Nativism in the 1920s

It is not necessary to go over in depth how nativist and xenophobic Trump and his supporters are. A simple Google search will provide ample evidence on how he launched his campaign by demonizing Mexican immigrants and bragging about how he would get Mexico to pay for a giant wall to keep them in. When that shtick got old he targeted Muslims, with a helpful assist from the ISIS attack in Paris, promising to keep them from entering the country. So we will turn to William Leuchtenburg for a description of nativism in the 1920s.

Despite prosperity, the United States in the postwar years felt deeply threatened from within. The American people suddenly had thrust upon them the responsibilities of war and the making of peace, and their contact with Europe and power politics was bitterly disillusioning. In a world of Bolshevik revolutions and Bela Kuns, of general strikes and Mussolini's march on Rome, there was danger that America, too, might be infected by the social diseases of the Old World. Yet the threat of foreign contagion was not as terrifying as the menace of change from within. In part the danger seemed to come from enclaves of the foreign-born, not yet adapted to American ways, in part from the rise of the metropolis, with values different from those of nineteenth-century America, in part from the new currents of moral relativism and cosmopolitanism. Not a little of the anxiety arose from the disturbing knowledge that Americans themselves no longer had their former confidence in democracy or religion. "They have," observed Andre Siegfried, "a vague uneasy fear of being overwhelmed from within, and of suddenly finding one day that they are no longer themselves." 

Political fundamentalism attempted to deny real divisions in the nation by coercing a sense of oneness. Celebration of the Constitution became a tribal rite; in the 1920s, Americans, as one English writer noted, were "a people who, of all the world, craved most for new things, yet were all but Chinese in their worship of their Constitution and their ancestors who devised it." Constitution-worship was a kind of magical nativism, a form of activity in which, as the anthropologist Ralph Linton writes, "The society's members feel that by behaving as the ancestors did they will, in some usually undefined way, help to recreate the total situation in which the ancestors lived." Efforts toward social change were condemned as un-American. "Individualism?" cried an American Legion commander in California. "Down with all Isms!" This resistance to change and this insistence on conformity intertwined with the desire of rural churchmen to turn back modernism in religion and compel morality by statute. In 1924, Protestant fundamentalists wove together both movements in a "Bible-Christ-and-Constitution Campaign,"while the Ku Klux Klan's warcry was "Back to the Constitution." 

Many felt hostile to anything foreign. Isolationism had its counterpart in a determination to curb immigration, to avoid alien contamination ad to preserve the old America ethnically before it was too late. In the late nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century, the drive for immigration restriction had foundered on presidential vetoes. Restrictionism could not overcome the industrialists' demand for cheap labor or, more important, America's confidence in its ability to absorb large numbers of foreign-born. World War I badly shook that confidence. The war revealed that the sympathies of millions of Americans were determined by their countries of origin, and the fight over the League of Nations reflected the animosities of Irish-Americans, German-Americans, and other "hyphenated Americans." In his defense of the Versailles Treaty, Wilson charged: "Hyphens are the knives that are being stuck into this document." By the end of the war years, many agreed with Walter Hines Page: "We Americans have got to ... hang our Irish agitators and shoot our hyphenates and bring up our children with reverence for English history and in the awe of English literature." 

The drive for immigration restriction after the war was based, to a far greater degree than before, on a pseudo-scientific racism. Men with little knowledge of either science or public affairs were accepted as experts on "race," although their writings revealed neither insight nor good judgment. In The Passing of the Great Race (1916), Madison Grant contended that race was the determinant of civilization and that only Aryans had built great cultures. "The man of the old stock," alleged Grant, "is being crowded out of many country districts by these foreigners, just as he is today being literally driven off the streets of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews. These immigrants adopt the language of the native American, they wear his clothes, they steal his name and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals." Lothrop Stoddard in The Rising Tide of Color (1920) and Professor Edwin East of Harvard warned that white races were being engulfed by the more fertile colored races. Most influential of all were the widely read articles by Kenneth Roberts in the Saturday Evening Post. Roberts urged that the immigration laws be revised to admit fewer Polish Jews, who were "human parasites"; cautioned against Social Democrats, since "social democracy gives of a distinctly sour, bolshevistic odor"; and opposed unrestricted immigration, for it would inevitably produce "a hybrid race of people as worthless and futile as the good-for-nothing mongrels of Central America and Southeastern Europe."
In the first fifteen years of the century, an average of one million immigrants a year had entered the United States. Slowed to a trickle by the war, the stream of immigration became a swollen torrent after the armistace. From June, 1920, June, 1921, more than 800,000 persons poured into the country, 65 percent of them from southern and eastern Europe, and consuls in Europe reported that millions more were planning to leave. By February, 1921, Ellis Island was so jammed that immigration authorities  had to divert ships to Boston. Alarmed almost to the point of panic, Congress rushed through an emergency act to restrict immigration; it passed the House in a few hours without a record vote and was adopted by the Senate soon after by 78-1. 

