Huey Pierce Long was a controversial figure on the national stage during the Great Depression. The former governor of Louisiana turned senator made few alliances in Washington. In fact, he had even moved to oppose the New Deal plan of the very popular president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and in 1935, he announced his candidacy for U.S. president, a campaign Democrats feared could divide support for Roosevelt, for while he was not popular among his congressional colleagues, he had grown more and more popular among the public, many of whom listened to him on the radio, where he expounded like a preacher on his Share Our Wealth program as an alternative to the New Deal, promising to make “Every Man a King.” And back in his home state, where he had done much to help the common man, he was truly revered by his constituency. “I’m a small fish here in Washington,” he was fond of saying, “But I’m the Kingfish to the folks down in Louisiana.” And it was not just the voting public he held sway over in Louisiana. He still dominated the political scene there. He had handpicked his gubernatorial successor, Oscar K. Allen, and the system of patronage he had established back when he had been governor remained in place, such that, even away in Washington, he could get state legislation passed or struck down seemingly as he pleased. In fact, he was in Baton Rouge on September 8th, 1935, just a month after declaring his candidacy for president, on just such state business. On that day, there was a special session of the state legislature. The business of the day was the ouster of an avowed political enemy of Long’s, Judge Benjamin Pavy. Long had arrived, accompanied by his armed guards, to personally see to it that certain bills would be passed that would allow the legislature to gerrymander Pavy’s district and ensure his political downfall. Huey Long stood tall and proud, secure on his home turf, as he walked between the marble pillars of the Louisiana capitol. Two times that evening, a man in a white suit, Carl Weiss, Judge Pavy’s son-in-law, tried to approach Long and engage him in some sort of conversation, but Long brushed him off. At 9:20pm, Weiss came at Long one more time, eliciting some angry retort from Long that appeared to trigger Weiss into assaulting him. The result was a shootout, as Long’s security, trying to prevent Long’s assassination by Weiss, gunned the judge’s son-in-law down. However, they were too late, for it appeared Weiss had already gotten a shot off. They rushed Huey Long to the nearest hospital, and surgeons immediately went to work trying to save his life. However, they could not stop the internal bleeding from his wound. For two days, Long clung to life, but in the end, he died. His final words were reported as “God, don’t let me die. I have so much to do.” When his passing was announced to the public, many mourned the death of a great reformer, feeling a loss of hope comparable to what the country would feel 30 years later after the murder of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. Meanwhile, many others sighed with relief to be rid of a dangerous demagogue, an authoritarian whom many believed to be a homegrown fascist akin to Hitler.

In the previous post, when I revisited my first topic about Trump’s demagoguery, I suggested the current perils U.S. democracy faces are similar to those in the 1930s, and I specifically cited the demagoguery of Father Coughlin. But Huey Long is often mentioned in the very same breath as Father Coughlin. It would have been quite easy to lump him in among the threats to democracy of that period, but Long deserves further analysis, which in turn requires some further clear-eyed analysis of demagoguery. Some scholars reject the term altogether, suggesting it is too difficult to define and is a label too easily flung at those whom we oppose as a means of discrediting them. The word originally only meant “a leader of the people” in ancient Greece, but even so, it has always carried with it a negative connotation, indicative of manipulation or deception. Today, however, we might recognize the validity and even the importance of certain radical political agitation that may not have been condoned in the past. So where is the line between radical leader and dangerous demagogue? Perhaps the ultimate example of a dangerous demagogue is Adolph Hitler. The way Hitler cultivated his public image as a leader of the masses, his spellbinding oratory, his appeal to prejudices and his reliance on scapegoats are all perfect examples of the stereotypical demagogue. In fact, it has been argued that demagoguery is the definite first stage of a fascist movement. It is certainly important, even vital, to remember the rise of Hitler and be vigilant against the rise of another like him. However, comparisons to Hitler are not always the historical parallel we should use. First of all, you run the risk of offending Holocaust survivors with such analogies. Second, you may be too easily dismissed as alarmist or hyperbolic. Perhaps the better example to use when evaluating whether Huey Long was a demagogue would be the stereotype of the Southern demagogue. We can take as our exemplar “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, another Southern governor and senator. A leader of the Red Shirts whom I described in my episodes on the Wilmington Insurrection, Tillman engaged in wholesale race massacres during Reconstruction in his efforts to ensure continued white supremacy. Like others who fall into the Southern demagogue category, Tillman rose to power by whipping up the emotions and prejudices of voters. He exploited the hot-button issues, manipulating the discontent of a white, agrarian culture and blaming all of their woes on the black citizens that he painted as their enemies. The demagogue cultivates his image as a champion of the downtrodden, when often he has never been one himself, as was the case with Tillman, who came from a wealthy slave-owning family. The demagogue is charismatic in their speechmaking, but it is the emptiness of their rhetoric that is more important, since great oratory is not a fault. The demagogue is no resolver of social problems. Rather, he distracts from problems with his scapegoating, and more often than not, race-baiting, as the demagogue’s currency is prejudice and resentment. And finally, revealing that the demagogue cares more for his own elevation than serving those who raise him up, he is no keeper of promises, and he usually reveals himself to be corrupt, engaging in fraud, and betraying the principles of democracy to further his own empowerment. These attributes can be seen very clearly in Hitler, and quite clearly in “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman and other Southern Demagogues. But the question of this episode is did the Kingfish meet these criteria?

