ABSTRACT
Wallace's pairing of anti-governmentalism with white backlash was simultaneously a manifestation of deep currents of American populism, reflective of the geo-political reality of the United States at the time, and an early step in what would become a defining feature of conservative (and Republican Party) thinking. It is worth digressing briefly into the profound implications that changing public attitudes towards government basic ideas about what the nation's governing institutions could and should do have had for American populism and American political culture. Several points from this (very brief) survey of the history of American populism through the twentieth century bear repeating. There is a tendency to dismiss conspiracy theorists as clinically disturbed. Contemporary conditions of collapsing political legitimacy echo earlier eras in which populists have risen to prominence. The billionaire funding of much conservative media is, of course, not populist in any economic sense.
