On 4/20/07, Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Apr 20, 2007, at 12:38 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
> And what better demagogic stroke
> has anyone ever invented than that phrase "Crucify Mankind On A
> Cross Of Gold?"
Yup - subtle way of invoking anti-Semitism in that phrase, because we
all know who crucified Jesus.
Michael Kazin, who should know a thing or two about populism and
William Jennings Bryan, says that Bryan, whatever his shortcomings,
was not prejudiced against Jews, let alone invoking anti-Semitism.
Who crucified whom in the story? Jesus was not a Christian, but a
Jew, a carpenter by trade, a commoner. Those who crucified him were
the Roman Empire and its collaborators who were the elite of the
oppressed Jewish society of which Jesus was a rising reformer. That
is the way the empire usually gets rid of a populist, a demagogue, a
reformer who may become a revolutionary.
On 4/20/07, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
moi:
> >is it possible to describe William Jennings Bryan -- the most famous
> >US populist -- as a "demagogue"?
Shane Mage wrote:
> H. L. Mencken certainly could. And what better demagogic stroke
> has anyone ever invented than that phrase "Crucify Mankind On A
> Cross Of Gold?"
of course, Mencken suffered from a different malady, what perhaps
might be called extreme cynicism?
the phrase doesn't seem demagogic to me, as much as it's a
fuzzy-minded effort to combine religious fervor with simplistic
monetary theory. BTW, didn't Bryan resign as US Secretary of State to
protest Wilson's efforts to get the US involved in WW1 (concerning the
sinking of the Lusitania)? That doesn't seem like demagoguery to me.
Bryan had his own moral and political principles, of the center left
(more to the center than to the left) of his day, though his are not
Marxist anti-imperialist principles.
Kazin puts it this way: critics of Bryan "scorned him as the
anti-intellectual chieftain of a rabble of know-nothing followers. But
Bryan's people did not lack ideas; they simply preferred they be
wrapped in passionate conviction. To expect the citizens of a mass
democracy to choose a leader as if they were electing the president of
a learned society is to make a serious and rather undemocratic
mistake."
--
Yoshie