Southern Demagogue “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman

Huey Long grew up in a district of Louisiana that thrived on populist politics, and he appears to have learned much about the whipping up of crowds from politicians in the so-called People’s Party, which appealed to farmers and rural laborers. Long always presented himself as being one of the working class, from a poor background, but in truth, he was from an affluent family, most of whom were Democrats, the party of Jim Crow segregation and black disenfranchisement until the party realignment that was underway during Long’s lifetime. Here we seem to be checking a box in favor of demagogue, as Long cultivated his image as one of the common man, when in fact members of his own family, upset by his later politics, publicly contradicted his tales of growing up poor. However, self-presentation is an artform practiced by all politicians, especially today with their teams of public relations experts and publicists and media messaging strategists. Adopting a rustic persona and reinventing oneself to appeal to the public is almost a requirement of the job. Yes, it’s disingenuous, but it’s also, maybe, a commonplace evil in a world where all politicians show up to disaster areas with their shirtsleeves rolled up as if they really intend to physically do anything beyond giving some prepared remarks. This alone we might dismiss as a matter of optics, a politician doing what politicians do. So let us search for further signs of demagoguery. He started his career as a lawyer, and even back then we can see his tendency to fight for the little guy, winning compensation for his clients from the enemy he would focus on throughout his political career: big corporations. His political career commenced with a position as Public Utilities Commissioner, in which role he again championed the less advantaged, supporting independent oil companies and taking on the behemoth Standard Oil. His critics will point out that he had a conflict of interest here, as he actually owned stock in the independent oil companies that he was helping. This assertion certainly paints Long as a corrupt and deceitful leader whose supposed principles only served his own ends. However, recent legal scholarship casts doubt on the long-held assumptions that Huey Long improperly profited from independent oil company profits. As it turns out, the stock shares in question, in the independent Win or Lose oil company, came into his possession years after he first began fighting for companies like them, even after he had left the governor’s office. And regardless, in his work for the Utilities commission, he not only fought for smaller companies, but also for the consumer, pushing for affordable rates. It may be difficult to argue that Huey Long was not corrupt, but to characterize all the genuinely beneficial reforms he pushed for as cynically self-serving is unfair.

