Robert Reich: Where They’re Raging Against The Establishment

Source:Robert Reich showing his readers the iconic political mascot of his American socialist movement.

"A groundswell of rage against the establishment has been growing in America for decades.

It became a gale-force wind after the Wall Street financial crisis of 2008, when banks that gambled with other people’s money had to be bailed out by taxpayers but millions of average Americans lost their savings, jobs, and homes.

It has been fomented by record levels of inequality. CEO pay has soared to 320 times that of average workers, and the stock market has reached staggering heights. At the same time, young men with no more than a high school degree are now earning 22 percent less, adjusted for inflation, than non-college young men earned 50 years ago.

And it’s become a deepening source of public distrust, as big money has taken over our politics. In the 2024 election, candidates raised $16 billion, much of it from a relative handful of billionaires.

Indicators of that rage are all around us.

Where can you find it... 

From Robert Reich

Populist uprisings (whether you are talking about left-wing socialist movements or right-wing nationalistic movements) are nothing new to America. I think Robert Reich and I completely agree on that. Shouldn't be surprising, especially in a liberal democracy, where we have constitutional rights to free speech, assembly, and even personal autonomy, that has the capitalist, private enterprise system that we have, that just doesn't allow, but encourages individuals to be as economically successful as they can. So my second point here might be where Mr. Reich and I differ. 

I think my second disagreement with Mr. Reich would be why these uprisings emerge in the first place. And I'll give you some examples of some populist movements from both the Left and the Right from the past and tell you what I think and know about them. 

The New Left from the 1960s and 70s: 

"The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer lifestyles on a broad range of social issues such as feminism, gay rights, drug policy reforms, and gender relations.[1] The New Left differs from the traditional left in that it tended to acknowledge the struggle for various forms of social justice, whereas previous movements prioritized explicitly economic goals. However, many have used the term "New Left" to describe an evolution, continuation, and revitalization of traditional leftist goals.[2][3][4]

Some who self-identified as "New Left"[5] rejected involvement with the labor movement and Marxism's historical theory of class struggle,[6] although others gravitated to their own takes on established forms of Marxism, such as the New Communist movement (which drew from Maoism) in the United States or the K-Gruppen[a] in the German-speaking world. In the United States, the movement was associated with the anti-war college-campus protest movements, including the Free Speech Movement." 

From Wikipedia

I think what separates the New Left and even Occupy Wall Street from the Tea Party/MAGA movements, is that the New Left was primarily made up of teenagers and young adults, from the Silent Generation (1920s and 30s babies) and the Baby Boom (1940s and 50s babies) who at the very least came from well-educated, white-collar, suburban, middle class, as well as upper class families. 

And lot of these folks were in college at the time of their movement and lot of them were coming of age in a time when the country was changing dramatically culturally and politically and they simply had a lot more information than even their parents did when they were young, as well as grandparents and they were seeing an America that they didn't like. All the racism, the sexism, the ethnicism, the homophobia, all the poverty, especially in African-America communities. 

And these folks perhaps feeling guilty about how they had it at that point and how they grew up, wanted to do something about the injustices that they saw in America. 

Some members of the New Left wanted change through peaceful, democratic means. But the militant members of this movement, saw the American system, our form of government economic system, as the obstruction to what they would call real progress in America. And they simply wanted to take out system down. You could literally argue (and I do) that the militant wing of the Socialist New Left, was what we seem from the WOKE Left today.

The Tea Party from 2008-14: 

"The Tea Party movement was an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party that began in 2009. The movement formed in opposition to the policies of Democratic President Barack Obama[1][2] and was a major factor in the 2010 wave election[3][4] in which Republicans gained 63 House seats[5] and took control of the U.S. House of Representatives.[6]

Participants in the movement called for lower taxes and for a reduction of the national debt and federal budget deficit through decreased government spending.[7][8] The movement supported small-government principles[9][10] and opposed the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), President Obama's signature health care legislation.[11][12][13] The Tea Party movement has been described as both a popular constitutional movement[14] and as an "astroturf movement" purporting to be spontaneous and grassroots, but created by hidden elite interests.[15][16] The movement was composed of a mixture of libertarian,[17] right-wing populist,[18] and conservative activism.[19] It sponsored multiple protests and supported various political candidates since 2009.[20][21][22] According to the American Enterprise Institute, various polls in 2013 estimated that slightly over 10% of Americans identified as part of the movement.[23] The movement took its name from the December 1773 Boston Tea Party, a watershed event in the American Revolution, with some movement adherents using Revolutionary era costumes.[24]