Despite initial opposition, sentiment for a more lasting form of immigration restriction soon gained increasing strength. For a time, industrialists continued to set themselves against the movement. T. Coleman du Pont protested that critics of the immigrant were suffering from "sheer Red hysteria, nothing more;" while Judge Gary denounced the 1921 law as "one of the worst things that this country has ever done for itself economically." With the new prosperity of 1923 and increased mechanical efficiency, which reduced the need for mass labor, however, the chief obstacle to permanent immigration restriction was removed at the same time that industrialist, agitated by the Red Scare, grew increasingly nativist. So did unions, largely confined to skilled craftsmen, who for some time had wanted to limit new entrants into the labor market, thereby enhancing the market value of their members by reducing supply.
In 1924, Congress passed, over scant opposition, the National Origins Act, which drastically cut down the total of newcomers to be admitted each year and established quotas to be calculated on the basis of the proportion of descendants of each nationality resident in the United States at an earlier time. Under that proviso, the more "Nordic" lands of northern and western Europe got 85 percent of quotas. In addition, the law forbade all Oriental immigration--a gratuitous insult which was marked in Japan with a day of national mourning. "It is a sorry business," wrote Hughes, "and I am greatly depressed. It has undone the work of the Washington Conference and implanted the seeds of an antagonism which are sure to bear fruit in the future." 

The law, reflecting racist warnings about a threat to "Anglo-Saxon" stock, aimed at freezing the country ethnically by sharply restricting the "new" immigration from southern and eastern Europe. In the debate on the bill, Congressmen reviled the foreign-born of the great cities, particularly New York, to whom were attributed every evil of the day, "On the one side," asserted a Kansas congressman, "is beer, bolshevism[sic], unassimilating settlements and perhaps many flags--on the other side is constitutional government; one flag, stars and stripes." For three hundred years, English squires and cutthroats, French Huguenots, Spanish adventurers, pious subjects of German duchies, and, above all in recent years, peasants from Calabria to the Ukraine had come to American in search of gold, or land, or freedom, or something to which they could not put a name. Now it was over. One of the great folk movements in the history of man had come to an end.

Trump and the KKK, Part 2

The controversy surrounding the KKK's endorsement of Donald Trump has probably led to some confusion, with a lot of people wondering "the KKK is still a thing? Isn't that only in that bad South?" While David Duke operated mainly in Louisiana and the original incarnation of the white terrorist group known as the Ku Klux Klan was organized by defeated confederate officers after the Civil War, the reborn Klan had a much larger reach. The following is a story of moralism gone astray, because if your underlying values are terrible then the empirical manifestations are also likely to be terrible.

As I alluded in my last post, all the dog whistles and coded language about race used by prior candidates for the GOP to stoke white supremacy and racial resentment seem to have broken through to explicit and conscious appeals to hate and fear. This is the first big clawing back of racism into our political discourse without any cover. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s, strong organized opposition from African-Americans, Latinos, and other non-whites together with white Liberal allies had made overt racism unacceptable in public. Republican strategists such as Lee Atwater learned to camouflage their language while wooing southern segregationists and bigots across White America.

