The KKK peaks significantly in the mid 1920s and never returns to this level of popularity, literally millions of members in that decade and never more than a few thousand since. Now we have similar levels of inequality and a wing of the Republicans making holocaust jokes in private chats. It’s Nick Fuentes now not the KKK.
Communism had a surge of popularity during WWII when we were allied with Stalin against the Nazis. You could also look at membership in the Socialist party which peaked in the early century as well; the 1910s but there was a crack-down and a red-scare which tanked numbers in the ’20s. Socialist party membership peaked at higher numbers than CPUSA during the ’40s.
We actually would need public opinion polling that captured some kind of spectrum of political positions to actually answer this question. Unfortunately the ANES only has been running since the ’70s (in modern form). We’re living through the period that would represent the one instance of rising inequality leading to political polarization but such a large cultural phenomenon has a lot of internal linkages and lags that would make it difficult to build the association from one example. That said, we definitely have seen increased political polarization in ANES data, for example, over the past forty years. Feeling thermometer data for the opposite party has declined during opposite party presidencies pretty consistently from highs in the ’80s.
The Klan grew from single digit thousands in 1916 to a peak of millions in 1925 then for the next few years its membership had a half-life of six months. If you are going to argue that Klan activity has something to do with inequality, I would expect to see some kind of decade-long extraordinary boom around 1915 and the Great Depression starting four years earlier than it did.
What level of precision must I use to object that Klan activity collapsed while inequality remained high, or that your proposed Socialist party membership metric peaked during a period of historically low inequality?
The KKK peaks significantly in the mid 1920s and never returns to this level of popularity, literally millions of members in that decade and never more than a few thousand since. Now we have similar levels of inequality and a wing of the Republicans making holocaust jokes in private chats. It’s Nick Fuentes now not the KKK.
Communism had a surge of popularity during WWII when we were allied with Stalin against the Nazis. You could also look at membership in the Socialist party which peaked in the early century as well; the 1910s but there was a crack-down and a red-scare which tanked numbers in the ’20s. Socialist party membership peaked at higher numbers than CPUSA during the ’40s.
We actually would need public opinion polling that captured some kind of spectrum of political positions to actually answer this question. Unfortunately the ANES only has been running since the ’70s (in modern form). We’re living through the period that would represent the one instance of rising inequality leading to political polarization but such a large cultural phenomenon has a lot of internal linkages and lags that would make it difficult to build the association from one example. That said, we definitely have seen increased political polarization in ANES data, for example, over the past forty years. Feeling thermometer data for the opposite party has declined during opposite party presidencies pretty consistently from highs in the ’80s.
The Klan grew from single digit thousands in 1916 to a peak of millions in 1925 then for the next few years its membership had a half-life of six months. If you are going to argue that Klan activity has something to do with inequality, I would expect to see some kind of decade-long extraordinary boom around 1915 and the Great Depression starting four years earlier than it did.
This is an excessive expectation for precision in a socio-cultural phenomena.
What level of precision must I use to object that Klan activity collapsed while inequality remained high, or that your proposed Socialist party membership metric peaked during a period of historically low inequality?