We’ve Been Here Before

Young people must be absolutely horrified at current political extremism. In many cases, we’ve been here before.

Hatred of immigrants as a political platform goes back at least to the ‘Know Nothing’ movement of the early 1800’s. The nativist ‘Know Nothings’ feared that Irish and German Catholics would take over the country and change the culture of the United States. Later in the 1800’s it would be Chinese immigrants that bigots feared were going to take over and change the culture.

Calling political opponents ‘communists’ goes back to Tailgunner Joe McCarthy and the McCarthyism of the early 1950’s. McCarthy ran around the country accusing anyone he didn’t like of being communists- without evidence. At one point he held up a paper he claimed listed 200 communists working in the U.S. State Department. Turned out all he had in his hand were some damp cocktail napkins.

The conspiracy theories that warn of secret evil cabals of powerful people looking to establish ‘one world government’ goes back to the John Birch Society of the late 1950’s.

Extreme selfishness as a political right goes back to Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Epistemology. The Rand philosophy is complex, but the takeaway is that selfishness is good. The most disheartening version of political selfishness is the belief that the Second Amendment means ‘anything goes’ while little children are regularly being slaughtered in schools.

The Know Nothing movement disbanded, Joe McCarthy was discredited, and mainstream conservatives like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan opposed the ‘lunatic fringe’ John Birch Society. The formal movements weakened, but the hateful ideology is still with us in the MAGA movement.

We’ve been here before.

For more on the Know Nothings: https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/nativist-riots-and-the-know-nothing-party

For more on McCarthyism: https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm

For more on the John Birch Society: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/17/1176662608/a-historian-details-how-a-secretive-extremist-group-radicalized-the-american-rig

For more on Ayn Rand: https://www.openculture.com/2017/11/christopher-hitchens-dismisses-the-cult-of-ayn-rand.html

Thanks and a tip of the hat to Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division for the image of Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn.