When Populism and Authoritarianism Saved Democracy

In the past thirty years, the top 1% in America have added $21 trillion to their wealth, while the bottom 50% has lost $900 billion. We know from history that democracy cannot survive such conditions.

Like many other parts of the so-called democratic world, the United States is living through a moment which, to the politically sensitive, feels dystopian, ominous, and cynical. Our era is hard to define in any simple way, and it is perhaps harder to see a positive path forward. But it seems that in the political realm—both nationally and globally—we are in an era of increasing authoritarianism; democratic and authoritarian countries alike are moving in more authoritarian directions. The United States, in particular, represents the tricky but fascinating case of an established democracy gradually morphing into a strange hybrid of democracy and authoritarianism.

What used to be called “democratic backsliding” now seems like a quaint term—that train has long departed the station. The real debate is not whether the United States is still a democracy (formally, it is), but about the causes of democracy’s degradation. For the legacy media, segments of the political class, and many elites in the Ivy League (at least those who haven’t decamped to Canada in their flight from fascism in New Haven), blame for democracy’s deterioration—and specifically, for many, the rise of Trump—lies primarily with the public for falling prey to “disinformation.” This is how we get the spectacle of Hillary Clinton, for example, blaming TikTok for why younger Americans have turned against Israel after two years of American-backed devastation in Gaza. The implication is that, instead of watching reels on their phones, young people should get their information from such reliable sources as CBS News or the Washington Post, both of which happen to be controlled by “neutral” multi-billionaires. For these elites, if we are in a democratic crisis, it is because too many people are uneducated, foolish, and tricked—this is purportedly why they support conmen and autocrats.

In other words, the working assumption among many observers of authoritarianism—especially of the mainstream liberal persuasion—is that a democracy can become authoritarian when the people turn to a strongman-type leader who exploits their grievances by appealing to their worst instincts. But any serious person must dig deeper than this. We first need to acknowledge the fact that, although we are in a severe crisis of democracy, not everyone will be affected by or even notice it; how severe one thinks the crisis is often depends on where one stands in society. Many of our elites might be fine with the current state of affairs if only because it benefits them economically. The crisis feels most palpable when we abandon the individualistic frame and consider the issue structurally and historically.

The Great Depression

One significant moment of rising authoritarianism in the United States occurred in the 1930s, during the Great Depression—a historical moment that offers several important lessons for own day. The severity of the Depression is badly underappreciated today. The collapse of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929, itself the result of an unregulated market economy that resembled a giant Ponzi scheme, sparked a chain reaction that quickly led to the worst economic crisis the modern capitalist world has known. Many of the millions of victims of the Depression had never heard of Wall Street, let alone visited it, but they lost absolutely everything because of it—their jobs and livelihoods determined by the activities of the Dow Jones Index. Incredibly, after everything that happened in the world, then and since, not much has changed: the economic fate of most people still depends on what that index looks like, even though they have nothing to do with it and may not even fully understand its operations.

By 1931, the economic crisis became global and people in different parts of the world learned the hard way how interconnected their respective national economies had become (although “globalization” hadn’t yet become a household term). The political consequences of high unemployment and runaway inflation were infamously disastrous in Germany—and later, the rest of the world. In East Asia, Japan was deeply impacted by the crash; since three out of eight Japanese agricultural farmers relied on silk cocoon sales in the 1920s, the Japanese economy promptly shrank by 10% once Western women could no longer afford to buy silk items. As in the case of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan only “recovered” through massive military buildup and, eventually, violent imperial conquests. After 1933, Nazi Germany, along with the Bolshevik Soviet Union, seemed to be the only countries impervious to economic collapse. Liberal democracies seemed to be goners, and young intellectuals of the 1930s took note.

Back in the United States—the point of origin of the crisis—Americans experienced unprecedented hardship. Social dislocation and massive unemployment caused men to leave their families in pursuit of work, only to become drifters. There were melodramatic stories about rich bankers losing everything and jumping out of windows, but in reality, the Depression was most devastating for those who were already poor. The hardest hit were, unsurprisingly, those who suffered most from brutalization and structural discrimination: African Americans.

This crisis was the retrospectively-unsurprising setting for a true authoritarian moment. President Herbert Hoover, elected in 1928 (despite never having held office) on a wave of admiration for his achievements as a brilliant engineer, manager, humanitarian, and entrepreneur who helped deliver food to war-torn Europe, soon became the least popular President in American history. Americans spoke of the “Hoover Depression” and resented his aloof optimism. Hoover’s promise that “prosperity is just around the corner” fell flat as people felt crushed and abandoned by their government.

Hoover’s nonchalance morphed into an ominous kind of authoritarianism in early 1932 when approximately 17,000 World War I veterans known as the “Bonus Army”—many of them homeless and unemployed—gathered in Washington, D.C. with their families to demand early payment of a wartime service bonus not due until 1945. Hoover opposed the Bonus Army’s demand along with Congress and most of the political class. Arguably, there was some logic to his position, since veterans’ benefits already took up 25% of the 1932 federal budget. But these were not logical times.

Following Hoover’s rejection, around 10,000 veterans remained in Washington, living in a sort of shantytown and in abandoned government buildings. Their presence just steps away from the White House was an embarrassment to the President. After police shot to death two veterans during a commotion, the supposedly-steady Hoover lost his bearings. Apparently fearing a revolutionary uprising, and convinced that the Bonus Army consisted of dangerous communists, he summoned General Douglas MacArthur—a man hardly known for his subtlety or finesse. Accordingly, MacArthur assembled an army led by Generals George Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower who were ordered to attack the Bonus Army, entering the shantytown and burning it down. Fifty-five people were injured, a pregnant woman miscarried, and a twelve-week old baby boy died from tear gas inhalation. The public reaction was rightly furious. The cold, technocratic instincts that had served Hoover well pre-crisis were failing him now. They led him to see the Bonus Army as criminals and subversives, instead of what they really were—desperate people who had sacrificed for their country.

What happened to the Bonus Army was an ominous first sign of democracy’s fragility in a time of severe crisis. But who was threatening democracy at this point—the Bonus Army, by “occupying” Washington, or the Hoover administration which burned down the tents in which desperate families were hunkered? The question becomes especially loaded when we recall that some of the earliest supporters of fascists and Nazis in Europe were disgruntled veterans who felt betrayed by their liberal-democratic governments.

The Unlikely FDR

With Hoover’s reputation underwater, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), then-Governor of New York, crushed him in the 1932 election. It may seem surprising today, but in 1933 many observers believed FDR would be even less effective than Hoover at dealing with the crisis, if only for biographical reasons. After all, FDR was a privileged aristocrat from New York’s Hudson Valley, whereas Hoover was from a small town in Iowa and pulled himself up from meager beginnings. Hoover had excelled in his studies and professional life, while FDR for most of his early life had coasted on his privilege. At Harvard, FDR was a glorified frat boy, joining endless clubs and earning mediocre grades. He later failed to graduate from law school at Columbia, but wanted to enter politics with the idea of becoming President someday. His inspiration was his distant cousin, Teddy Roosevelt, the mythic former President.

Aside from his great last name, FDR seemed to have little going for him. In retrospect, we know that this was a superficial assessment of the young man. As Secretary of the Navy in the Woodrow Wilson administration, and then as Governor of New York, he began to show real political talent, dynamic policymaking, and a capacity for leadership. But even when he entered the White House, many considered him a lightweight who was elected more because of Hoover’s ineptitude than for his own appeal. No one was ready for just how FDR would face the crisis inherited from Hoover—with a mix of radical democracy and a dose of centralized authoritarianism.

FDR turned out to be an outstanding politician, able to communicate effectively with the public and stave off serious challenges to the system. According to the historian Richard Hofstadter, the glib optimism and boyish enthusiasm that made FDR look like a lightweight at the outset became, in a sense, the essence of his political program. Indeed, FDR transmitted his personal confidence to the nation at large. He knew, as opposed to Hoover, that in a modern mass society, personality in politics is extremely important. He was one of the first political figures to make effective use of the radio with his famous “Fireside Chats” broadcasts, in which he described the New Deal policies his administration was undertaking on behalf of the American people.

Yet contrary to what many elite liberal commentators seem to believe today, media-savviness—whether on the radio in 1935 or on TikTok in 2025—is not sufficient for political success; the policies behind one’s media strategy have to be good for the message to really work. FDR understood this well, and his ability to fuse substance with style helped him confront perhaps the biggest domestic political challenge he had to face during his first term: Louisiana’s Huey Long. In 1932, after one term as Governor of Louisiana, Long ran for the Senate and was easily elected. After that, although he had no official function in Louisiana’s government, he became what can only be described as the dictator of the state. The new Governor was Long’s childhood friend and puppet, and this allowed Long to continue shaping policy in the state, which was then—as it remains today—one of the poorest in the nation.

