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.
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
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:
Are we going to say this about Trump in years to come?
@Jay L Gischer: I wouldn’t think so. Trump is no Huey Long.
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.