Why is it resurfacing now? It is pretty obvious even if the republican base, that turned into the tea party, that now supports Trump refuses to admit that most if not all of them are motivated by the same feelings of white supremacy and racial resentment as always, it is just visible now. The strong countervailing forces that could keep this kind of racism in check have atrophied over time in relation to the thundering of movement conservatism. While today's policies of mass incarceration, discriminatory policing, voter suppression and others that disproportionately affect minority communities were put in place with the same sort of veiled racism that was espoused by the politicians who enacted them. "Tough on crime" and "war on drugs" have been buzzwords used to send thousands upon thousands of young men to prison with lengthy sentences without even a halfhearted attempt at rehabilitation. Meanwhile immigration has been demonized simply by adding the word "illegal" in front of it to stigmatize anyone driven off their land by subsidized agribusiness and into the US desperate for work.

It is always difficult to put concrete explanations for why social movements arise and mature, but at least we have history as a guide. The following posts will include a series of excerpts from William Leuchtenburg's The Perils of Prosperity that I also excerpted for the "We Have Been Here Before" series (Part 1, 2, and 3). Professor Leuchtenburg included a chapter on political fundamentalism that I feel is important to retell in this election season.

Donald Trump and The Ku Klux Klan

Ever since Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the president of these United States, I have been researching the obvious question of why in the hell anyone would support him. And then this happened:

David Duke: Voting against Trump is 'treason to your heritage'

Regardless of the timeline of events, first he didn't then he did disavow the KKK and white supremacists. And the minor dust-up about credentialing a white nationalist radio show host for one of his mass rallies. And the fawning, gushing love for the Donald over at new-nazi website the daily stormer (I'm not linking to it but if you're brave, go have a look). We have the this blast from the past. As JAMES PONIEWOZIK put it in the New York Times, "until this week, the K.K.K.’s loathsomeness had seemed to be a settled issue." 

Hopefully it will be nothing else, but Trump's campaign has certainly proved that this supposed tyranny of political correctness is a toothless tiger. If, on election day Trump secures a paltry minority of votes and his Republican Party is utterly crushed in down-ticket races all over the country, the short-fingered vulgarian and his hate-filled mouth-breathing followers will have shown us all that racism is alive and well, and that the tyranny of political correctness has no idea how to adequately deal with it. And that we are really just one rigged election away from reinstating segregation, white supremacy, and possibly even a return to slavery. Political correctness, at least in the way social conservatives yap endlessly about it, really seems more and more to be a meaningless buzzword that signifies nothing more than "why can't we dominate those non-white people the way we used to?"

Just as the plutocracy and unregulated capitalism were marginalized for a time by the Great Depression, open racism and white supremacy were marginalized by herculean efforts of the Civil Rights Movement and the intervention of the Federal Government. But the will to power and domination represented by these forces are an idea, and just as many commentators pointed out during the "war on terror," you cannot destroy an idea. Thomas Frank discussed this concept in The Wrecking Crew, in regards to the methods and tactics that "conservatives" use to try and destroy liberalism once and for all. Just as plutocracy and "free market" (basically unregulated) capitalism clawed their way back into power by displacing the labor movement and New Deal institutions inch by inch, capitalizing on every crisis to expand and legitimize corporate power, racism and white supremacy has clawed its way back into the discussion by using every shock of modernity to discredit and delegitimize multiculturalism, diversity, equal rights, and tolerance of difference.

By playing footsie with very dangerous people, Trump legitimizes for his followers a belief structure that should have died out a long time ago. The only saving grace is that the majority of authoritarian followers still do not like the label of "racist" and do not want to be associated with words like "KKK" or "Neo-Nazi" however much they hold racial resentments. The next post will describe the KKK of the 1920s and explore similarities with Trump supporters.

Getting The House In Order

I am a big fan of The Bubble Genius Bob and Chez Show, and I follow their writing for The Daily Banter and elsewhere. This is a podcast about politics that Mr. Cesca and Mr. Pazienza host twice a week to bring their pragmatic liberal point of view to a grateful audience. I am using the honorific "Mr." out of respect and it is how gentlemen talk about their friends. Two and a half years ago I wrote an open letter to Chez so I could try and cheer him up and share some historical perspective with anyone who was open to reading it. I like to think it helped, Chez posted the link to his blog and The Daily Banter, where the letter received a decent response, and an expression of gratitude from the man himself. Recently the show has focused more and more energy on the fringiest of fringes, the so-called Bernie Bots. Chez's articles have also lately become borderline obsessed with the idea that there are an enormous number of these privileged snowflakes who cannot wait to stay home on election day if Bernie Sanders is not the Democratic nominee. I am worried that this tendency is negatively impacting his mental health and want to give it another try to help my friend and to start getting our Democratic house in order for this long march to election day.

