To begin the conversation we must define what we mean by the term Populist.  Arguably, the Populist movement was born in the United States in the early 19th century with the creation of the Anti-Masonic Party  then fueled by the debate in the 1830s over the renewal of the charter for the Second Bank of the United States. After the Civil War, the Populist movement continued to battle upper-class control, representing working-class and farming communities attempting to combat the rise of the Robber Barons.  This movement culminated in the election of 1896 when Populist William Jennings Bryant gained the Presidential nomination for the Democratic Party, principally arguing that a silver standard should be included with gold and used for legal tender.  Populism in modern times continues to distrust the influence of elite fraternities on politics and economics as well as the centralization of financial power through central banking and currency manipulation, allowing the upper classes inordinate political and economic power.

With Bryant’s loss, Populism receded into ignominy, to be replaced by the Progressive movement in the 20th century, ironically often funded by the very Robber Barons it purported to combat. While Populism blamed wealth inequality on upper-class collusion, Progressives incorporated the concept of historical dialectics as described by Karl Marx to explain the centralization of financial power.  Blame was shifted from unethical behavior onto a theorized historical process that claimed inevitability.  This website seeks to promote the notion that corruption of political systems is responsible for the vast wealth inequality we see today, rather than some theorized unstoppable historical movement.