This essay makes an argument for progressive populism, but it is an alarmingly distorted analysis of what populism is and how it functions.
Both the Bacon rebellion and Jacksonian populism were examples of a right-wing populism in which middle level white people sought to defend their relative "precarious" position by stomping on the native population. Jackson is a positive figure only if you ignore genocide of tribal peoples.
The largest populist movement in U.S. history until the Tea Parties was the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Targeted blacks, Jews, and Catholics.
Read more here:
http://www.publiceye.org/right_wing_populism/populism.html
Chip Berlet co-author, Right-Wing Populism in America
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