I am the first to admit that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, my letter could have had no real impact on Chez's improved attitude and writing. But if there is even a chance that I can be of some help I want to share my perspective on the issue of Bernie Bots and the attempted sabotage of keeping a Democrat in the White House, then let's give it a shot. I want Kid Dynamite (someone called Chez that in a comment on my post, I'm pretty sure he was being sincere) back in form and blasting the snot out of Republican obstructionism.

I will preface this by saying that I will be turning the mirror around a bit and using some of Bob's and your words, observations, and ideas to make a case for snapping back to form. And yes, I'm being selfish because every time you, Chez, write a monster smack down of that Republican obstructionism I get a warm fuzzy. This obsession started with grumbling about college kids being college kids, so let's start there. The beautiful thing about being Eighteen, Nineteen, etc. is it only happens once, and this is (hopefully) "our" chance to be stupid and live to tell about it. Bob certainly noted after the low youth turn out in 2014 that what loud college kids want is often irrelevant to our larger political reality. I have also written about the stupid mistake I made in 2000 and tried to atone for it. You and Bob have repeatedly stated that crowd sizes, yard signs, and social media hits are a poor gauge for estimating electoral strength. So I want to state that I worry you are being had.

Or am I missing the point? Is this grumpy "get off my lawn" idiom just an act? A niche to fill for this election cycle and bathe in clicks? No, I don't think so. Unless everything about your writing has been an act since I started reading it. Though criticizing Bernie Sanders' supporters has certainly generated a lot of pageviews and comments. On the other hand, and this may be completely unsupported anecdotal evidence, it seems like so many of the commenters are repeat offenders and the discussion is between just a few passionate people with a lot to say. There have been about 26,000 shares of your latest article on Bernie supporters, how many of those are from real, engaged citizens and how many are from people just passing on a cool meme? With all the technology available to us these days, it is still awfully hard to tell.

At the risk of using a Doocy mark, how many so-called #feelthebern movement leader types could just be paid right wing trolls? Is is wrong to ask the question of whether much of this controversy is actually being led by agents provocateur? How many dedicated, professional, well-paid propagandists would it take to lead an army of disconnected volunteer trolls to pretend that they are actually leftist Liberal critics of Hillary Clinton? My answer: One. You guys have commented in the past that comment thread trolls are often led by by one operative or organization that produces the memes and talking points for issues of the day. The majority of "conservative" trolls are followers, right wing authoritarian followers to be precise. It really would only take one person to forward the idea on some obscure, reactionary message board that everybody should show up on liberal websites and social media to attack Clinton from the left, and the trolls would come running. After making exaggerated claims (conveniently echoing Republican propaganda) criticizing Clinton, and making the idealistic stand about "teaching the 'establishment' a lesson" and that politics as usual is not good enough, we come to the 'staying home or voting for Trump' portion of the ratfucking campaign.

Or it may be that the Bernie or bust movement is wholly part of the "far left", as it was in 2000 with Ralph Nader and the Green Party. I dislike speculating because there are no reliable documents to put forward as evidence. And the social media revolution has turned discourse into shifting desert sands anyway. Left or right, any number of people can create a number of sock puppet accounts to echo their message and agenda. Just as there are right wing authoritarian followers who obediently line up behind authority figures who tell them what they want to hear and will gladly attack anyone who disagrees with their self-righteous world view, there are left wing versions as well. In The Authoritarians Bob Altemeyer describes the left wing authoritarian follower as a permanent rebel who is never satisfied with the existing order. Sound familiar? You and Bob talk about them all the time without using that label. It could be any combination of these vandals manipulating people for a myriad of reasons

