Welcome to the Online Archive of the Old PublicEye.Org Website

Please remember that this is an archive of an older website for researchers, and it is not being updated.
Therefore, much of the material here is not current.
Much like any library archive, it is "out-of-date." Brick and mortar libraries do not toss out older resource materials, they archive them.
That is what we have done here.

What is Producerism?

One of the staples of repressive and right-wing populist ideology has been producerism, a doctrine that champions the so-called producers in society against both “unproductive” elites and subordinate groups defined as lazy or immoral.

Kazin points out that as it developed in the nineteenth century,

...the romance of producerism had a cultural blind spot; it left unchallenged strong prejudices toward not just African-Americans but also toward recent immigrants who had not learned or would not employ the language and rituals of this variant of the civic religion. . . . Even those native-born activists who reached out to immigrant laborers assumed that men of Anglo-American origins had invented political democracy, prideful work habits, and well-governed communities of the middling classes.

In the 1920s industrial philosophy of Henry Ford, and Father Coughlin’s fascist doctrine in the 1930s, producerism fused with antisemitic attacks against “parasitic” Jews. Producerism, with its baggage of prejudice, remains today the most common populist narrative on the right, and it facilitates the use of demonization and scapegoating as political tools.

--From Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons. 2000. Right–Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press.

What is Populist Producerism? {you are here}
Basic Chart on Producerist Populism {as pdf handout} {view as jpg}
Defending the Idea of Right-Wing Populism & Producerism
(A response to Postel and others)
Where Does Right-Wing Populism Fit in the Political Scene?{slide show}
How Does Right-Wing Populist Producerism Facilitate Scapegoating? {slide show}
What are the Main Sectors of the Political Right in the US?

Welcome to the Online Archive of the Old PublicEye.Org Website

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What is Producerism?

Patriot and Armed Militia Movements

Christian Dominionism

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