Re: Why Richard Hofstadter Is Still Worth Reading but Not for the Reasons the Critics Have in Mind
On Oct 10, 2006, at 12:43 PM, Michael Pugliese wrote:
http://hnn.us/articles/30629.html
I’ve just read five of Hof’s books, and I gotta say Jon Wiener is
deeply, but all too typically, unfair in this paragraph:
Hofstadter’s argument that the historical roots of McCarthyism lay
in the Populist tradition, on the other hand, is simply wrong. He
argued that the Populist movement of the 1890s was deeply
irrational and essentially proto-fascist. The Populists saw the
principal source of injustice and economic suffering in rural
America in what they called “the money power.” In Hofstadter’s
analysis, this was evidence of irrational paranoia, of “psychic
disturbances.” Moreover, Hofstadter argued that these denunciations
of “the money power” were deeply anti-Semitic. Alas, his evidence
of Populist anti-Semitism was embarrassingly thin: a handful of
lurid quotes from a few Populist leaders about the “House of
Rothschild” and “Shylock,” and an argument that Henry Ford’s anti- Semitism came from his background as “a Michigan farm boy who had
been liberally exposed to Populist notions.”
This is a tremendous exaggeration. Hofstadter conceded the populists
had reasonable complaints and many virtues. The passages on anti-
Semitism take up just a few pages, and are not the centerpiece of his
analysis (and, though he doesn’t mention this, isn’t Bryan’s choice
of imagery, “crucified on a cross of gold,” rhetorically interesting,
coming from a time when the Jews were blamed for nailing up Jesus?).
He points out that American populism is a political ideology of petty
producers - and rightly, I think, underscores the radical departure
of the New Deal from the individualist roots of American radicalism
for something much more collective. That kind of collectivism, which
lasted into the 1970s, is exactly what the New Right has been trying
to reverse all along, and they’ve accomplished a good bit of the
task. Hof’s emphasis on the individualism of American white
protestantism is highly relevant now - it illuminates what’s the
matter with Kansas, since American white protestants love The Market
as an instrument of reward and discipline. That love is not some
recent confidence trick perpetrated by Karl Rove, but has deep roots.
Doug