
When America Tried to Deport Its Radicals - pseudolus
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/11/when-america-tried-to-deport-its-radicals
======
rayiner
> In 1919, alarmed by the growing presence of “peoples of Asiatic races,” the
> Anti-Alien League called for a constitutional amendment “to restrict
> citizenship by birth within the United States to the children of parents who
> are of a race which is eligible for citizenship”—i.e., whites. Senator
> Wesley Jones, of Washington State, promised to introduce such a measure—a
> proposal not unlike today’s calls to end birthright citizenship.

The majority of countries don’t have birthright citizenship, and Ireland and
New Zealand got rid of it in the 21st century. Yet in the view of the New
Yorker, that common rule is “not unlike” a rule that would limit citizenship
to a specific race.

(I’m a big proponent of birthright citizenship. But the New Yorker’s framing
of it devalues it by making it seem like the baseline, instead of an example
of American exceptionalism.)

~~~
Braggadocious
>“to restrict citizenship by birth within the United States to the children of
parents who are of a race which is eligible for citizenship”—i.e., whites

White was also not considered a race in the 20's. There were Nordics, Jews,
Irish, Eastern Europeans, and Southern Europeans. American eugenicists also
were very much into "building" a race. They would have family breed
competitions at fairs where families would compete like dogs or livestock for
who were the best breeding stock. It wasnt a white vs colored, it was a tall,
intelligent, hard-working, disease-free, group of mostly northern europeans vs
anyone short, stalky, diseased, epileptic, mentally deficient, criminal,
promiscuous, obsessed with art, etc. For instance, Irish were considered a
problem because they didnt work hard, were obsessed with art and music, were
short, and susceptible to tuberculosis. Mind you, this is not scientific fact,
this is just the nonsense they spouted at the time. They also believed in a
thing called "Germplasm" which roughly translated to gene pool, but of course
even today we're not exactly clear on what's genetically inheritable and what
isnt.

I should also mention, this is the deeply disturbing origin of the progressive
movement in america. Using what they thought was superior scientific
understanding of the natural world, the IQ test, birth control, the gifted
student program, the use of performance metrics in school and workplaces to
justify glass ceilings, firings, mass deportation, and mass sterilizations of
anyone deemed deficient in any way by society. The work americans did to
create a legal framework for eugenics would be borrowed by the Nazis to create
their own legal framework for the deportation and final solution of the jews.

~~~
dragonwriter
> White was also not considered a race in the 20's.

Yes, it was.

> There were Nordics, Jews, Irish, Eastern Europeans, and Southern Europeans.

The existence of those groups, and the fact that then-current concepts of
whiteness would exclude some or all of them, doesn't change the fact that
“White” was the identity of the dominant racial group, and had been for quite
some time by the 1920s.

> I should also mention, this is the deeply disturbing origin of the
> progressive movement in america.

No, it wasn't. Oh, deeply disturbing it was, but it wasn't the origin of the
progressive movement in America. It's true that the eugenics movement occurred
within one of many (often overlapping in time) movements that took the name
“progressive” in US history, but it wasn't the first, nor one historically
strongly connected to any of the modern groups with the name.

~~~
Braggadocious
I respect your decision to be completely and utterly wrong. The progressive
movement was the movement of eugenics. We were going to improve the human race
through science, technology, and industrialization. Rockefeller Foundation
funded eugenics research. Carnegie and Stanford created the scientific studies
that would help support hundreds of new eugenics laws. UC Berkeley, Harvard,
Columbia, etc would teach eugenics to students. We wiped the history clean of
all this during WWII, but if you do some keen wikipedia'ing, or go oldschool
and read some books, it's all there for you.

And no, there was no group of white people saying white people are all great,
stick together, etc. That wouldnt happen until the 60's and 70's, after
eugenics was taboo.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I respect your decision to be completely and utterly wrong

That’s hilarious but...

> The progressive movement was the movement of eugenics.

There, again, have been a number of separate “progressive” movements in US
history, eugenics was a minority view within one of them. But, while you are
wrong here, it's not nearly so flagrantly wrong as:

> And no, there was no group of white people saying white people are all
> great, stick together, etc. That wouldnt happen until the 60's and 70's,
> after eugenics was taboo.

I don't think it ever happened; even white racists don't tend to think white
people are all great. But, no, white racists that saw the race they favored as
the “white” race did not first show up in the 1960s-1970s, as evidence by the
Cornerstone Speech in which Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens laid
out his view of the central case for the Confederate cause in _18_ 61: “...Our
new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are
laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal
to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his
natural and normal condition. ...”