During his governorship, Huey Long did undeniable good for the state of Louisiana. It is somewhat absurd to read his critics argue that he only exploited the poor and disadvantaged to achieve power, but then concede that he did actually keep his promises and enact reforms that benefitted them, but also claim that he only did so to hang on to his power. It’s a bit like arguing that a certain saint does not deserve to be sainted because they only did all that charity work and performed all those miracles in an effort to become a saint. It’s rather hard to discern the purity of one’s motives, since we judge by their actions. In office, Huey Long enacted so many reforms they became known as the Long Revolution, and the reforms would be considered progressive even by today’s standards. He pulled the state out of its Depression nosedive with broad infrastructure projects that vastly improved employment. Yes, some projects may have been vanity projects, like a new governor’s mansion and a new capitol, but they put laborers to work all the same, and most projects were not, including the construction of a new seawall and spillway to shield New Orleans from flooding, improvements to that city’s port and warehouses, a new airport, numerous bridges and railroads, and almost 4,000 miles of newly paved roads, a record at the time for a state in the Deep South. Beyond these projects, he built new health care facilities and fought for more sanitary and compassionate mental health facilities. In education, he allocated funding to improve school facilities and provide free textbooks, and as a result increased enrollment in public schools. He also established night schools and managed to significantly reduce adult illiteracy in Louisiana. Those who call him a demagogue argue that he only helped all these people in order to serve himself, but he actually did much to empower local government over big government, which would seemingly reduce his own power. If demagogues don’t keep their promises and are in the business of distracting from real world social issues by blaming scapegoats, Huey Long doesn’t fit the bill. He drew attention to real social ills and enacted concrete programs to alleviate them. The enemies he vilified were the extremely wealthy and large corporations, validly pointing out a concern that we must recognize has only gotten more concerning: that many of society’s ills derive from the distribution of wealth. It causes one to ponder, can it really be called scapegoating if you are accurately casting blame?

While he won the enthusiastic support of Louisianians, especially poor and rural citizens, Long made many enemies as governor, and later, in Washington. Perhaps this accounts for the divisive nature of his legacy. The first time he ran, in 1924, he lost, but in 1928, through his innovative campaigning and captivating speeches, he succeeded with the slogan “Every Man a King but No One Wears a Crown.” Early in his tenure as governor, having made enemies of industrialists with his proposal of an oil tax, he was nearly removed from office under an impeachment resolution that listed accusations ranging from bribery through patronage and controlling the courts through his appointments, to carrying concealed weapons and suborning murder. The last was hearsay, a rumor that Long had suggested, while drunk, that someone kill a rival’s son and leave him in a ditch. The accusations resulted in an all-out brawl in the legislature, remembered as Bloody Monday. Long insisted the whole impeachment campaign was a conspiracy by Standard Oil to prevent his reforms, and in the end, after a battle of bribes and counter-bribes on both sides, Long was victorious. Afterward, he came to dominate state politics, such that one critic rewrote his slogan as “Every Man a King but Only One Wore the Crown.” His mechanism of influence was machine politics. He cultivated allies in the legislature through patronage. He would appoint legislators to positions in state agencies, providing them additional income, and then expect them to play ball when it came to passing laws for his reform programs, and as we saw on the day he was shot, he attended legislative sessions in person, ready to bowl over opponents of his agenda with his folksy and charming rhetoric, as well as his scathing personal attacks. His opponents he thereafter dealt with harshly, supporting those who ran against them in elections and even using his power to take petty revenge, like firing anyone in their family who happened to work for the state. It’s no wonder he was disliked by those who stood in his way, and absolutely his system of patronage was ethically dubious, but those who admire his reform programs, and especially those who benefitted from them, like the poor, tended to view him as playing the game the way it had to be played in order to keep his promises and make his changes. One argument is that he may have started out an idealist and only resorted to the corrupt means that his enemies employed because his ends justified them. Moving beyond his time as governor, though, after his election to the Senate, when he remained in firm control of Louisiana through his machine and the puppet governor he’d chosen to replace him, it may very well be that he succumbed to his ambitions, not wanting to give up his influence, and seeking greater power in Washington, whether because he lusted after it or because he really believed that only he would use it for the good of the country.

