American New Left Populism

Abstract

2016 saw the election of Donald Trump and at the same time, Senator Sanders started his political revolution. By examining populist movements and parties throughout US history, we see that populism has been a constant in American politics. Moreover, we distill two traditions: civic nationalist populism and racial nationalist populism, which are different in why they oppose immigration. Most lists of examples of populism in America do not include New Left movements even though they seem to fit the bill perfectly. In order to prove this, we will apply the characteristics distilled in chapter 1 to the Students for a Democratic Society, a New Left movement established in the US in the late 1950s/ early 1960s. We will see that this New Left movement fits into the American populist tradition, further strengthening the idea that populism has been a constant in American populism.