Fox News host Laura Ingraham went on a shocking racist tirade during the Wednesday night broadcast of her show.
“The America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like,” she said. “This is related to both illegal and, in some cases, legal immigration that, of course, progressives love.”
Historian Kevin Kruse delivered a massive and scholarly Twitter response that traced Ingraham’s comments to the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan in the 20th century.
“This bears strong echoes of the racist screeds of the 1910s and 1920s that paved the way for the rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan and immigration restriction at home, and much worse abroad,” he wrote.
“The Ku Klux Klan used this popular panic over immigration to revive itself as a national organization in the 1920s,” Kruse continued.
He discussed a Grand Dragon meeting in 1923 that “focused a great deal on the supposed demographic threat that new immigration posed to old-stock Americans and the need to crack down on it.
Kruse then explained how America helped the Nazis form their ideology through racist legislation.
“The popular panic over immigration, and the pseudo-scientific justifications for nativism and racism, came together in the push for the National Origins Act of 1924, a measure that drastically reduced immigration from SE Europe and banned Asians from immigrating entirely,” Kruse explains.
This law “served as a model for the racial citizenship laws that took root in Nazi Germany a decade later.”
Kruse concludes with a warning: “We need to remember that, a century ago, unhinged fear-mongering about “demographic changes” in the American population led not just to drastic immigration restrictions at home, but to disastrous horrors abroad.”
Read the full thread below.
This bears strong echoes of the racist screeds of the 1910s and 1920s that paved the way for the rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan and immigration restriction at home, and much worse abroad. https://t.co/gPBsQCulPC
Consider Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race (1916), which complained about unwanted demographic changes in the same terms.
Older Americans from the "Nordic race," Grant warned, were increasingly being displaced by newer immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. pic.twitter.com/2jjFyc38aM
White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, Grant complained, weren't reproducing at rates fast enough to keep up with "the Slovak, the Italian, the Syrian and the Jew."
"Suicidal ethics" permitted this unwanted immigration, which was already "exterminating" the old stock American "race." pic.twitter.com/jCL3l7RsEN
In The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World Supremacy (1920), Lothrop Stoddard warned that white races were being engulfed by the more fertile colored races. pic.twitter.com/nIyaxOeX9I
In the Saturday Evening Post, Kenneth Roberts warned about arrivals of Polish Jews, who were "human parasites."
Unrestricted immigration would create "a hybrid race of people as worthless and futile as the good-for-nothing mongrels of Central America and Southeastern Europe."
In 1922, the Klan's Imperial Wizard warned about "the tremendous influx of foreign immigration, tutored in alien dogmas and alien creeds, slowly pushing the native-born white American population into the center of the country, there to be ultimately overwhelmed and smothered." pic.twitter.com/Mf4XDYT40S
In 1923, a meeting of Grand Dragons of the Klan focused a great deal on the supposed demographic threat that new immigration posed to old-stock Americans and the need to crack down on it.
The popular panic over immigration, and the pseudo-scientific justifications for nativism and racism, came together in the push for the National Origins Act of 1924, a measure that drastically reduced immigration from SE Europe and banned Asians from immigrating entirely.
Here's Senator "Cotton Ed" Smith (D-SC) invoking Madison Grant's work in his speech calling for passage of the immigration restriction law. pic.twitter.com/QHjHvl3ADW
The National Origins Act of 1924 was passed by overwhelming margins in both houses of Congress, with equally strong support from both major parties. pic.twitter.com/TqQIFcLDip
The National Origins Act of 1924 not only shut the door on a centuries-old tradition of open immigration to America.
As James Whitman has noted, it also served as a model for the racial citizenship laws that took root in Nazi Germany a decade later. pic.twitter.com/VPPfGP8Z2U
We need to remember that, a century ago, unhinged fear-mongering about "demographic changes" in the American population led not just to drastic immigration restrictions at home, but to disastrous horrors abroad.
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Historian dismantles Laura Ingraham’s shocking racist tirade
09 Aug 2018 at 13:08 ET
Fox News host Laura Ingraham went on a shocking racist tirade during the Wednesday night broadcast of her show.
“The America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like,” she said. “This is related to both illegal and, in some cases, legal immigration that, of course, progressives love.”
Historian Kevin Kruse delivered a massive and scholarly Twitter response that traced Ingraham’s comments to the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan in the 20th century.
“This bears strong echoes of the racist screeds of the 1910s and 1920s that paved the way for the rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan and immigration restriction at home, and much worse abroad,” he wrote.
“The Ku Klux Klan used this popular panic over immigration to revive itself as a national organization in the 1920s,” Kruse continued.
He discussed a Grand Dragon meeting in 1923 that “focused a great deal on the supposed demographic threat that new immigration posed to old-stock Americans and the need to crack down on it.
Kruse then explained how America helped the Nazis form their ideology through racist legislation.
“The popular panic over immigration, and the pseudo-scientific justifications for nativism and racism, came together in the push for the National Origins Act of 1924, a measure that drastically reduced immigration from SE Europe and banned Asians from immigrating entirely,” Kruse explains.
This law “served as a model for the racial citizenship laws that took root in Nazi Germany a decade later.”
Kruse concludes with a warning: “We need to remember that, a century ago, unhinged fear-mongering about “demographic changes” in the American population led not just to drastic immigration restrictions at home, but to disastrous horrors abroad.”
Read the full thread below.
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