The Rise of ‘Middle-Finger Politics’

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2024

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Donald Trump can seem like a political anomaly. You sometimes hear people describe his connection with his base in quasi-mystical terms. But really, Trump is an example of an archetype — the right-wing populist showman — that recurs across time and place. There’s Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Boris Johnson in Britain, Javier Milei in Argentina. And there’s a long lineage of this type in the United States too. So why is there this consistent demand for this kind of political figure? And why does this set of qualities — ethnonationalist politics and an entertaining style — repeatedly appear at all? John Ganz is the writer of the newsletter Unpopular Front and the author of the forthcoming book “When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s.” In this conversation, we discuss how figures like David Duke and Pat Buchanan were able to galvanize the fringes of the Republican Party; Trump’s specific brand of TV-ready charisma; and what liberals tend to overlook about the appeal of this populist political aesthetic. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: “Right-Wing Populism” by Murray N. Rothbard “The ‘wave’ of right-wing populist sentiment is a myth” by Larry Bartels “How we got here” by Matthew Yglesias Book Recommendations: What Hath God Wrought? by Daniel Walker Howe After Nationalism by Samuel Goldman The Politics of Cultural Despair by Fritz R. Stern Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. I think a lot of Democrats and even a lot of Republicans are still a bit a
0:27.8	gog that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee once again in
0:32.4	2024. After everything he said and done,
0:36.2	after what he did during COVID, after everything he did to try and overturn the
0:41.0	2020 election,
0:43.0	amidst all the criminal trials and scandals and corruption,
0:47.5	all the people he has betrayed and insulted
0:50.9	and double-crossed, this guy still.
0:56.2	It's not like there weren't alternatives.
0:57.9	DeSantis pitched himself as Donald Trump without the wild personality.
1:02.3	Maybe what people liked about Trump were the positions,
1:04.8	but he was being held back by who he was. At least not on the Republican side, that did not turn not to be the problem for Donald Trump. Vivigramaswami was a younger, more cheerful, more multicultural spin on the Trumpist theme.
1:17.6	Neither of them found any real footing.
1:20.0	Both of them were missing something, and I think trying to think about what they were missing is important.
1:25.3	Because there is this endless dialogue about what is the nature of Trump's appeal,
1:30.0	and people keep trying to split him into component parts, the policy, the showmen, the vibes, the media,
1:36.2	it can make Trump seem a little too unique.
1:39.8	You sometimes hear people describe his connection with his base in quasi-mystical terms,
1:44.4	but I think that's a mistake. I don't think Trump is that unique and what is interesting to me about him in part
1:50.5	is that he puts together a bunch of traits that occur and recur in politicians
1:56.9	like him across places and times. You keep having this archetype of the right-wing populist showman,
2:04.0	the grinning ethnoc nationalist strongman.
	...

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