Editing Huey Long (section)

===Historical reputation===
Academics and historians have found difficulty categorizing Long and his ideology.<ref>[[#Haas|Haas (1994)]], p. 125.</ref><ref name="Sanson 2006, p. 261">[[#Sanson|Sanson (2006)]], p. 261.</ref> His platform has been compared to ideologies ranging from [[McCarthyism]] to [[Fascism in Europe|European Fascism]] and [[Stalinism]].<ref>[[#Dissidence|Brinkley (1981)]], p. 118.</ref> When asked about his own philosophy, Long simply replied: "Oh, hell, say that I'm ''[[sui generis]]'' and let it go at that."<ref name="FDR"/> In a 1981 ''New York Times'', [[Robert Penn Warren]] wrote of Long:<blockquote>My guess is that he was a remarkable set of contradictions, still baffling to biographers. But I had a great interest in what Huey did in his world, and a greater interest in Huey as a focus of myth. Without this gift for attracting myth he would not have been the power he was, for good and evil. And this gift was fused, indissolubly, with his dramatic sense, with his varying roles and perhaps, ultimately, with the atmosphere of violence which he generated.<ref>{{Cite news |date=January 8, 2020|title=In the Time of 'All the King's Men' - The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/31/books/in-the-time-of-all-the-king-s-men.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200108173512/https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/31/books/in-the-time-of-all-the-king-s-men.html|archive-date=January 8, 2020|url-status=live|work=The New York Times|access-date=July 13, 2023}}</ref></blockquote>

A majority of academics, biographers, and writers who have examined Long view him negatively, typically as a demagogue or dictator.<ref name="mor1"/><ref>[[#Dissidence|Brinkley (1981)]], pp. 118–19.</ref>{{efn|group=note|In 1946, Russell—yet to be a Senator—convinced Senator Overton to submit a motion titled "In Defense of My Father". Beginning with the sentence, "I venture the assertion that no man of our times has been more abused, vilified, and misrepresented by the American press to its reading public than my father, Huey P Long.", the motion was passed without objection and published in ''Congressional Review''.<ref>[[#Perry2004|Perry (2004)]], p. 2.</ref>}} [[Reinhard H. Luthin]] said that he was the epitome of an American demagogue.<ref>[[#Moreau|Moreau (1965)]], p. 122.</ref> [[David M. Kennedy (historian)|David Kennedy]] wrote that Long's regime in Louisiana was "the closest thing to a dictatorship that America has ever known".<ref name="Kennedy, David page 236"/> Journalist [[Hodding Carter]] described him as "the first true dictator out of the soil of America" and his movement the "success of fascism in one American state".<ref name="leg"/><ref>[[#Moreau|Moreau (1965)]], pp. 125–26.</ref> [[Peter Viereck]] categorized Long's movement as "chauvinist thought control"; [[Victor Ferkiss]] called it "incipient fascism".<ref>[[#Dissidence|Brinkley (1981)]], p. 119.</ref>

One of the few biographers to praise Long was T. Harry Williams, who classified Long's ideas as neo-populist.<ref>[[#Long1|Long (1996) [1933]]], p. xii.</ref><ref name="Brinkley p 120"/> He labeled Long a democratic "mass leader", rather than a demagogue.<ref name="Brinkley p 120">[[#Dissidence|Brinkley (1981)]], p. 120.</ref><ref>[[#Haas|Haas (1994)]], p. 126.</ref> Besides Williams, intellectual [[Gore Vidal]] expressed admiration for Long, even naming him as his favorite contemporary U.S. politician.<ref>{{cite news|last=Kauffman|first=Bill|date=September 14, 2012|title=My Pen Pal Gore Vidal|url=http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/my-pen-pal-gore-vidal/|work=[[The American Conservative]]|access-date=July 2, 2020|archive-date=March 28, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190328092414/https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/my-pen-pal-gore-vidal/|url-status=live}}</ref> Long biographer Thomas O. Harris espoused a more nuanced view of Long: "neither saint nor devil, he was a complex and heterogenous mixture of good and bad, genius and craft, hypocrisy and candor, buffoonery and seriousness".<ref>[[#Moreau|Moreau (1965)]], p. 123.</ref>