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Now that the presidential election is underway, it is time to ask the exact same questions as after Trump’s surprise election victory. For four years, many have been looking for soap in the bottom of the bathtub, the one that constantly slips; the explanation itself. Why did so many people vote for Trump? Why do they do it now? The question has been asked in countless reports where journalists have spoken to voters in an impoverished countryside, in the nearly closed coal mine, in areas ravaged by the opioid epidemic: why do you think the wealthy real estate mogul can help him? Weren’t we vaccinated against leaders who openly lie, despise knowledge, and constantly name one minority or another as scapegoats? Voters used to say they wanted to “go back” to … something that existed before.
A Swedish-American told a story a few years ago. He had ended up at a dinner with several representatives of large companies, who had been angry at Trump all night: he was dangerous for the country, for the environment, for the economy, he had to go. So what do you do if Elisabeth Warren becomes the Democratic candidate? Asked my acquaintance. She intends to raise taxes, the entrepreneurs said with their mouths, then we will vote for Trump.
So naked self-interest? Wallet? Tax cuts for the rich and open coal mines for others?
Throughout American political history, a deep streak of populism dates back to the birth of the nation.
One explanation many The growing income gaps reappear, the panic of ever larger groups that see it impossible for their children to have the same or better living conditions than they do. Or is the language of hate and polarization an engine in itself, the desire to pour the garbage of the soul onto another, what the Danes call “the inner pig dog” who has finally been freed from the corridor of opinion? Or all at once? But the finished answers are like a sweater that has shrunk in the wash: you can wear heels, but it doesn’t cover everything anymore.
Anyone who wants to explain the return of populism in response to a catastrophic widening of income gaps in a country like the United States has many numbers on their side. The so-called “Gini coefficient”, which measures relative inequality in a society, has increased dramatically in the US since 1970, with a real jump in the 1990s and then continuing upwards (see Carl Johan von Seth in DN 28/10), at the same time life expectancy has stabilized or is decreasing in certain groups and income mobility has been drastically reduced. Health care costs are skyrocketing, as is the price of a college education, which has tripled in the same period. I think this is the “back” that many long for; the moment before this development took off. At the same time, this is the kind of social threat that liberal “central politics” has a hard time dealing with. So fertile ground for the populists.
But what populism? Throughout American political history, a deep streak of populism dates back to the nation’s birth, but it looks very different at different times.
Read more. Sven-Eric Liedman: opinion should never be more important than knowledge
In the years before the Civil War, the so-called “American party” (or “know-it-all”) became a factor of power. They were openly racist, mainly against the Irish and Germans, and they spread conspiracy theories about Catholics while being open to women’s rights and divided on the view of slavery. The foundations were violent, nationalist chauvinism, and the party collapsed after the 1856 elections, especially on the issue of slaves.
During the last years of the 19th century, a completely different and clearly left-wing movement was brewing: the “Popular Party” or simply “the populists.” They were hardly free from racism, but there were also clear attempts to unite low-income blacks and whites, especially in rural areas. The party was driven by a strong idea of equality and the socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, Bernie Sanders’ role model, was for a time “populist.” The party enjoyed some success, but collapsed after the 1896 presidential election. Democrats absorbed some parts and began their move to the left on the American political ladder.
The legacy of the “populists” it is debated; some historians see them as the spearhead of the Enlightenment, others as representatives of a class of small farmers about to be defeated. There are several outbreaks of radicalism on both the left and the right: The Peasant Labor Party in Minnesota, today part of the Democrats, was clearly related to the populists. Much of the left-wing phalanx of Democrats that Trump calls “communists,” like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, draws energy from this very American left-wing tradition. In 2000, Per Wirtén wrote the excellent book of essays “The Populists” on this movement.
Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 21, 1965.
Photo: Anonymous
The polarization that is now tearing apart American society is nothing new. (Nor have we mentioned the Civil War, 155 years away, with a legacy of slavery never unearthed in the bud, or the wave of lynchings in the 20th century.) quickly from factors that we recognize today, such as the drastic increase in income gaps. But it acquires diametrically opposite expressions. Warm inclusion or scapegoating in search of purity. Occasionally both.
The late Martin Luther King distinguished in his latest book, “Where do we go from here?” (1967) deep divisions as a fundamental cause of the division of the United States. The only way to crush segregation and structural racism was to draw inspiration from the redistribution of resources that you saw in contemporary Scandinavian countries. If I am forced to choose a single explanation for Trump’s election victory in 2016, it will be these deepening economic rejections that ultimately liberated the populist mother. But the shirt gets a little tight.
Trump found this vein deeply ingrained in American politics, but he never managed to give it any direction other than as a means to divide and rule. There, however, he did it magnificently. But it never became a political platform for the whole thing, no “legacy” other than deepening contradictions for the sake of contradictions. If Biden resigns with victory in this already controversial election, there is still a broken country, more divided than in a long time.
But there is also a brighter tradition of American populism to remember, as could be seen in the triumphant moments of the Civil Rights Movement, or in the best moments of the Minnesota Peasant Labor Party: If you can create a platform that contains enough people, they can start working together. that has been broken. This tradition is also American.
Read more:
Björn Wiman: How do we think here? Trump’s time has just begun
Carl Johan von Seth: the next president of the United States must fix the bankrupt economy
Artists of the world are chosen in the final sprint of the presidential elections
Per Svensson: There is another pandemic that threatens freedom, it is called populism
