Outside the Beltway

Podcast Recommendation

Autocracy in America.

Steven L. Taylor · Tuesday, November 26, 2024 · 3 comments

I have been meaning to recommend this six-part series by Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev from The Atlantic, Autocracy in America.

It details not where we might go (although it does deal with that to some degree), but really is about where we have already been.

It includes discussion of Huey Long, who has come up in the comment section of late.

It is an informative, if depressing, listen.

FILED UNDER: History, Political Theory, US Politics, Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic

About Steven L. Taylor

Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

Jay L Gischer says:

Tuesday, 26 November 2024 at 14:00

I just spent a bit of time reading the Wikipedia entry for Huey Long. I’m not really sure what to think of Long. Wikipedia has this tidbit:

According to T. Harry Williams, Long was “the first Southern mass leader to leave aside race baiting and appeals to the Southern tradition and the Southern past and address himself to the social and economic problems of the present”.
[…]
Williams concluded “the secret of Long’s power, in the final analysis, was not in his machine or his political dealings but in his record—he delivered something”.

Are we going to say this about Trump in years to come?

Reply
just nutha says:

Tuesday, 26 November 2024 at 16:52

@Jay L Gischer: I wouldn’t think so. Trump is no Huey Long.

Reply
Not the IT Dept. says:

Tuesday, 26 November 2024 at 17:21

You want to read Alan Brinkley’s Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression, if you can find it. He does a great job of summarizing all the various -isms floating around during the 1920s and 1930s.

Long was tricky, not a one-dimensional type like Coughlin, and he gave FDR a serious scare as the 1936 election approached. His assassination in 1935 prevented one of the great what-ifs of American history.

Reply

Click to Edit –
You want to read Alan Brinkley's <em>Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression</em>, if you can find it. He does a great job of summarizing all the various -isms floating around during the 1920s and 1930s. Long was tricky, not a one-dimensional type like Coughlin, and he gave FDR a serious scare as the 1936 election approached. His assassination in 1935 prevented one of the great what-ifs of American history.