I feel like I'm being trolled here. Hofstadter was wrong about most things and especially wrong, in a dangerous way, about populism.https://twitter.com/jonathanchait/status/953113526456942592 …
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Replying to @HeerJeet
Hofstadter was a brilliant historian and a superb writer whom anyone who cares about the American past should read. Of course, he was wrong about some things. But his take on populism was more nuanced than you think.
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Replying to @mkazin
I think the problem is characterizing things as like McCarthyism & Trumpism, which depend crucially on support from GOP & business elite, as populist. That characterization obscures more than it reveals.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
well, I wrote a whole book arguing that populism is a promiscuous language which different pols and political forces adapt to their own purposes: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100195280 … It's not an ideology like socialism, liberalism, or conservatism
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Replying to @mkazin
I know! I've read Populist Persuasion -- several times in fact. I think it's fair to say there is populist rhetoric, but tension between that rhetoric & reality worth emphasizing.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
but when nearly everyone uses "populism" to refer to a type of rhetoric, then that becomes the reality, no? Anyway, enough back and forth on this. keep up the splendid work at TNR!
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Agree, in terms of usage the broad meaning of populism has won. But I'm enough of a historian to regret the loss of the earlier, more focused, usage.
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