Hofstadter sided with Grayson Kirk at the 1968 Columbia commencement, where he spoke, after the bloody bust, while all honorable people were at the counter-commencement. His commencement speech was published in the Columbia Forum. Like many other liberal historians, including the unspeakable Vann Woodward, Hofstadter had a bad reaction to the 60s. But the reason for it is there in his work: he talks about anti-intellectualism but not about anti-populism. Like Daniel Bell and others at the time, the idea of mass participation in politics terrified him.
There's much more to be said. Oddly, people might want to read Alan Heimert about the Great Awakening of the 18th century, which shook up social structure for the good. Many things that Hofstadter saw as dangerous mob excesses have been viewed more positively through other lenses. And of course there is Norman Pollack's 1961 Populist Response to Industrial America (?), and his criticisms of Hofstadter and Handlin for their "fear of man," which helped to get him fired from Yale, part of a long processession of firings non/hirings there including me, Staughton Lynd, Herbert Aptheker and more in recent times.
Above, of the top of my head, is just a beginning.
Jesse Lemisch ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chip Berlet" <c.berlet at publiceye.org> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 2:05 PM Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Why Richard Hofstadter Is Still Worth Reading
Hi,
There is much of interest in the Jon Wiener article on Hofstadter, but it as if he stopped reading about populism in the mid 1970s. These are all books that talk about populism as a way of framing reality--a style...
Laclau, Ernesto. 1977. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism. London: NLB/Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press.
Canovan, Margaret. 1981. Populism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and political mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Betz, Hans-Georg. 1994. Radical Right-wing Populism in Western Europe. New York: St. Martins Press.
Kazin, Michael. 1995. The Populist Persuasion: An American History. New York: Basic Books.
Betz, Hans-Georg, and Stefan Immerfall, eds. 1998. The New Politics of the Right: Neo-Populist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Berlet, Chip, and Matthew N. Lyons. 2000. Right-Wing Populism in America. New York: Guilford.
Chip (self-serving) Berlet
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From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org on behalf of Wojtek Sokolowski Sent: Tue 10/10/2006 1:47 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Why Richard Hofstadter Is Still Worth Reading butNot for the Reasons the Critics Have in Mind
http://hnn.us/articles/30629.html
-- Michael Pugliese ___________________________________
[WS:] Interesting. However, dismissing Hofstadter's populist anti-intellectualism argument hinges on semantics - whether such behavior was "irrational." Irrationality is a red herring here. Deeply anti-intellectual leaders, such as Pol Pot, were far from being irrational. In fact they were themselves of intellectuals of some sort, and merely exhibited antipathy toward other intellectuals. They espoused a certain set of values glorifying simple rural life, also shared by intellectuals like Rousseau or even Voltaire (cf. Candide), which were hostile to those who, like Marx, considered such life style 'rural idiocy.'
What is at stake here is not reason vs. irrationality or stupidity but different cognitive frames that manifest themselves, inter alia, by preference from bucolic rural life or for urban diversity. Both are pre-rational, that is, frame and direct the rational thought process.
So if we drop the charge of irrationalism, Hofstadter's thesis that American culture tends to be anti-urban and rather local, with all the accoutrements of that localism: navel gazing, suspicion of outsiders, suspicion of high culture, suspicion of big organizations and government, love of small business, religiosity etc. still stands. Local yokels ain't stupid, they just do not like them city slickers.
Wojtek
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