Talk:Share Our Wealth

Huey Long as "left-wing" populist

I removed the claim that Long was a left-wing populist an editor restored with an editorial from The Atlantic as a source.[1] That doesn't count as a reliable source. Ironically, the writer sees Donald Trump as a successor to Long. Most reliable sources say either Long combined left and right wing elements (Berlet, Chip. Lyones, Matthew Nemiroff. Right-wing populism in America: too close for comfort, p. 125) or was categorically right wing (Lipset, Seymour Martin. Raab, Earl. The politics of unreason: right wing extremism in America, 1790–1970, pp. 194-199.) There have been since discussion as Talk:Fascism. TFD (talk) 15:32, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

This is historical revisionism at its finest. Huey Long is quite literally the single most prominent left-wing populist in American history and there are an abundance of sources in the last 80 years demonstrating this. His program was a direct challenge at FDR from the left, not the right, and that’s generally acknowledged by pretty much everyone. See the discussion at Talk:Huey_Long#"Left", where it was pretty uniformly decided he was left-wing. This is not denied on the left or the right from what I can tell. Toa Nidhiki05 15:46, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Sources:

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And this was just with a five-minute Google search. Toa Nidhiki05 16:01, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Berlet & Lyons say in their book that Long combined left and right-wing elements, not that Long was left-wing. The nest source, Moley, does not say Long was left-wing. On of the best sources. Seynmour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab in The politics of unreason: right wing extremism in America, 1790–1970,pp. 194-199, clearly identify him as right-wing. Even if your other sources were acceptable, you would still have to admit that there was no consensus that Long was a man of the left. Right-wing demagogues don't get magically transformed into leftists once they have been disgraced. TFD (talk) 16:19, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

The articles in The Week[3], The Telegraph[6], Haaretz[9] and Politico[10] do not say Long was left-wing, could you please remove them. TFD (talk) 17:16, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Such views are a minority. Long is widely viewed as the foremost left-wing populist and one who shifted and pressured FDR from the left-wing. Identitying him as right-wing is patently absurd and ahistorical.

The Week mentions his ideology as a radical form of the left-wing Populist Party’s ideology. The Telegraph specifically includes him as among the left-wing populists by including his image several times. Hareetz notes his platform shifted FDR to the left. Politico does not say “left-wing populism”, but that is because it assumes all populism to be left-wing, hence how it describes Trump as the “right-wing version of populism”. I see no reason to remove any of them. Toa Nidhiki05 18:02, 21 August 2019 (UTC)