at people who do not need it. People are beginning to understand they are no better off and probably their grandkids will pay for this. There is a great deal of resentment over the fact that Republicans and Democrats will risk everything to prop up rich people.”

We have begun a socialist experiment. George W. Bush and John McCain, in stunning repudiations of all they claimed to believe, call for massive state intervention in the financial markets and the use of billions in government funds to buy major stakes in banks. The question is not whether we will build state socialism. This process has already begun. The only question left is whether this will be right-wing or left-wing socialism.

The left, with a few exceptions, like the Progressive Party in Vermont, has largely thrown in its lot with the Democratic Party. Right-wing populists, as is evidenced by the acrimonious split in the McCain campaign, remain clustered around the fiefdoms of large megachurches that stoke hatred and frightening totalitarian visions of a Christian state. The left has no correlating centers of activism, organization or mass support, especially with the decline of labor unions. If left-wing populists do not rapidly build local organizations, as was done in Vermont, to compete with the right-wing populism of the Christian right, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, they will be easily swept aside.

There is not much time left. A Democratic victory in November may signal not a reversal of our fading fortunes but the start of a precipitous slide toward the Christian dystopia peddled by people like Baldwin.

Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose weekly column appears Mondays on Truthdig. He is the author of “American Fascists,” an important book on this topic.


Comments

Populism Revisited — 8 Comments

  1. I sat on the plane next to a 70 year old Jewish Democrat Lawyer and we talked about this and more. It was a fulfilling conversation that gave me hope.

    Off topic (maybe): Why are they giving Dick Cheney a microphone when he should likely be in jail?

    • The main stream media is widely scorned by the right wing populists as “liberal” when in fact it is quite conservative – that is why Dick Cheney is being given a microphone. His comments about Obama creating a climate in which the United States will suffer another attack from terrorists is red meat to the followers of the Republican Noise Machine. If you read Hitchens’ essay again, pay particular attention to these sentences: “The elite, as happens in all such moments of confusion, revolt and social chaos, will probably be forced to make an uncomfortable alliance with right-wing populists if they want to survive. The center of the political spectrum will melt.”

  2. If only everyone could be like Beth. She is an excellent example of what the religious folks should strive to be–she has great faith, but she’s willing to think and she’s not hateful. Those are qualities that would make people who are not religious, a little more understanding. And perhaps sign up!

    Though I have to say I think the people who are not religious know quite well how important religion is to the Right–how could we not? Just look at Proposition 8 out in California for one example–people rabid about taking away someone else’s rights because of religious reasons. Or all the fights about prayers in public buildings. It’s endless. Even my own personal incident about the secretary of the horse club telling me I’m not welcome in the club because of my article, “How Sarah Palin Turned Me off Religion.” Believe me, we KNOW how strongly religious people feel. And it’s causing some people to feel defensive. Which doesn’t help the cause.

    http://www.GreenerPastures–ACityGirlGoesCountry.blogspot.com

  3. Hi Jeff. When I spoke of the left being elitist and perhaps contemptuous of our faith, I wasn’t referring specifically to Chris Hedges—I actually meant the left in general. If the left wants to reach some of those who are drawn to the Religious Right, they must recognize and respect how important their faith is to them. Also, I wasn’t seeking to absolve those who would join the Religious Right movement—I was just saying that many of them are people that I love and care about, so I can’t say that I’m personally repulsed by them. But I am greatly repulsed by the leaders of the Religious Right who would exploit my friends’ fears and their lack of sophistication to gain political power and, even worse, do it all in the name of God.

    • More good points. I don’t know if there is a solution to the problem of elitism on the left. Because most on the left are secular humanists and likely don’t attend church on a regular basis, the idea that faith could be important to a group of people is likely quite foreign to them. There are initiatives being made by some on the left (Rabbi Michael Lerner, for one) to reach out, but those initiatives aren’t many. It is quite a problem and one that increases (because of the vacuum) the power of the demagogues on the right. Chris Hedges even addresses the issue in one of the closing statements of his essay, when he writes, “[i]f left-wing populists do not rapidly build local organizations, as was done in Vermont, to compete with the right-wing populism of the Christian right, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, they will be easily swept aside.” Given the fractious nature of those on the left, I don’t see much evidence (or chance) of this happening. I don’t have many answers, just lots of concerns and questions.

  4. By the way, when I say I am “almost repulsed” by the Religious Right, I mean the movement, not necessarily the people. In fact, I know people who I guess I would call followers of the Religious Right philosophy, and they are fine people.

    • As always, Beth, you’ve made some very thoughtful comments. I wish that there were many more of you out there in blog-land! I was concerned enough about your reaction to what Hedges says about the “Christian right” to click on that link and copy and paste the following from his essay:

      “The radical Christian right has no religious legitimacy. It is a mass political movement. It is interchangeable, in many ways, with other traditional political movements ranging from fascism to communism to the ethnic nationalist parties in the former Yugoslavia. It shares with these movements an inability to cope with ambiguity, doubt and uncertainty. It also embraces a world of miracles and signs and makes war on rational, reality-based thought. It condemns self-criticism and debate as apostasy. It places a premium on action. It dismisses those who do not bow down before its god—and the leaders who claim to speak for God—as heretics and traitors. This movement shares with corporatists, who are busy cannibalizing our society for profit, the belief that there are a chosen few who know the truth and therefore have the right to impose it. The citizen, the individual, no longer has any legitimacy in this new world. All legitimacy is assumed by groups, whether they are corporate groups herding us over the cliff of globalization or religious groups that give popular vent to corporate-generated despair through faith in the Christian utopia. In this paradigm—corporate and religious—we become disempowered, afraid, passive and easily manipulated.”

      I think the most important sentence in this snippet of Hedges’ essay are these: “The radical Christian right has no religious legitimacy.” I doubt very much that Hedges has made or would make a negative comment about Christianity – he is speaking here of a mass movement that does not think and endorses a course of dangerous action. While I don’t doubt that the people you know who you guess you would call followers of the Religious Right philosophy are fine people, so were many of the followers of Hitler, Jim Jones, David Duke, Joe McCarthy, Father Coughlin, Huey Long, George Wallace, and hundreds of other demagogues who would so blithely oppress and victimize those who they deem enemies. When people don’t think critically and follow demagogues of the left or right, there is trouble ahead. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with uncritically following a leader. You must be very clear in understanding that any movement is composed of its members. You cannot absolve a movement of its guilt by excusing the actions of its members.

  5. You’re right, Jeff—Chris Hedges is a very perceptive writer, and this is a very sobering read. I think he’s right, but I also think that those on the left are still not comprehending that they so often come across to us blue-collar types as elitist and perhaps even contemptuous of us and our Christian faith. As a Christian myself, I am actually almost repulsed by the Religious Right, but I can see why so many of my fellow blue-collar friends are drawn to them. The left, the Progressives, must come down off their intellectual high horses and seek to truly understand our lives and why we think and feel as we do, rather than scoffing (or seeming to scoff) at it.

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