What is Populism? From the Farmers' Alliance to Trump

American History Hit

History Hit

America, History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 July 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the long unanswered question of whether the established elite truly support the concerns of ordinary people, a supposed hero arises: Populism.

But what is Populism? Where did it come from? And is this political approach from the late 19th century reflected anywhere in today's politics?

Don speaks to Steve Babson, author of seven books including ‘Forgotten Populists: When Farmers Turned Left to Save Democracy’.

Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Farming out west sure seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.
0:05.0	Vast tracts of land up for grabs, railroads expanding, cheap labor available.
0:10.0	But over the last decade, the lands have proven anything but fertile.
0:15.0	Scant rains have fallen as prices have dropped.
0:18.0	The only thing thriving are the debts we carry.
0:22.0	Change is blowing like milkweed across the fields.
0:26.0	Why are loans so expensive?
0:28.0	How are interest rates through the roof?
0:30.0	Shouldn't our government protect us?
0:33.0	What we need is a new approach.
0:36.0	We need to fight for a survival, stand our ground, but how?
0:40.0	How do we come together?
0:42.0	In 1890, in the dry... How do we come together?
0:43.0	In 1890, in the dry barren earth, a new populist solution has sprouted and taken root.
0:50.6	It's called the Farmers Alliance, and it's ready to grow. Hello you're listening to another episode of American History Hit.
1:08.0	Greetings, I'm Don Wildman.
1:10.0	The great value of historical study is the ability to understand human events in context.
1:15.8	Gain clarity, perspective on how our society has developed.
1:19.4	The United States has been around for 250 years and it is always remarkable, refreshing to me, to see how
1:25.1	ideas we live with on a daily basis have their specific origins in the past.
1:30.4	Such is our talk today about the term populist, a label often misunderstood and
1:35.3	misused, with roots in a political movement of the 1890s that spread like Ivy
	...

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