The second Gilded Age analogy fails because the movements differ structurally

Evidence

A more telling analogy is the suggestion that the US is experiencing a “second Gilded Age.” Here there are some similarities to be traced. In the first Gilded Age, party polarization prevailed over an extremely unequal economy amid the Second Industrial Revolution. On reelection, Trump moved to levy “McKinley-like tariffs,” hoping to protect the steel sector against global overcapacity, while a devaluation of the dollar is now indirectly being pursued. In the late nineteenth century, a populist insurgency from outside the party steered it in a different direction, seeking to loosen the money supply. Then, as now, the Democrats were seen as a predominantly inflationary coalition, in favor of decoupling from a repressive gold standard, while the Republicans stood out as a deflationary bloc bent on maintaining the nation’s industrial developmental trajectory. … There the analogies also quickly end. Rather than a digital outfit with loosely coordinated actors, populism grew out of a cooperative farming movement that had already achieved a foothold across the South and Midwest; only after much delay were they co-opted by establishment Democrats. This frontier peasantry sought to launch itself into corporate modernity. The era was one of rising rather than stagnating American power; US steel production had already overtaken Britain’s in the 1890s; xvimass immigration was at an all-time high. The machine, as Baudrillard might have said, was just revving up. … The contemporary situation thus presents a recalcitrant hybrid, difficult to relate to historical exempla. On the one hand, popular involvement in American politics has seen a relative resurgence compared to the disengagement of the 1990s and early 2000s. On the other, institutionalized involvement is at an all-time low, while American parties have only further cartelized and fused with their media or donor classes. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 19

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s periodization framework: the 1890s populist movement maps interestingly against her own mass-institution argument in putting activism beyond parties.