~~~
Braggadocious
The progressive era was between the start of the industrial revolution and the
start of WWII.

>even white racists don't tend to think white people are all great.

You are so committed to this modern liberal partisan revisionist
historiography that you are willing to admit the narrative doesn't make any
sense, and yet equally willing to keep at it. That's commitment.

Irish, Italians, russians, and other "inferior" whites were always considered
white. "White" has never and will never be the barrier to entry into this
country or into the american hierarchy. Looks, charm, stature, sharpness of
mind, focus on meaningful pursuits like work, not being too interested in
"meaningless pursuits" like art and music. Not being promiscuous, no
criminality, no epilepsy, no "feeble-mindedness" or imbecility. This is what
race was about. Virginia aristocracy, the Boston Brahmins etc, were spurred on
by the leading science and technology of the day, to believe these attributes
were genetically inherited and "selected" by nature, which meant they could
also be selected with Mendelism. We were not interested in a "white race."
Since race was something you could control, we were interested in a "superior
american germplasm" a genepool of the best of the best while the rest were
sterilized, aborted, deported, or imprisoned in jails, asylums, or
reservations. American eugenicists were interested in "building a race." A
concept Hitler adopted and was quoted talking about fairly often.

Racism was not white vs black. Its nowhere near that simple

~~~
dragonwriter
> Racism was not white vs black.

Racism _was and is_ more complex than _just_ white vs. black, but that wasn't
your claim upthread that I have been arguing against.

What you claimed previously was that _white was not considered a race_ before
the 1920s. It absolutely was, and there are copious prominent invocations of
white racial identity in US history prior to that time—as I've shown with the
Cornerstone speech—and while racism is more complex than _just_ white vs.
black (and ideas of just who is white have evolved), white vs. black has been
a key racial divide for the whole history of the country.

------
hutzlibu
"We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for
democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. How else is the
world to take America seriously, when democracy at home is daily being
outraged, free speech suppressed, peaceable assemblies broken up by
overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform; when free press is curtailed and
every independent opinion gagged? Verily, poor as we are in democracy, how can
we give of it to the world? "

Emma Goldman, one of the deported radicals, wrote this 1917.

~~~
CryptoPunk
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman)

>>She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend,
planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act
of propaganda of the deed. Frick survived the attempt on his life in 1892, and
Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison

~~~
hutzlibu
She also did not condemn the murder of president McKinley. So? Does that
invalidate anything of what she wrote?

~~~
rayiner
Without delving deeper into the facts, it raises the possibility that what
she’s portraying as suppression of free speech and independent thinking is
actually a legitimate reaction to someone engaged in criminal activity.

~~~
hutzlibu
Individually there were indeed quite some anarchists and communistsengaged in
criminal activity. But not at all, all of them. And this is the point: Radical
people do want to change the current system completely. But there is a big
difference between working on peacefull opposition and organizing in unions
for example, than active terrorism. Those raids in the article were targeted
on radicals, no matter the criminal activity of them - they targeted simply
political opponents. Did raids, beatings and torture without warrants.
Eventually deporting. Not really democratic.

And when you have the state doing this, than it is hypocrisy for this state to
go to war for democracy.

And this criticism is valid, even if the person expressing it, did engage in
criminal herself earlier in her life.

------
mc32
The British empire essentially deported many of its criminals to Australia.
The USSR banished their radicals to Siberia... I’m sure others have done
similar.

