Some in the press use the term “populist” as a synonym for “popular” or for any new political movement outside the traditional parties. It has a much richer history, some centered in Kansas.
I learned about populism in 5th Grade. Because I finished my work early, the teacher let me browse the library. I was enthralled with utopian ideas and voraciously read Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia.” Orwell’s “1984″ and Huxley’s “Brave New World” were anti-utopias. But it was Edward Bellamy’s utopian “Looking Backward,” written in 1888, that introduced me to populism.
Edward Bellamy was the cousin of Francis Bellamy who wrote the American Pledge of Allegiance. Edward published a magazine, The New Nation, that promoted the emerging People’s Party and Nationalist Clubs. The 1800s was a time when Great Plains farmers and ranchers were chaffing under high interest rates from bankers and exorbitant freight charges from railroad barons.
This populist movement promoted nationalizing the banking and railroad businesses—essentially a socialist plan. However, Edward Bellamy preferred the term “nationalism” to “socialism” because—similar to today—many citizens had a knee-jerk aversion to the term “socialism.”
His cousin Francis Bellamy was a Christian socialist minister and preached for “the rights of working people and the equal distribution of economic resources, which he believed was inherent in the teachings of Jesus.” Francis Bellamy understood the separation of church and state and did not include “under God” in his original pledge. (Only later, in 1954, would President Eisenhower ask Congress to add “under God” in response to the Joe McCarthy-era fear of god-less communism.)
The populists who formed the American, People’s and Populist Parties in the 1800s were unified by their opposition to the ruling elites and had an agenda that included women’s right to vote, the 8-hour work day, and progressive income taxes. In 1892, the Populist candidate James Weaver won 8.5 percent of the nationwide vote. And Kansas was one of the few states where Weaver won the majority.
Today, commentators who have done their homework correctly report that there are shades of populist theory in Bernie Sanders’ proposal for single-payer health care. There is likewise a whiff of populist anti-elitism in the rise of the Tea Party and separately in Trump’s “America First.”
But there is a dark side to populism. In the mid-1800s, the populist American Party targeted recent immigrants for stealing jobs and destroying our culture and religious identity. Despite being third or fourth generation immigrants themselves, populists wanted new immigrants to wait 21 years in U.S. residency before becoming citizens.
Francis Bellamy stated that he wrote the Pledge “…as an inoculation that would protect immigrants and native-born but insufficiently patriotic Americans from the virus of radicalism and subversion.”
But being anti-elitist and favoring immigration restrictions is not enough to define populism. Jan-Werner Muller, in the book “What is Populism?” describes how populists believe that even if they are not in the majority, “…they and they alone represent the people.” He describes populists as “…a shadow of representative politics” that sporadically arises when a portion of the population feels they are suppressed. They claim to represent the “real people” or “silent majority.” And populism is not about “…democratic will-formation among citizens” but merely confirming “…what they have already determined the will of the people to be.”
While the respected commentator David Brooks has concluded that populist us-versus-them movements “generally have a history of defeat,” there is one case of their rise to power.
The World War I Treaty of Versailles established massive war reparation payments that kept Germany in poverty. A population that could never get ahead fell prey to a message that scapegoated Jews and immigrants outside the Aryan race. Although only a minority of Germans were members, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party claimed that only they represented the “real” German people. Simply, the Nazis were a populist movement.
Only since World War II do we place hand-over-heart in our salute to our flag that accompanies the Pledge. Before then, our salute to the flag (the Bellamy salute) had been an outstretched arm, similar to the Nazi salute.
So journalists—don’t continue calling every third party or unconventional candidate a “populist”! Populism is more complicated than that.
And teachers—let your students browse the school library.
John Richard Schrock is a professor at Emporia State University.