The right wing authoritarian followers who show up to troll liberals have their leaders in right wing media and politics, with Trump being the textbook definition of the "social dominator" that Altemeyer described. But left wing authoritarian followers have leaders as well, you and Bob know them well. These are the Glenn Greenwalds and H. A. Goodmans of the world, and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. had them defined as "wailers" almost seventy years ago. In The Vital Center he described those two chuckle heads as "democratic men with totalitarian principles" almost as dogmatic and ideologically driven as their power-hungry counterparts on the right. I wrote about "wailers" and "doughface progressives" in several posts a few years ago (here, here, here, and here) because of the similarities between our self-appointed "purist" progressives who aggressively complained about being excluded and betrayed by the Obama Administration after working so hard to get him elected and those careerist "establishment" doughfaces in the administration who aggressively complained about the pajamas media and their foolish liberal agenda. Both sides had a point and the fact that we had to have that debate in public makes me despair of ever getting the house in order.

But seriously, in the large electoral coalition that is the Democratic Party, how many of these Bernie Bots that pledge to never vote for anyone but him are there? Chirping about it on those social media-driven websites that depend on Facebook traffic is one thing, but how many of these chuckle heads were going to vote before Bernie entered the race? Statistically insignificant is the term that springs to mind. Whether driven by authoritarians on the left or right, the numbers of Bots is pretty small. Most of the people I know and people I have observed do not have the nihilistic and apocalyptic view of pouting and staying home if they don't get what they want. No, most is not even the real descriptor, one is more like it and she never voted for a Democrat before. So the excessive energy spent trying to reason with people you, Chez, always admit will never see reason seems like a waste. We can't get everyone to agree, that's why we have elections. It is an imperfect method of resolving differences, but it's better than letting Trump make all the decisions.

I would love to see the young, disillusioned college types get out there in huge numbers and contribute their energy and passion to the process of democracy, but it hasn't happened. We can't win them all and moreover, we're not ready for a revolution. Even if that revolution is simply a return to dedicated New Deal policies and programs, which Bernie is basically advocating (for all the talk about Democratic Socialism, Senator Sanders is just a staunch New Dealer). Too many people have been effectively conditioned by the right wing media into petulant children. And not just on the right, the most interesting and largely unexplored facet of our descent into fascism has been how coarse we have all become in recent years. And goddamnit, wasn't The Daily Banter trying to "unfuck" the internet and raise discourse? I agree with most of what you, Chez, said in that piece, now that catharsis has been achieved it is time to take a break and stop policing the kids. The rest of non-authoritarian society needs you to get our house in order.

Relaunching the Sea Monster With Much Less Gloom

I hope it does not look like a promotional stunt. Changing the name of this blog is a reflection on my growth as a writer over the past few years. The Gloomy Historian just does not quite fit anymore. Mrs. Kraken rolled her eyes way back in the summer of 2009 when I first mentioned to her that I was starting a blog with that name. I did not really expect it to catch on, some of my friends thought it was okay but but gloomy historian was more a place I was at that time. I am older, wiser (I hope) and ready to more fully embrace my connection to the sea and the giant beasts of myth and legend. That doesn't mean my posts will all of a sudden be nautically-themed or random gifs of Harryhausen monsters will find their way onto this page. Okay maybe just one:


via GIPHY

Oops, wrong one. Here we go


via GIPHY

No, still not right:


via GIPHY
Aha! Yes, that's it.
But I promise that will be the last one.

Anyway, I plan to keep the voter education series going for the near future. And throw a couple of bombs along the way. Just remember, the real monsters wear suits and smile as they pick your pocket through laws.

Election 2016: Opening Thoughts

One objective that this blog has developed is to make readers more skeptical and less gullible to the many distractions, misinformation, and outright lies perpetrated by political operatives. Education should be a universal value after all, should it not? You would be surprised how many people are simply not interested in learning more, improving themselves, or challenging information if it agrees with what they already believe. Is this where the dividing line should be drawn in our politics? Between the people who want to know more and improve themselves, versus the people who are content in their limited knowledge and want to force everyone else to freeze intellectually. It is a tragedy that the information superhighway accommodates too easily both of these.

The irony is thick when you consider that the Internet is one of the greatest technological developments of human history and a significant percentage of Americans use it to wall themselves off from anything that would challenge their views. Don't do that. Your computer or smartphone can answer any question you can think of, and most likely direct you to more sources of information where you can figure out new questions to ask. Much of our collected knowledge and wisdom out there waiting to be tapped and harnessed to your command. Sometimes you have to step back from your day to day routine and really consider what a fascinating time it is to be alive. Be curious. Be adventurous. But also, be cautious; and skeptical.

