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Behind the Aegis

(53,833 posts)
Mon Nov 21, 2016, 02:37 AM Nov 2016

That Other Time Jews Were Hated in America and 3 Lessons To Learn from It Now

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!

"America First!” “Absolute control of the United States by the United States!” “Return to Normalcy!” These may sound like slogans emanating from the campaign of Donald J. Trump, but in fact they date back to 1920, when Warren G. Harding was elected president.

The Harding election, like that of Trump, represented a sharp and shocking break from the policies of the previous Democratic administration, the liberal presidency of Woodrow Wilson. The ugliness that accompanied the administration of the conservative-minded Harding, and responses to it, offer lessons and perhaps even some solace for our own troubled times.

Harding’s election spelled the death-knell to the last Jewish hopes that America’s gates might be kept open, at least for victims of persecution. The Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 limited, for the first time, the total number of immigrants who could be admitted into the United States and also introduced a country by country quota that made it particularly difficult for Jews from Russia and Poland to obtain immigration certificates. Meanwhile, more immigrants than ever before were deported for their political views, and entry requirements at Ellis Island were tightened. “Chauvinistic nationalism is rampant,” Louis Marshall, the foremost American Jewish leader of his day and a strong proponent of liberal immigration privately complained. “The hatred of everything foreign has become an obsession.”

Nor was hatred confined only to foreigners. Domestically, hatred of blacks, Catholics, Jews and others surged across the United States in the wake of the Harding election, so much so that historian John Higham famously dubbed the era “The Tribal Twenties.” The Ku Klux Klan, reborn as a small Georgia operation in 1915, flourished under the new administration; at its peak in the 1920s it claimed a membership of 4 to 5 million white males. Numerous municipalities and at least one state, Oregon, enacted laws effectively banning Catholic parochial schools. Discrimination against Jews likewise magnified. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and numerous other universities, private and public, limited Jewish student enrollments, as did innumerable private academies and preparatory schools. Fraternities, clubs, hotels and resorts, in many cases, shut Jews out completely.

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That Other Time Jews Were Hated in America and 3 Lessons To Learn from It Now (Original Post) Behind the Aegis Nov 2016 OP
Muslims are the new Jews. Latin Americans and Middel Easterners are the new... Nitram Nov 2016 #1
And many of these policies and others, marybourg Nov 2016 #2
This is a good read, thanks for posting. JudyM Nov 2016 #3

Nitram

(22,671 posts)
1. Muslims are the new Jews. Latin Americans and Middel Easterners are the new...
Mon Nov 21, 2016, 09:48 AM
Nov 2016

Greek, Italian, Polish, Slovak, Serb, Russian immigrants of the 1920s. Its deja vu all over again.

marybourg

(12,540 posts)
2. And many of these policies and others,
Mon Nov 21, 2016, 11:54 AM
Nov 2016

lingered into my youth in the '50's, limiting the educational, career, residence and travel opportunities for my peers (sexism was a bigger barrier in my case).

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