Steve Bannon sees the thirties as a golden age of nationalism, and wants to bring it back. Bernie Sanders is aware of the analogy, too, but views it as a cautionary tale. In his speech on socialism, he cast himself as a modern-day FDR, fighting oligarchies and the right-wing strong men they use as tools both domestically and abroad. Elect him in 2020, and happy days are here again, it seems.
Is he right? Actually, nothing about his story rings true:
- Only a Marxist would view Hitler and Mussolini as pawns of business interests.
- As Tim Cook would be happy to tell you, Trump isn’t a tool of large corporate interests, either.
- Nor are the grab bag of contemporary strongmen to whom Bernie referred in his speech. Xi works for an oligarchy, all right, but they are Communists, not businessmen. Putin tamed the oligarchs in his country; they work for his interests, not the other way around. MBS is a Peter the Great wannabe trying, in his erratic and despotic way, to free his country from the shackles of Islamic tradition. Duterte is a thug obsessed with crime and drugs; business is not his thing. Orban’s right-wing populism is based on nationalism, not the promotion of Hungarian business interests. And so on.
- Can you imagine a President Sanders doing his best within the system to prop up the ultra-imperialist Churchill against the Nazis in 1940? Me, neither.
- While it is true that the GOP portrayed FDR as a socialist, he made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t one, and it is fair to say that most of Bernie’s programs (with the possible exception of Medicare-for-All) were not part of his vision for the country. Sanders is the new Henry Wallace, not FDR.
The bottom line is that Bernie’s speech was a bogus Marxist narrative used for opportunistic purposes, not an accurate description of either America or the rest of the world. It is true that inequality has increased both at home and abroad as a result of globalization and technological change. It is also true that the current wave of right-wing populism in America and Europe is to some extent a reaction to economic failure. It is not true, however, that Trump and the other right-wing populist leaders are simply pawns of business interests, just because Marxist theory says they must be.