In the 1880s, as today, the result of stagnation was not fascism but populism.
Fascism was all about violence: marching men in uniforms, battered opponents, rearmament, war. The violence of populism is mostly verbal. Populist leaders are demagogues in suits, not jackboots.
They insult their opponents, they don’t break their legs. They tend to be against overseas wars. This is not to say that Donald Trump is identical to William Jennings Bryan, the bombastic populist orator of the late 19th century, only that he is much closer to Bryan than to Hitler.
As in Bryan’s day, the populist backlash is directed against: a) financial elites and their political cronies, b) free trade, c) immigration and d) racial integration (though this last is not explicit today).
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