Nativism speaks loud and proud from the White House

Some MAGA folks might be surprised to learn that their own ancestors came from a “sh*thole country.”

“Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime” they come from “sh*thole countries.”

You know who said that, of course, just this week, and you know who his targets were, and the color of their skin.1 Nativist rhetoric has become acceptable again, and spewed from the highest levels of our government. This is tyranny in its most basic form.

“Nativism” is a political policy aimed at favoring the interests of native-born citizens against immigrants of different ethnic, social, cultural, and religious backgrounds.2 Virtually every immigrant group that has entered the United States seems to have had its turn at being criticized as unwanted and unworthy. And its a sad fact, that having achieved acceptance over time, the descendants of the despised join in the oppression of the next group in line. The descendants seem to either conveniently forget their history, or simply choose to ignore it.

Nativist sentiment runs deep in this country. Even revered founding father Benjamin Franklin espoused anti-immigrant views. In his day, the German states were sh*thole countries. Franklin opposed the influx of immigrants from these areas into Colonial Pennsylvania and also opposed the immigration of all Africans.3

In the mid-nineteenth century Nativist hostility was particularly directed at the Irish, during a time when millions left Ireland for the U.S. as downtrodden and desperate immigrants fleeing the Great Famine. A particular point of opposition was the Roman Catholic religion of the vast majority of this group. Even Protestant Irish citizens were opposed to the influx of Catholics. Roman Catholic clerics and churches were targets of violence in many areas during the nineteenth century; incidents of such violence continue to the present day.4 And let’s not forget the anti-Catholic efforts to thwart the candidacy of John F. Kennedy, led by Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale in 1960.5

The backlash against Asian immigration is well-known, and it extends from before the 1882 “Chinese Immigrant Exclusion Act” (the first legislation in U.S. history to broadly restrict immigration)6 to the incarceration of American-born Japanese during World War II. Jews were a specific target of immigration restrictions in the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and thereafter; the bill that became law was accompanied by a report in which the chief of the U.S. Consular Service characterized potential Jewish immigrants from Poland as “filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits…lacking any conception of patriotism or national spirit.”7

Here is Donald with his dear old dad Fred, who led the way for his son with his racist views, despite, perhaps ironically, being a potential target of Nativist views himself. It’s a fun fact that Fred’s parents emigrated from Germany in the 1880s, but Fred claimed to be Swedish, apparently to avoid the anti-German sentiment that existed even then, and flourished during and after WWI. His son Donald backed him up on the Swedish lie for years.8

Fred was likely a KKK sympathizer, if not an actual Klan member. In 2016, The Washington Post uncovered newspaper reports of Fred’s 1927 arrest at a Klan rally in Queens:9

The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that “Native-born Protestant Americans” were being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City.” “Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon,” it continued, “when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organize to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language.”

The “Roman Catholic police of New York City” was barely disguised code for the Irish and Italians who predominated in the police force at the time.10

The Klan rally was part of a resurgence of the group that took place from 1915 through the 1920s; it took hold not just in its native South but in towns and cities throughout the country.11 This renewed Klan movement stuck to its anti-Black racist roots, and added in a large dose of ideas from the Nativism movement. The Klan’s updated agenda was expressed on its membership cards.

“Tenets of the Christian Religion12 … White supremacy … Protection of our pure womanhood … Preventing unwarranted strikes by foreign labor agitators … The limitation of foreign immigration … Prevention of fires and destruction of property by lawless elements ….” “Preventing the causes of mob violence and lynchings” is a nice touch – blaming the victims for their victimization.

Does this ring any bells?

Of course it does. There is a direct line from the deep-rooted Nativism of the Know Nothing Party and the KKK of the 1920s, to the MAGA of today.13

So, a fair question to any MAGA supporters you may know, is whether they know their family ethnic background, and if they are familiar with the discrimination their ancestors may have faced in the past. Or even the present! It continues to astonish me that members of groups that are actively denigrated by the MAGA majority continue to support the man who actively espouses racist and discriminatory views against them.

Tell us in the comments what sh*thole country your family came from! Mine should be easy to guess. 🙂