In 1966 journalist Tom Wolfe attended a reception on New York's swank Upper East Side where rich hosts and guests gushed over leaders of the militant Black Panther party.
This 'new populism' is simply a front for what I call Industrial Feudalism.
Whereas original feudalism was based on land and peasants tied to it with a hierarchical structure, industrial feudalism will entail the top level of society of tech oligarchs and wealth CEOs - the implementation of job killing AI programs and destruction of the social safety net will keep the working class poor and desperate - it won't be a new Gilded Age- it will be much worse
This is good, but I think you could argue that the third wave of populism came with FDR after the 1920s. That decade was so fundamentally different and embraced by Americans, that it’s hard to argue it was merely part of the second wave. The appetite for populism died after WW1 and into the 20s. It only returned once the economy crashed at the end of the decade.
The billionaires who supported Trump in 2024 did not support him in 2016 or 2020. Trump didn’t court their support. At least in the case of Zuckerberg, there’s a lot of self-guilt for his role in censorship . Too soon to tell, but it seems like there is a genuine move to the right among even the elite.
This 'new populism' is simply a front for what I call Industrial Feudalism.
Whereas original feudalism was based on land and peasants tied to it with a hierarchical structure, industrial feudalism will entail the top level of society of tech oligarchs and wealth CEOs - the implementation of job killing AI programs and destruction of the social safety net will keep the working class poor and desperate - it won't be a new Gilded Age- it will be much worse
This is good, but I think you could argue that the third wave of populism came with FDR after the 1920s. That decade was so fundamentally different and embraced by Americans, that it’s hard to argue it was merely part of the second wave. The appetite for populism died after WW1 and into the 20s. It only returned once the economy crashed at the end of the decade.
The billionaires who supported Trump in 2024 did not support him in 2016 or 2020. Trump didn’t court their support. At least in the case of Zuckerberg, there’s a lot of self-guilt for his role in censorship . Too soon to tell, but it seems like there is a genuine move to the right among even the elite.