The Rise of 'Middle-Finger Politics'
About this episode
Klein asks why Trump is the GOP nominee again despite criminal trials, January 6, and DeSantis. John Ganz, author of the newsletter Unpopular Front and "When the Clock Broke," traces Trump's lineage to 1990s right-wing populism. The episode walks through David Duke (the ex-KKK leader who won 55% of Louisiana's white vote in 1991 by attacking the Republican establishment), Murray Rothbard's "Right-Wing Populism" essay theorizing a demagogue who "short-circuits" mediating institutions, and Pat Buchanan, whose 2002 "The Death of the West" prefigured today's culture-war language. Ganz's key claims: a permanent "reservoir" of demand for a right-wing populist showman — not just waves; form and content are fused — the middle-finger, insult-comic theatricality is the politics; Trump succeeded where Duke and Buchanan failed as an unambiguous outsider with showman charisma; and his core is narrowing who counts as a "real American," with evangelicals now seeing him as a chosen defender.