The outpouring of joy on social media after the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson suggests that America’s populist moment is evolving into something larger and more significant than just a backlash against the political establishment. If so, it is also becoming something Americans have seen before. In the late nineteenth century, the People’s Party, also known as the Populists, targeted big business as well as establishment politicians, blaming large enterprises for both destroying Americans’ livelihoods and corrupting the government.
This change could be bad news for Donald Trump. The US president-elect is not the first Republican politician to purport to serve both commerce and the forgotten man; but after campaigning alongside billionaires and inviting them into his administration, he has stretched this claim to the breaking point.
The American Populists were mainly farmers in the South and Midwest whose fortunes plummeted as the country industrialized and as the cultural center of gravity shifted to the cities. Both major parties neglected agrarian interests as they relitigated the Civil War and sought support from the rising commercial class (in the case of the Republicans) and the expanding ethnic populations in the cities (in the case of the Democrats). Farmers, pummeled by the “Great Deflation” caused by the government’s insistence on paying off the war debt, thus took it upon themselves to mobilize, achieving political dominance in several states and greater influence in Congress.
Original source can be found here.