A New York Times Editors’ Choice An “essential” (Jane Mayer) account of the dangerous marriage of plutocratic economic priorities and right-wing populist appeals — and how it threatens the pillars of American democracy. In Let Them Eat Tweets, best-selling political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson argue that despite the rhetoric of Donald Trump, Josh Hawley, and other right-wing “populists,” the Republican Party came to serve its plutocratic masters to a degree without precedent in modern global history. To maintain power while serving the 0.1 percent, the GOP has relied on increasingly incendiary racial and cultural appeals to its almost entirely white base. Calling this dangerous hybrid “plutocratic populism,” Hacker and Pierson show how, over the last forty years, reactionary plutocrats and right-wing populists have become the two faces of a party that now actively undermines democracy to achieve its goals against the will of the majority of Americans. Based on decades of research and featuring a new epilogue about the intensification of GOP radicalism after the 2020 election, Let Them Eat Tweets authoritatively explains the doom loop of tax cutting and fearmongering that defines the Republican Party—and reveals how the rest of us can fight back.

In a time of rising inequality and plutocratic government, citizens’ movements are emerging with growing frequency to offer populist challenges to the declining living standards of masses of Americans, and to protest the conditions through which individuals suffer in poor communities across the country. This book looks at the progression of modern social uprisings in the post-2008 period, including the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, the Bernie Sanders “Revolution,” Trump’s populism, the anti-Trump revolt, and #MeToo. A key theme is that populism and mass anger at the political-economic status quo take different forms depending on whether the protests are progressive-left or right-wing in orientation. Employing theories of elite politics and pluralism, and using a mixed methods approach, Anthony DiMaggio harnesses his rich experience with movement politics and his engagement with a wide range of media and public opinion data to explain where we are today and how we got here – always with an eye on moving ahead. Aimed at courses on social movements wherever they’re taught, this book also offers general readers insight into contemporary politics and protest.

In the current climate of dissatisfaction with "democratic" Western political and economic systems, this is a timely book that demonstrates a true political Third Way. Populism is distinguished from other political movements by its insistence on two things conspicuously missing from modern systems of political economy: genuine democracy based on local citizen assemblies, and the widespread distribution among the population of privately-owned economic capital. Fixing the System offers a comprehensive historical account of populism, revealing the consistent and distinct history of populism since ancient times. Adrian Kuzminski demonstrates that populism is a tradition of practice as well as thought, ranging from ancient city states to the frontier communities of colonial america-all places where widely distributed private property and democratic decision-making combined to foster material prosperity and cultural innovation. In calling for a wide distribution of both property and democracy, populism opposes the political and economic system found today in the united states and other Western countries, where property remains highly concentrated in private hands and where representatives chosen in impersonal mass elections frustrate democracy by serving private monied interests rather than the public good. As Kuzminski demonstrates, as one of very few systematic alternatives to today's political and economic system, populism, offers a pragmatic program for fundamental social change that deserves wide and serious consideration. Populism is a genuine "third way" in politics, a middle path between the extremes of corporate anarchy and collective authoritarianism. As America takes stock of her current situation and looks toward the future in the 2008 election year, Fixing the System offers a trenchant and timely study of this deep-rooted movement.