In the worst days of the Depression, Long built a national profile based on his high popularity among the poorest people—first in his own state, then across the country. His consistent critique of extreme inequality and wealth concentration, which he blamed directly for people’s suffering, resonated deeply with many Americans. He singled out oil companies like Standard and Shell, as well as plutocrats like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Mellon. His political platform, “Share Our Wealth,” was for its day a radical redistribution program that demanded a cap on excessive wealth and a subsidy to every American household, including the guarantee of housing, a car, and a radio so that “none shall be too big, none shall be too small.”

Of course, the main reason for Long’s popularity was that he didn’t just talk but got things done. Long’s biographer, Harry T. Williams, mentions that prior to Long’s election as Governor in 1928, Louisiana had only 296 miles of concrete road, thirty-five miles of asphalt, 5,728 miles of gravel, and three major bridges, none of which crossed the Mississippi River. By 1935, when Long was assassinated, the state had 2,446 miles of concrete roads, 1,308 miles of asphalt, 9,629 miles of gravel, and more than forty major bridges.

Whereas the people of Louisiana, and poor people across the country, saw in Long a champion and protector, the elites of his day—business tycoons, editors in New York, professors at Harvard and Yale—feared and despised him. He was widely seen at the time as a fascist-like figure, while others regarded him as a sort of communist. Whatever political flavor one wants to assign to Long, it is fair to call him an authoritarian. He consistently showed contempt for democratic institutions, and in the climate of the 1930s, this immediately evoked thoughts of Hitler and Mussolini. Indeed, many people who barely listened to the content of Long’s speeches could not get past his body language and mannerisms, which to many mattered much more than the substance of his speeches. Much of what Long had to say was not entirely exact or necessarily realistic, but he touched on a real problem in American society that many people could identify with: the combination of wealth concentration and extreme inequality. Politicians who highlight this problem today are, unsurprisingly, in the similar position of being admired by large numbers of people and reviled by the elite.

FDR understood what made Long popular, and he responded accordingly. In his first two terms, FDR enjoyed a widespread national popularity that has never been matched by any President since. In particular, the “New Deal”—FDR’s flurry of policies unleashed during the first 100 days of his administration—attempted to stimulate the moribund American economy without concern for “procedure.” A lot of its measures weren’t even about economic growth, or even “the economy,” in the way that modern economists understand the term. Rather, the New Deal was about protections and the restoration of basic social fabrics that economic collapse destroyed. Arguably the two most notable features of the New Deal were the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act (concerning the minimum wage), which helped poor people in particular and which FDR’s enemies on the right most despised. But the most important feature of the New Deal was, of course, putting people to work so that they could be paid something, even if the jobs were as “meaningless” as cutting rocks in a yard all day. The result of FDR’s policies was a roughly functional society—less susceptible to fascism or revolution, founded on material progress, social protections, and major public infrastructure projects. No such analog exists in the present.

The New Deal built a powerful coalition of voters that seems unthinkable today, bound by policies that promoted the public good and consisted of ethnic minorities, white farmers, African Americans (who because of the New Deal began, for the first time, to abandon the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln), industrial workers, and intellectuals. FDR knew exactly what was happening in the wider world, understood what severe economic crisis did to people and their politics, and recognized what he was up against. He seemed to share a class-based analysis of the problems facing the American people, and when he said, “we have earned the hatred of entrenched greed,” he was not wrong. What helped him potentially fend off any serious challenge from Long (who may have run in 1936 had he not been shot) and other challengers was that he was beloved by poor people across racial, ethnic, and other lines—the same people who also supported Long. Given FDR’s own privileged background, many of his fellow elites considered him a class traitor.

Even policies that carried mostly symbolic meaning endeared him to his supporters. The Revenue Act of 1935 raised federal income tax by introducing the “Wealth Tax,” a progressive tax that took up to 75% of the highest incomes and which led to the greatest period of growth in American history. Additionally, in 1935, in a mischievous act of populism, FDR proposed the wonderfully-named “Soak the Rich” bill to effectively tax one person—Rockefeller. “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made,” he would later say. Such policies would be immediately killed in America’s donor-driven politics today.