~~~
eng888888
Yeah but none of those claim to be the "land of the freedom" and other
platitudes as loudly as the Americans

~~~
stereolambda
This seems to be written in mean spirit, but is essentially true. America is
supposed to be founded upon an ideology, and deserves scrutiny whether this
ideology is upheld. (Incidentally, USSR, albeit not Russia, was also this
way.) I'm not American, for example, and my sympathy for that country tends to
be proportional to how much free and constitutional I find it.

The article is somewhat biased, but includes enough information to invite some
reflecting on those problems. It paints an image of how many people might have
been actually fearing a violent revolution, for example. It also shows how
such fears can interplay with how law is executed.

~~~
mistermann
> This seems to be written in mean spirit, but is essentially true. America is
> supposed to be founded upon an ideology, and deserves scrutiny whether this
> ideology is upheld.

This is why I admire China, and think they will win, even if they had to tie
one hand behind their back. This Western notion that we have to uphold certain
principles, without actually upholding them, is one of our many Achilles
heels. We have to struggle with all this theoretical and historical baggage
that people take soooóooo seriously, regardless of whether it really matters,
sowing social discontent, and they just continue to do what's pragmatic,
sowing social harmony over time as those slighted see that it is for the
greater good.

The ego of the Western mind is a force to be reckoned with, for the West.

------
Animats
Amusingly, a question today is what to do with people who left their country
to fight with the Islamic State? Take them back? Keep them out? Send them to
re-education camps? Turkey has a lot of them, and they're not Turkish. Turkey
wants to unload them. "There is no need to try to escape from it, we will send
them back to you. Deal with them how you want." The UK doesn't want theirs
back. France has decided to take theirs back. Sweden is taking theirs back but
sending them to re-education camps. The US only has a few, so they can be
dealt with individually.

------
pjc50
This kind of thing is why it's important to challenge the framing of people as
"illegal"; citizenship is an administrative category, and abusive governments
can find all sorts of excuses to end or revoke it.

~~~
Mikeb85
They committed a crime (crossing a border illegally). What should you call it
if not illegal immigration?

What do you call robbing a bank? Undocumented withdrawal? No, it's a crime.

~~~
fzeroracer
People that smoke Marijuana have also committed a crime. As well as people
that jaywalk, or violate any of the obscure laws the various states have on
the books. They're all criminals, wouldn't you agree?

We should call them illegal citizens. Then we can start working towards
deporting such criminals as the article demonstrates.

~~~
Mikeb85
> We should call them illegal citizens. Then we can start working towards
> deporting such criminals as the article demonstrates.

Well international law prevents you from making someone stateless so they get
thrown in jail instead. But yes, non-citizens who commit crimes are generally
deported.

Also, the US classes crimes as either felonies or misdemeanours (possibly more
categories?). In Canada we have indictable crimes, summary offences and things
like jaywalking aren't even crimes, just ticketable offences. It's
disingenuous of you to compare something like jaywalking to actual crimes.

~~~
fzeroracer
International law hasn't stopped the US before. So why bother? We can just
deport these illegal citizens to the place that best matches their heritage.
Problem solved.

And in the US, jaywalking is a crime. A crime is a crime, which makes
jaywalking a crime all the same. If they decided to jaywalk, then they deserve
to be deported for their criminal actions.

For reference: Crossing the boarder illegally is a misdemeanor just like
jaywalking.

~~~
manigandham
Crossing a federal border to enter a sovereign nation is nothing like
jaywalking. Crimes have levels of seriousness, and non-citizens have more
serious consequences from committing crimes including deportation.

------
delibash___
Fascinating thread. Would be interesting to see the racial and socioeconomic
breakdown of its participants.

------
qnsi
judging from title it sounds interesting. But I wish it was written more in
wikipedia style, without book-like descriptions of shackles etc

