It's true that Hofstadter holds populism responsible for not only its own -- which he says was "a mode of expression, a rhetorical style, not a tactic or a program" (The Age of Reform, Vintage, p. 80) -- but also subsequent anti-Semitism: "It is not too much to say that the Greenback-Populist tradition activated most of what we have of modern popular anti-Semitism in the United States" (p. 80).
On 10/10/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Though
> he doesn't say this, his analysis is perfectly consonant with the
> anti-Semitism that floats through a lot of populist politics that is
> anti-finance and anti-urban but not really anti-capitalist.
For the time being, there is no "really anti-capitalist" politics to speak of in the USA, but, fear not, there is no "anti-finance" politics to speak of either. :->
There was practically no popular opposition to the bankruptcy reform, which would have been a good political target if there had been either "anti-finance" politics or "really anti-capitalist" politics.
It's odd to be arguing against a movement -- in this case, an anti-Semitic and anti-finance populist movement -- that does not exist here now. Isn't it a hallmark of the paranoid style to incite a fear of a non-existent menace? -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>