Historical Comment

With the recent invocation of charges like "socialism" and "Anti-American" as critiques of Barack Obama's economic proposals, I started thinking about the various times that similar charges were hurled in American political history. I came up with four specific eras where similar charges were made against a group or party in order to create some level of hysteria, usually in an effort to preserve the status quo in terms of political and economic power.

The first occurred in the early 1850s, following Europe's revolutionary generation of 1848, from which Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" first sprang. In the US, the concern was with immigrants who may or may not have participated in those uprisings (the bulk of the immigrants came from Ireland, where revolution was much less a factor for emigration than hunger; many from the continent were probably actually trying to escape the the violence). The real concern was that the swelling ranks of foreigners in the country were diluting the political clout and economic opportunities of the native-born population (by becoming easily manipulated voters in the first instance and competition for jobs in the second). This led to the rise to several nativist groups, most notably the American Party (popularly known as the Know-Nothings). Ultimately they weren't too successful, though it's possible that their candidate for president in 1856, Millard Fillmore, might have thrown the election to Democrat James Buchanan by siphoning votes away from the Republican John C. Fremont.

The second instance came in the late 1870's following the bloody wildcat Railroad Strike of 1877. Again, immigrant "agitators" were among those targeted as responsible, for introducing foreign ideas into the mix of more "traditional" labor/management relations (that is, where the bosses held all the cards). This also came on the heels of radical uprisings in Europe, most notably seen in the establishment of the Paris Commune a few years earlier, though as in the earlier era described above, this was probably more coincidental than instrumental in the events that unfolded in the US. Still, it provided a handy, and largely effective, rhetorical device to help swing middle class public opinion against the workers, and against organized labor in general for decades thereafter. The bloody battles at Haymarket Square, Homestead, Lawrence, and elsewhere were among the consequences.

The third instance occurred after World War I, with the Palmer Raids against radical groups and individuals who threatened the emerging conformist notion of "Americanism" (or as Warren Harding would term it in the following presidential election, "normalism"). Again, immigrants comprised a large component of those targeted, especially those who came from Russia, where the revolutionary Bolsheviks were still consolidating power following the 1917 takeover. This may have been the generation when immigrants comprised the largest percentage of Americans (well, with the exception of the early colonists, of course), and in the wake of the mess that was World War I, it was perhaps inevitable that many here would fear the potential unsettling effects of so many "others" amongst us. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer ended up deporting a significant number of suspected radicals, and also set the stage for the revival of the Ku Klux Klan (which became bigger in the 1920s than it was after the Civil War).

The last case is, of course, the Red Scare of the late 40s and early 50s, the so-called McCarthy era. Again, "Americanism" became the by-word, and although we'd finally clamped down on those pesky immigrants (quotas having been established in the 1920s, limiting the masses who could emigrate to the states), foreign ideas (like "socialism," "communism," "totalitarianism," but also for many "civil rights," "freedom of speech," and "self-determination") were still pretty scary. This period created such a stifling atmosphere of political and cultural anxiety, that eventually the suspicion and charges of hypocrisy were turned upon our core institutions during the upheavals of the sixties.

Obviously, these are brief, and somewhat over-simplified summaries, but the point they lead to is, I think, quite valid: if you can't effectively demonstrate that an idea or plan or policy or campaign promise is faulty through reasoned argument, slap what you think is a derogatory label on it ("Anti-American" and "socialist" being particularly effective) and hope enough people are suckered to allow you to get your way without actually making the case. What the examples described above suggest about this strategy is that, while often politically expedient and immediately effective, over the long term they sow the seeds of deeper division and conflict.