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GAZETTE: Can you say more about why you think there are similarities between Trump and these other populist plutocrats you mentioned?

The conference is motivated by the initial hypothesis that Donald Trump is sufficiently similar to these other politicians, who for lack of a better term we’re calling populist plutocrats, that we can learn something useful by comparing them. So are Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand and Joseph Estrada in the Philippines. Silvio Berlusconi in Italy is one example who seems to fit this pattern. This may well be unprecedented in modern American political history, but it’s not at all unprecedented in the world.

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I felt like this was a movie I’d seen before: the politician who campaigns as a “man of the people” but who ends up using the power of office mainly to benefit himself and a small circle of cronies and family members. Yet he’s governing in a way that, based on the early indications we have, seems to resemble “crony capitalism” at best, and possibly something more sinister. President Trump, especially during the campaign, managed to effectively deploy anti-elite rhetoric, positioning himself as a representative of the common people who would stand up to the well-connected elites. STEPHENSON: To be candid, the conference was very much motivated by my concerns about the Trump presidency. GAZETTE: You are organizing a conference called “Populist Plutocrats: Lessons from Around the World.” What led you to focus on this theme?

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Co-sponsored by Harvard Law School and the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, the event is free and open to the public. In advance of the session, the Gazette interviewed Harvard Law School Professor Matthew Stephenson, who is one of the organizers and who researches anticorruption from an international and comparative perspective, about how the gathering aims to help people learn lessons from around the world about how populist plutocracy works. To understand the phenomenon of populist plutocrats, a Harvard conference on Saturday will host a gathering of analysts who will discuss political leaders from Italy, Thailand, the Philippines, Peru, and South Africa who share at least some of the expressed characteristics. Some critics say it is happening in the United States in the early months of Donald Trump’s presidency. It happened in Italy with the election of Silvio Berlusconi, and in Thailand under Thaksin Shinawatra. If you’d like to help, you can donate to their Patreon account.A rich candidate campaigns as a representative of the common man against a shadowy elite, but once in office governs in ways that support and enrich people like him. The filmmaker is currently seeking donations to fund this series. I should also stress that Gangsters includes some truly remarkable and harrowing footage of labor strikes and battles between workers and police (especially during the pivotal year of 1934), much of which was only made available in the last few years.” We can thank these activists for the very existence of the American middle class. Here, I cover a number of militant, highly organized and often ingenious labor actions that collectively compelled great changes at the state level. Oftentimes it was more a case of one step forward, two steps back. With some notable exceptions, most of the strikes I covered in parts 1-3 merely set the stage for the next phase of labor struggle - they didn’t usually result in triumphant victories.

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“More than any other entry in the series so far, this film is directly relevant to current events. Part IV is titled “Gangsters of Capitalism.” Scott Noble writes of Part IV: Part II,”Solidarity Forever,” covers the late 19th Century to the early twenties. Plutocracy: Divide et Impera (Divide and Rule) includes sections on Mother Jones, the American Constitution the Civil War draft riots Reconstruction Industrialization the evolution of the police the robber barons early American labor unions and major mid-to-late 19th Century labor events including the uprising of 1877, the Haymarket Affair, the Homestead strike and the New Orleans General Strike. The introduction examines the West Virginian coal wars of the early 20th Century, culminating in the Battle of Blair Mountain. A multi-part series by filmmaker Scott Noble, Part I focuses on the the ways in which the American people have historically been divided on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex and skill level. Plutocracy is the first documentary to comprehensively examine early American history through the lens of class.