At first, Huey Long allied himself with Franklin D. Roosevelt and campaigned for him, but eventually he turned on the president, opposing his New Deal programs as not doing enough to resolve the hardships of the Depression. It has been claimed by his critics that Long only moved against Roosevelt because the president had blocked his further political ambitions, but again, this is a matter of presuming Long’s motivation. It is certainly true that he had his eye on the presidency. He even wrote an imaginative account of what his presidency would be like. He anticipated dividing Roosevelt’s support, resulting in a Republican presidency, after which Long believed he would be swept into office. His critics further claim that his alternative program, the Share Our Wealth Society, was little more than a ploy to get him into office by bribing the poor for their support. And it is true that his alternative program was rather light on details and perhaps overpromised what could be accomplished at the time, but looking at it in a modern light, Huey Long was advocating for many reforms that were ahead of his time. He spoke about the richest 2% owning far too much of the wealth, and he proposed capping wealth and redistributing it to the poverty-stricken. He wanted to enact a temporary moratorium on debt during the economic crisis, a policy that was recently enacted under the Trump administration and furthered under Biden to provide relief during the pandemic. But more than that, Long pushed for universal healthcare, free college education, and a universal basic income. All of these proposals are still advocated for by progressive reformers today. So perhaps Long’s program was not the transparent ploy that some historians have claimed. Certainly Roosevelt recognized the appeal of it, as he came to view Long as “one of the two most dangerous men in America,” the other being General Douglas MacArthur. To address this threat, Roosevelt sicced his IRS on Long, putting his finances under the microscope in an effort to bring him down, and played Long’s own patronage game against him, declaring, “Anybody working for Huey Long is not working for us.” Roosevelt recognized not only Long’s threat to his presidency and to his New Deal programs. Almost certainly, Roosevelt’s assessment of Long as a danger reflected the belief common among Long’s critics that he was a fascist. Indeed, many were the comparisons of Long to Hitler. One New Dealer called him “the Hitler of one of our sovereign states,” and one journalist suggested Long could possibly “Hitlerize America.” American Communists called him “Louisiana’s Hitler,” and described him as “the personification of the fascist menace in the United States.” Domestic sympathizers of fascism said he was “the nearest approach to a national fascist leader.” Even Huey’s own brother said he was “trying to be a Hitler,” and some historians and biographers have immortalized this view of him. But was it accurate?

Long delivering a speech with his signature awkward gesticulation, which was sometimes compared to Hitler’s oratorical style.

There are indeed undeniable parallels between the Kingfish and fascist dictators like the Führer and Il Duce. They all rose to power in the wake of the Great Depression, taking advantage of the public’s dissatisfaction with an ineffective government. They were all mesmerizing orators and master propagandists. Huey Long pretty much invented the modern campaign media blitz. He was the first to outfit a truck with speakers and have it driven through the streets to encourage people to attend his rallies, and he was the first politician to use radio for national addresses, a practice that both FDR and Hitler later took up. However, in several key regards, Longism does not match up with fascism. A key element of fascism was race hate and racial scapegoating, obviously with the anti-Semitism of Nazism but also the Italian fascist racism against Slavic ethnic groups. However, Huey Long, while known to make remarks that betrayed a typically Southern view on race, was said by one who knew him to have “far less racial prejudice in him than any other Southerner in the Senate.” In his reform programs, he helped the poor black community the same as the poor white, securing jobs for black workers, improving conditions for black students, and reducing illiteracy among black Louisianians from 38% to 23%. He even insisted that black citizens too must receive an equal share in his plan to redistribute wealth. “Black and white, they all gotta have a chance,” Long said. “They gotta have a home, a job, and a decent education for their children.” As for anti-Semitism, despite working with some rabid anti-Semites, like Gerald L. K. Smith, Long himself was not anti-Semitic, having close Jewish friends and allies, one of whom, Abe Shushan, he honored by naming the new airport in New Orleans after him. Beyond these differentiations, there is the fact that Long’s politics were simply too far left to be considered fascist. You’ll hear some ill-informed people claim that fascism and Nazism were leftist movements, for the simple reason that Nazism was short for National Socialism, but Hitler was never a leftist or socialist. He used the term to gather broad support, but he explicitly said that he was redefining the word. In 1923, he said, “I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.” Very quickly his party revealed itself as a far-right movement, and that is how fascism is always and has always been characterized, despite what some who fear the far left might claim today. Nazism and Italian fascism both rose in clear opposition to Communism. Now Huey Long presented himself and his Share the Wealth proposals as an alternative to Communism, but his proposals were certainly far too socialist to be considered fascist today, especially since, when he had power, he did not forget about the people to whom he had made promises, as Hitler did, but rather delivered reforms to improve their condition. And Long himself certainly resented the comparisons, responding, “Don’t liken me to that sonofabitch.”