But perhaps the most “authoritarian” move proposed by FDR was the so-called “court packing plan” of 1937. When the conservative Supreme Court threatened to overturn the New Deal as “unconstitutional” (specifically, and not surprisingly, the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act, the programs that most helped the poorest Americans), the President announced his plan to add enough new Justices for each sitting Justice who did not retire by age seventy, until there were fifteen instead of nine.

The plan never went through, partly because FDR met resistance from his own Party in Congress, but mainly because the Supreme Court changed its mind by declaring that, actually, the New Deal was constitutional. Indeed, FDR’s move was not only perfectly legal and within the President’s mandate, but also necessary given what Americans were living through at the time. This was clearly an attempt by FDR to bully the Supreme Court, which is a bedrock of the checks-and-balances on which American democracy rests. In threatening the Supreme Court, was FDR being authoritarian? Or was he being democratic?

The answer is: both. He was being authoritarian, but his goal was to protect democracy. FDR understood something fundamental that few liberal elites nowadays do, namely, that a democracy needs to take care of people’s basic needs if they are to remain committed to the system. Simply, for FDR, feeding starving people was more important than a commitment to an institution.

Saving Democracy

In an era of rising authoritarianism meant to destroy democracy, FDR knew that a certain degree of authoritarianism was necessary to protect democracy, since it couldn’t just save itself. He understood why people choose authoritarianism. It wasn’t because of “disinformation,” as many of our elites like to say today. “Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations,” FDR said in an April 1938 fireside chat, “not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they stay helpless in the face of government confusion and weakness through lack of leadership. Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat.” The liberal and neoliberal elites of today, who have all but abandoned FDR’s legacy at the behest of corporate interests, would do well—if they are serious about saving democracy, as they claim—to pay heed to the words of the Democratic Party’s most successful leader. FDR’s response to the challenges that threatened to bring about the rise of fascism (or alternately, a socialist revolution of some sort) in the 1930s was the complete antithesis to what we have seen in the years since the financial crisis of 2008–2009.

In the past thirty years, the top 1% in America have added $21 trillion to their wealth, while the bottom 50% has lost $900 billion. We know from history (and specifically the history of FDR’s era) that democracy cannot survive in such conditions. The powers that be will need to resort to increasing authoritarianism and propaganda just to maintain power and legitimacy. But even an authoritarian regime, in the long term, cannot survive such conditions. Eventually, a revolutionary moment will arrive, as the ancién regime in France learned the hard way in 1789. We also know from the 1930s that when center-right or center-left elites spend their energy and dwindling public credibility fighting tooth and nail against alternative politics or economic policies deemed too “radical,” a populist form of rightwing politics eventually swoops in and exploits public disgruntlement. This is very much the case in our era and was certainly true in Europe in the 1930s.

This toxic dynamic is primarily why American political life currently consists of a strange mix of democracy and authoritarianism. We know that American democracy is an incomplete, unfinished, and deeply flawed project, but it has been especially degraded in the last five decades. This deterioration was not the product of foreign pressures or influence, but totally self-inflicted. A politics in which a handful of multi-billionaires dictate not only central policy but also what the future should look like for everyone—through the sheer weight of their ability to legally corrupt politicians and institutions—is much closer to oligarchy than to democracy.

One lesson we can take from FDR’s case is that, in a severe crisis, many people will not necessarily turn to a democratic leader or to an authoritarian leader. That is a false choice. They will, more likely, turn to leaders who confront the crisis and propose both an explanation and a solution. Some leaders will propose a truthful explanation for the crisis and their solutions will focus on the common good. Other, more dangerous leaders will address real problems and will propose false explanations and solutions that scapegoat, deflect, and distract from the real causes of people’s suffering. This is what fascists did then, and it is what their political and spiritual heirs do now, in the United States and elsewhere.

Historically, the most effective barrier against these figures is a sort of compromise: a leader committed to the public good even if it is at the expense of a commitment to proceduralism, existing institutions, and elite arrangements. It is a compromise between democracy and a certain kind of authoritarianism that we need today, in an era of rising authoritarianism—the kind of compromise represented, in the 1930s, by Franklin D. Roosevelt.