We humans have amazing qualities. We can use tools and remember the past; we can communicate with each other and our offspring, each individual is connected to their neighbors and the future in this way. The internet and all of its myriad portals are new tools that empower us to communicate and remember. But it also amplifies other qualities, such as that of deception, manipulation, domination, intimidation, exclusion, and unthinking obedience that are less useful. 

For example, when the first human tried using a stick to poke holes in the ground and plant food, he (or she) could gather more sustenance than the others who simply gathered nature produce. That person was able to feed themselves better than the others and was consequently able to have more children and live longer. Those children did not have to then spend time figuring out how to use a stick and could instead figure out how to make a better tool. In turn, that knowledge would spread until it was an entire tribe settling down to practice agriculture and take further steps forward in improving their techniques until they produced a surplus of food. When there is a surplus of food, some people can be freed from farming to spend time, energy, thought, and resources on new ways to help the tribe. Once that happens there is a division of labor, society is no longer equal and governing structures arise to regulate the relations of power. This is where politics is born. 

There will always be people who want to keep going, inventing new things, telling new stories, teaching and learning new ways to benefit society. And there will always be others who say "that's far enough," for some people change is just too much to bear. There are many reasons to oppose change or stand in the way of progress, it does not mean the same thing to all people. For another, going back to the idea of "where you sit determines where you stand" from the first post in this series, the division of labor and surplus creates opportunities for privilege, and change often threatens the privileged members of society. Luckily for those elites, many common people fear change out of reflex because of advanced age or lack of sophistication, intellect, curiosity, or imagination. The elite often have little trouble convincing a plurality or even majority of society to keep things the same, or at least change things very slowly and as skewed toward elite interest as possible. In the past the elite often took the form of land-holding warriors or priests and as such their words carried weight with the peasants, who feared for their lives and/or souls. Today, the elite often have power in the form of wealth and control over jobs, development, investment, etc. And especially control over media to sway public opinion towards the interests of that privileged few.

Whenever there is political conflict, it often takes the form described in the previous paragraph. Reformers, also known as Liberals or Progressives, put forward a new idea or invention and the privileged elite minority who happen to like their position in society thank you very much, resist the change with support among the uncurious and fearful commoners. In the past you would often find the peasants supporting the king against some middle-class force trying to change society. Today, things are far more complicated. But the conservative fear of change persists even in the United States of 2016. Subsequent entries to this series will explore these divisions and conflicts in greater detail. For now, take a look at the next politically-themed meme or article that shows up in your news feed with these ideas in mind. And try not to lose composure over the latest attempt by the cynical to make you afraid, because they want you to be afraid but it is very often in your best interest to remain rational. Until next time, good luck and keep exploring!

Election 2016: "Course Objectives"

 If this series were a college class, think of this as the syllabus. I'm not a professor in real life so this post will be loose of necessity and subject to revision. However, there are some goals we should be striving for so I will try to get some down.

First, there will be no assigned reading or papers. Though I might suggest some texts for further investigation and some applications or exercises you may want to try. There won't be any grades or credits awarded obviously, by the "end" of this series you should have a better understanding of our government and politics. 

Second, there will probably be a lot of history. I want this series to give you a very large perspective and that will require an understanding of where we came from. I especially want to discuss the intellectual history of the republic. 

Third, ideology. While I stated in the introduction that people have nearly infinite experiences and varied outlooks or expectations for issues and government, we can generally group them under common ideas. This will make parties and elections easier to understand.

Fourth, American government. Checks and balances, divided branches, and staggered elections. The organization of our Federal Government can be challenging but once you understand how and why this is so politics becomes easier to understand.

Fifth, reliable and unreliable sources. For good or ill, media has become very broad in the age of the internet. We will go over examples and guidelines for how to judge the veracity and relevance of a source of information.

Sixth, rhetoric. Politicians and political writers use what can seem like another language at times. We will discuss what certain common words and phrases actually mean.

This list will probably take a good amount of time to cover. It is my sincere hope that when this project is complete it will be of some use to you.