While Huey Long was no fascist, the further argument is that he at least had authoritarian tendencies. And of course, while fascism is undoubtedly a phenomenon of the far right, leaders on the far left of the political spectrum may indeed be autocrats heading a totalitarian state. One need look no further than Stalinism for an example of this. Examining Huey Long for evidence of authoritarianism, we find definite cause for concern. Even T. Harry Williams, one of Long’s most admiring biographers, concedes that Long, while seeking the power to overcome his opposition so that he could do good, may have ended up grasping too much after power and doing inadvertent harm. In wielding his unprecedented influence over the state legislature, he betrayed some rather anti-democratic sentiments, such as when one lawmaker reminded him that Louisiana had a constitution they were bound to follow, and Long replied, “I’m the constitution around here now.” As a senator and presidential hopeful, when he was pushing for wealth redistribution and was asked how he might respond as president if the Supreme Court blocked his program, he said he would get Congress to pass a law that extended the Supreme Court bench to include all congressmen and would have the case considered again. While I acknowledge and even distrust and denounce the counter-majoritarian nature of the Supreme Court, especially today as an openly partisan and extreme right bench rolls back civil rights, what Long was proposing, effectively merging the judicial and legislative branches of government, was not just unrealistic but extremely dangerous. While these remarks and Long’s unprecedented influence over every aspect of the government in Louisiana may be indicative of some anti-democratic tendencies, when we hold up Louisiana under his auspices to scholarly criteria for a totalitarian regime, we find that it doesn’t quite fit. A totalitarian system is characterized not only by a leader who holds extraordinary power as Long held. It is further characterized by the existence of only a single party and an official ideology, which just wasn’t the case with Longism. It is further characterized by an iron-fisted control over media and education and the economy, none of which Long ever held. Indeed, Long struggled with opposition newspapers and rival parties, and he once said to a newsman who suggested he was a dictator, “You and I both know that if the people want to throw me out they’re going to do it.” Besides the broad power Long wielded in Louisiana because of his political machine, the one other criteria he could be argued to meet was his commanding of a “secret police” capable of terrorism. Long’s use of the state police as his personal security was widely criticized, with comparisons unsurprisingly made to Hitler’s Brownshirt private army. And in 1928, he pushed the infamous Act 99 through the legislature, establishing the Bureau of Criminal Identification, a law enforcement agency independent of the police, which Long controlled by appointing its head officers, and which was capable of making arrests without a warrant. Long’s critics declared it his own Gestapo… but it didn’t engage in official campaigns of terror as predicted. In fact, today, it is just the wing of the state police in charge of fingerprinting.

Huey Long surrounded by his armed guards.

When Long first established this bureau, the BCI, it was specifically to investigate a number of armed militia groups that had formed in opposition to him and which had engaged in criminal violence and armed insurrection. These groups were, like so many others then and today, openly racist, overtly likening themselves to white supremacist movements like those that enacted reigns of terror all over the South during Reconstruction, much like those I described in my series The Coup on Cape Fear. These groups were responsible for death threats, not only to Huey Long but also to the Long-supportive administration, headed by Long’s successor as governor, Oscar K. Allen. They attempted arson on more than one occasion, and once even took a pot shot at Long’s home in New Orleans. At one point, when during a recount for a voter referendum on some constitutional amendments, Governor Allen declared martial law, necessitating that the recount occur under armed guard, many cried fraud, but the clear reason that Allen had to call in the National Guard that day was that these militia agitators had staged an armed rebellion in the district where the recount was occurring. Hundreds of armed members of the opposition militia group calling itself the Square Deal Association had stormed the East Baton Rouge Parish courthouse. And rather than some draconian crackdown, Allen’s declaration of martial law resulted in the Square Dealers dispersing without violence. These Square Dealers were the central focus of the BCI, who had infiltrated them with informants. It was because of these spies that the BCI was able to arrest many in this group the very next day, when the BCI surprised fifty armed Square Dealers at the Baton Rouge Airport. A shootout ensued, but no one was killed. Several were arrested, and the group’s leader fled across state lines. The informants that the BCI had among these opposition groups also provided information on meeting locations, at some of which Long stated they had recorded evidence of murder plots. Ever the purveyor of political spectacle, Huey Long dramatically read the minutes of these meetings on the Senate floor. Indeed, if they can be trusted, it does seem that the men at the meetings were talking about killing Long, specifically shooting him and sinking his corpse into the Gulf of Mexico weighted with chains and speculating that Roosevelt would pardon them for doing it. Whether this was idle talk or earnest plotting remains unclear, but all this seems enough to warrant Long’s security details and the establishment of the special investigative force, even if it does not excuse the unconstitutional granting of unlawful search and seizure powers. When later that year Long was killed in the Louisiana capitol, his armed guards failing to protect him, unsurprisingly, the event spawned a number of conspiracy theories, which I intend to discuss in a patron exclusive Blind Spot.