The Tea Party movement was popularly launched following a February 19, 2009, call by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a "tea party".[25][26] On February 20, 2009, The Nationwide Tea Party Coalition also helped launch the Tea Party movement via a conference call attended by around 50 conservative activists.[27][28] Supporters of the movement subsequently had a major impact on the internal politics of the Republican Party. While the Tea Party was not a political party in the strict sense, research published in 2016 suggests that members of the Tea Party Caucus voted like a right-wing third party in Congress.[29] A major force behind the movement was Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a conservative political advocacy group founded by businessman and political activist David Koch.[30]

By 2016, Politico wrote that the Tea Party movement had died; however, it also said that this was in part because some of its ideas had been absorbed by the mainstream Republican Party.[31] CNBC reported in 2019 that the conservative wing of the Republican Party "has basically shed the tea party moniker"

From Wikipedia

If anyone is putting at an all points bulletin for the Tea Party, you don't need to do that because it's still around. But similar to let's say the Washington Redskins becoming the Washington Commanders, they're almost unrecognizable today. If you are familiar with Donald Trump's MAGA movement, that's the Tea Party. It's just that they're not so much populist now, as they are oligarch and run and funded primarily by billionaires today who think they should be able to run the world simply because they have so much more money than anyone else. And they also believe that anyone who tries to get in their way, should be arrested or beat up, or something. 

And the other key difference between the Tea Party and MAGA, is that of course the Tea Party from 10-15 years ago had its' fundamentalist populists, who put their religious and cultural beliefs over everything else. But they wouldn't have had the success that they did and electing all the Republicans that they did, if they weren't against the corporate, taxpayer funded bailouts, and their push for fiscal conservatism and fiscal responsibility. Fiscal conservatism is all but dead in the Republican Party today, because MAGA is almost completely dominated by oligarchs and right-wing, militant, cultural warriors. Not fiscal conservatives. 

Occupy Wall Street of 2011-12: 

"Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Financial District, and lasted for fifty-nine days—from September 17 to November 15, 2011.[7]

The motivations for Occupy Wall Street largely resulted from public distrust in the private sector during the aftermath of the Great Recession in the United States. There were many particular points of interest leading up to the Occupy movement that angered populist and left-wing groups. For instance, the 2008 bank bailouts under the George W. Bush administration utilized congressionally appropriated taxpayer funds to create the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which purchased toxic assets from failing banks and financial institutions. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC in January 2010 allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts on independent political expenditures without government regulation. This angered many populist and left-wing groups that viewed the ruling as a way for moneyed interests to corrupt public institutions and legislative bodies, such as the United States Congress.

The protests gave rise to the wider Occupy movement in the United States and other Western countries. The Canadian anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters initiated the call for a protest.[8] The main issues raised by Occupy Wall Street were social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector. The OWS slogan, "We are the 99%", refers to income and wealth inequality in the U.S. between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population. To achieve their goals, protesters acted on consensus-based decisions made in general assemblies which emphasized redress through direct action over the petitioning to authorities.[9][nb 1]

The protesters were forced out of Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011. Protesters then turned their focus to occupying banks, corporate headquarters, board meetings, foreclosed homes, college and university campuses, and social media." 

From Wikipedia

We had the New Left of the 1960s and 70s and now Occupy Wall Street from 2011-12, who were the kids and grandkids of the New Left, at least ideologically and culturally. People who were left-wing hippies (or hipsters, if you prefer) trying to take down "The Man". (Democratically or otherwise) Because similar with the Tea Party of the same era, these leftists opposed all the corporate bailouts that happened during the Great Recession of 2008-09, especially when the country was dealing with 9% unemployment and lot of these folks were so young at this point and were buried in college debt and had no government bailout for themselves. 

But again similar with OWS's political ancestors, these folks weren't so much populist. We're not talking about Blue Collar Joe and Mary who worked very hard at the factory, just trying to pay their bills. Most of these folks come from well-educated, white-collar, middle class and upper class families, who thought they were getting a raw deal by their government. And decided to politically fight back.

As a Liberal Democrat myself (meaning someone who believes in liberal democracy) I'm all about liberal democracy, which means a helluva lot of free speech, (even if I don't agree with it)  free assembly, and personal freedom. Even for the people who don't believe in liberal democracy for their political opponents. But I think we have to be careful about throwing out terms like populist and populism. A populist is: 

"A person, especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.

"he ran as a populist on an anticorruption platform"

From Dictionary

And of course the Don Trump's, the Liz Warren's, the Bernie Sanders, Alex Cortez's, (if AOC runs for President in 2027-28) try to appeal to ordinary Americans. But other than perhaps Bernie Sanders (everyone's favorite Socialist) most of these people aren't populists in the sense of how they live their own lives. All these folks are already very well-to-do who believe appealing to ordinary Americans simply helps them politically. 

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