The Rise of American Populism

I was thrilled to be the inaugural guest on the relaunch of Inflection Point, the Berkeley Political Economy podcast hosted by Dylan Riley and Brad DeLong.

J. Bradford DeLong is a professor of economics at University of California - Berkeley with a special focus on economic history, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a weblogger at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and a fellow of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Relevant to our discussion, he worked as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy from 1993 to 1995, during the Clinton Administration. I’m a long-time fan of Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality blog, going back to before its Substack days. What little I know of macroeconomics comes largely from reading Brad over the years.

Dylan J. Riley is a professor in the department of sociology at Berkeley with a focus on capitalism, socialism, democracy, authoritarianism, and knowledge regimes in a broad comparative and historical perspective. Riley is also on the editorial committee at The New Left Review. His first book The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain, and Romania 1870-1945 was published in 2010 and is already considered a classic in fascism studies. I’m a big admirer of that book and Riley’s writing on fascism in general, which has influenced my own work a great deal.

I came on to talk to Brad and Dylan about my book When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. I made the case that the early 1990s represented the first signs of a Gramscian “crisis of hegemony,” where the American political elite started to lose its grip on a restive civil society. This first became apparent within the Republican party and the conservative movement, before spreading to the rest of the country. We discussed why that might be, how this all happened, and then brought the conversation up to the present day, considering exactly what sort of regime we may be looking at with Trumpism-Muskism. This conversation had special significance for me because of the great esteem I have for both these scholars.

Additional readings:

* Brad’s review of my book from last year

* “American Brumaire?” by Dylan Riley in The New Left Review

* “What Is Trump?” by Riley in The New Left Review

* “Seven Theses on American Politics” by Dylan Riley and Robert Brenner also in The New Left Review

I also have another announcement: the indispensable Dissent magazine is having a fundraiser April 8th featuring my good friends Sam Adler-Bell, Matt Sitman, and Jamelle Bouie. I’ll probably be hanging around, too! Please consider coming out and supporting this crucial journal during this strange and difficult time not just for the left and intellectual culture in general.