Make America Great Again Political Cartoon Immigration
Concluding weekend, Saturday Night Alive produced a mock "Voters for Trump" advert, in which everyday "existent Americans" gently describe why they support Donald Trump for president—before they are all revealed to be white supremacists, Klan members, and Nazis. Trump, of course, non only received old Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke's support for his candidacy, but also declined to disavow the Ku Klux Klan on CNN.
This has happened before. As The Atlantic'south Yoni Appelbaum pointed out, the Republican front end-runner's refusal to repudiate white supremacists' support besides every bit the bombast in his campaign are both echoes of the Ku Klux Klan. Every bit a historian of the 1920s Klan, I noticed the resonances, besides. Trump's "Make America great again" linguistic communication is just like the rhetoric of the Klan, with their accent on virulent patriotism and restrictive immigration. But maybe Trump doesn't know much most the 2nd incarnation of the order and what Klansmen and Klanswomen stood for. Mayhap the echoes are coincidence, not strategy to win the support of white supremacists. Maybe Trump just needs a quick historical primer on the 1920s Klan—and their vision for making America great over again.
In 1915, William J. Simmons, an ex-government minister and cocky-described joiner of fraternities, created a new Ku Klux Klan dedicated to "100 per centum Americanism" and white Protestantism. He wanted to evoke the previous Reconstruction Klan (1866-1871) but refashion information technology every bit a new gild—stripped of vigilantism and dressed in Christian virtue and patriotic pride. Simmons's Klan was to be the savior of a nation in peril, a ways to reestablish the cultural dominance of white people. Immigration and the enfranchisement of African Americans, according to the Klan, eroded this dominance and meant that America was no longer great. Simmons, the first imperial magician of the Klan, and his successor, H.Due west. Evans, wanted Klansmen to return the nation to its former glory. Their messages of white supremacy, Protestant Christianity, and hypernationalism found an eager audition. By 1924, the Klan claimed 4 one thousand thousand members; they wore robes, lit crosses on fire, read Klan newspapers, and participated in political campaigns on the local and national levels.
To save the nation, the Klan focused on accomplishing a serial of goals. A 1924 Klan cartoon, "Nether the Peppery Cross," illustrated those goals: restricted immigration, militant Protestantism, better government, clean politics, "back to the Constitution," constabulary enforcement, and "greater fidelity to the flag." Along with the emphases on regime and nationalism, the order as well mobilized under the banners of vulnerable white womanhood and white superiority more generally. Nativism, writes historian Matthew Frye Jacobson in Whiteness of a Different Color, is a crisis about the boundaries of whiteness and who exactly can be considered white. Information technology is a reaction to a shift in demographics, which confuses the ascendant group's agreement of race. For the KKK, Americans were supposed to be only white and Protestant. They championed white supremacy to keep the nation white, ignoring that citizenry was not constrained to their whims.
The Klan was facing a crisis because the culture was changing around them, and nativism was their reaction. Demographic shifts, including immigration, urbanization, and the migrations of African Americans from the Due south to the North gave urgency and legitimacy to the Klan's fears that the nation was in danger. From 1890 to 1914, more than xvi million immigrants arrived in the The states, and a large majority were Catholics from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Poland. Effectually 10 percentage were Jewish. The Klan described the influx of immigrants as a "menace" that threatened "true Americanism," "devotion to the nation and its government," and, worst of all, America as a culture. Evans claimed that "aliens" (immigrants) challenged and attacked white Americans instead of doing the correct thing—and joining the Klan's cause. (Yeah, strangely, he expected immigrants' support fifty-fifty though the Klan limited membership to white Protestant men and women. Of form, it's also foreign that Trump expects Latino support.) Writing in the Klan newspaper The Purple Nighttime-Hawk in 1923, Evans declared that immigrants were "mostly scum," a unsafe "horde."
Unsurprisingly, the 1920s Klan supported legislation to restrict clearing to preferred countries with Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian roots. The order championed the Immigration Act of 1924, which limited immigration visas to 2 pct or 3 pct of the population of each nationality from the 1890 demography. When President Calvin Coolidge signed the nib into law, the Klan celebrated the continued protection of the "purity" of American citizenship. A white Protestant citizenry and the want to maintain their authorization culturally and politically, then, defined 100 per centum Americanism.
Their rhetoric and dramatic displays of robes and burning crosses appealed in the 1920s. White men and women turned to the Klan for reassurance that America was a nation founded by white people for white people. The Royal Night-Hawk crafted histories absent of native peoples, African Americans, Catholics, and Jews that confirmed what readers wanted to hear: White Protestants were the creators of America, and the nation would just succeed with their continued authorisation. The Klan made enemies of immigrants but also of any people they considered "foreign" who already resided on American soil. Threats appeared everywhere, from newly arrived immigrants to Catholics, Jews, and African Americans who were already citizens—though the social club wasn't of the stance that they should be.
Making America slap-up required exclusion, intolerance, and vitriol. Unfortunately for the Klan, their message of 100 percentage Americanism started losing ground by the end of the 1920s. Public scandals involving Klan leaders and convictions of Klansmen for murder fabricated white Americans reconsider their allegiance to the order and its increasingly tarnished ideals. The Klan started to appear too extreme and unsafe for even the slightest association. Their steep rise was tempered by an equally steep fall. Moreover, the Klan developed an epitome problem: their persistent association with racism—which continues to plague the modern Klans despite efforts to rebrand their prototype to reflect the love of the white race, non racism per se.
The Klan'due south bulletin of 100 pct Americanism and restrictive clearing resonated in the 1920s, and their message gains traction again and again every time white Americans encounter social alter and shifting demographics. With a black president, LGBT equality, an enormous Hispanic community, and predictions that America will shortly be a majority minority country, their bulletin resonates now, too. That's why a former Klan leader is encouraging other white supremacists to vote for Trump and why The New Yorker's Evan Osnos plant that extremist white-rights groups also programme to vote for him. Maybe Trump doesn't know improve. Or maybe the echoes are less similar echoes and more like the purposeful conjuring of a racialized message—one that too many white voters even so want to hear.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/donald-trump-kkk/473190/
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