The figure of the Kingfish, Huey Long, is hotly contested by biographers and historians who variously call him a hero or a despot, a champion of the people or a demagogue. I have endeavored to judge him fairly in this episode, and to indicate where I thought he may have been unjustly criticized or unfairly characterized, but I must be clear that I don’t approve of his machine politics or his lack of regard for the separation of powers and for constitutional rights. I think that his plan for the redistribution of wealth, while admirable in many regards, was simplistic and unrealistic as outlined and likely a calculated attempt to steal the New Deal thunder and help him realize his designs on the presidency. I think Long actually showed his lack of support for the working classes in numerous ways, such as his lack of support for labor unions, his failure to push for a minimum wage law in Louisiana, and his opposition to the ratification of the Federal Child Labor Amendment. Nevertheless, one cannot help but wonder what concrete beneficial reforms he might have managed to achieve as president. On the other hand, while Long may not fit many of the criteria of a demagogue or a fascist, when we apply the same criteria to Donald Trump, an unsettling conclusion must be drawn. Huey Long kept his promises to the people who supported him, whereas Trump, who made concrete promises such as investing $550 billion in infrastructure, bringing back U.S. manufacturing jobs, guaranteeing 6 weeks paid maternity leave, and generally improving the economy, healthcare, and education, did not keep the promises he campaigned on. He was carried into office largely by poor, rural whites, convincing them that he was fighting for them, but inequality only deepened when Trump was in power. Huey Long did not distract from real issues by race baiting, is common of demagogues and fascists, but Donald Trump ran on hate for immigrants, specifically Latin American migrants and Muslims, and since that time, he has made his political opponents and the media into his constant scapegoats, blaming the left and fake news whenever his corruption is revealed. Huey Long was regularly accused of corruption and graft, and after his death, those who inherited his political machine were definitively caught using it in corrupt ways to enrich themselves, but try as his critics might to posthumously link their crimes to him, Long has remained unimplicated in their crimes. Conversely, Trump ran on draining the swamp or ridding Washington of corruption while acting as corruptly as any President before him, or worse, conning donors to his campaign and his defense fund out of hundreds of millions and flagrantly enriching himself through the powers of his office. He is a compelling, if buffoonish and overdramatic speaker, as was Long and as was Hitler, and he certainly benefits from propaganda in conservative news media and through online disinformation campaigns. While Long was a progressive populist and used his control of law enforcement to combat lawless militia groups, Trump has proven himself a far-right extremist, far closer on the political spectrum to textbook fascism, and his apparent personal command of white supremacist anti-government paramilitary goon squads like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys serves as a far more apt comparison to Hitler’s Brownshirts and Mussolini’s Blackshirts, and they have proven themselves more prepared to engage in terror campaigns. As I acknowledged at the beginning of this episode, comparisons to Hitler and fascism can often be viewed as offensive or alarmist or hyperbolic, and I do not make the comparison lightly. I’ve laid out the criteria and considered it thoughtfully, as you’ve seen. At a certain point, after comparing how something looks and how it swims and how it quacks, you’ve just got to admit when it passes the duck test.

The Enigmatic Kingfish, Huey Long

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