The Creativity Con Ate the Middle Class
Thomas Frank on the middle class’s most cherished idea, creativity, and how it became the cover story for the plutocracy that replaced it.
4 Article(s) by: Thomas Frank
Thomas Frank is a political analyst, historian, and journalist. He cofounded and edited The Baffler magazine. He is the author, most recently, of The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism.
On Democrats and Class, the Writing Was on the Wall
Two writers, Thomas Frank and Joan Williams, provided sharp insight into the Democrats’ hemorrhaging of working-class voters eight years ago. The Democratic Party ignored their perspectives. We asked them to explain how we ended up here — again.
Talking Rural America With Thomas Frank
Urban elites’ contempt for rural America is centuries old — but so is rural populist resistance.
Populism Belongs to the Left
In an interview, writer Thomas Frank discusses how populism brought together workers, farmers, and all those struggling against the wealthy for a more egalitarian society — and why that’s made it a dirty word for the elite, both in the 1890s and today.