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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
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Introduction
As I say in the title of this column (which in part is a return to a column that I published back in 2022), xenophobia, so prominently displayed in the Trumpublican Party, has in fact been part of Republican dogma since the very beginnings of the Party and its predecessors, dating from the 1850s. Trump, of course, in his original 2015 "golden staircase" announcement for the Republican Presidential nomination of 2016, made it clear as a bell that xenophobia is at the center of his political doctrine (followed closely by racism and sexism). And now, as he tragically approaches the Presidency again, xenophobia is at the center of his very first announced major policy initiative: expulsion, not only of Latino illegal (or possibly illegal) residents of the United Sates, but also of certain birthright citizens.
Of course, the latter move would be a clear violation of Section 1 of the XIVth Amendment. But Trumpers, up to (or down to) the TrumpSupreme Court, do not care too much about the Constitution. (Indeed, for the Court, for example, with the "immunity" decision blithely amended Article II of the Constitution [the one which describes the powers and the scope of the Presidency]) without bothering to go through the Amendment process. As it happens, Art. II has nothing in it even vaguely connected to some concept of "Presidential Immunity.") As it happens, Republican xenophobia, which Trump spends so much time spouting and then turning into policy, actually goes back to the days of the Party's founding, and has been present in Republican doctrine and politics ever since.
It began with Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United Sates. He was the last Whig to hold that office, succeeding to it in 1850 upon the death of Zachary Taylor. Denied his own party's Presidential nomination for re-election in 1852, he joined the newly-minted, openly xenophobic, American Party (otherwise known as the "Know-Nothings") and became their Presidential candidate in 1856. His party was known for its violent (sometimes literally) antagonism towards the Irish (Catholic) immigrants who had been fleeing a very poor homeland for the United States since the 1830s, a flow that only increased with the Potato Famine of the mid-1840s. Following that Presidential campaign, in which the "Know-nothings" fared poorly, Fillmore, looking for another political place to land, went on to become one of the founders of the Republican Party. Of course, the original Republican Party is known for its pursuance of the Civil War and the eventual abolition of slavery. But the "know-nothingism," the xenophobia that Fillmore and others like him brought to it, has festered off-and-on over the years, down to the present time.
For example, it was in 1875, before Reconstruction officially came to an end, that the Republicans in Congress enacted the nation's first specifically anti-immigrant law, the Page Act. It was designed to prevent the immigration of Chinese women. Can't be birthing Chinese-ancestry people here, now can we --- sound familiar? They were coming in to join the Chinese laborers who in the 1850's and 60's had done much of the heavy manual labor to build the Western side of the first transcontinental railroad, through the mountains. Then in 1882 the Republicans enacted the both-sexes Chinese Exclusion Act. About 40 years later came the infamous, Republican, Immigration Act of 1924. Language very similar to that of the current "Great Replacement Theory" echoed in the propaganda promoting it that Act. It banned immigration from all of Asia and set severe quotas for immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, among other restrictions. (This led to, among other things, the virtual impossibility for Jewish refugees from the Nazis getting into this country during the 1930s and early 40s, until the Second World War cut off Europe completely.)
For a change, in the mid-60s, what is now looked back upon as a remarkably liberal Republican Party, agreed to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which liberalized matters as they had been established in 1924 very significantly. But with xenophobia again gradually rearing its ugly head in portions of the Republican Party in this century (specifically among the members of misnamed "Freedom" Caucus), Trump put it back at the head of the line of Republican policy, beginning with the speech that accompanied his entrance into Presidential history on the gold (or is it "gold"?) escalator. BUT, the point here is that this is nothing new for the Repubs. It just a resurgence of policy that has been in the blood (one might say) of the Party since its founding. Trump and the Trumpers are just doubling down on it.
On Racism
For most of its existence since the end of Reconstruction following the election of 1876, the Republican Party has been the party of reaction in the United States. In fact, the only reason that Rutherford B. Hayes, the GOP candidate in that disputed election, won, was that he agreed to end Reconstruction, essentially turning over the Southern states to the former slaveholders and the Ku Klux Klan. Very quickly, despite the best efforts of President Grant, 1869-1877, "The Party of Lincoln" (some Repubs. amazingly still use that term) had become the Party of Grant's predecessor, Lincoln's successor, the racist, pro-slavery, Andrew Johnson (who most unfortunately Lincoln had chosen to "balance" his ticket in 1864). Thus, with the end of Reconstruction, which the Party sacrificed in order to keep the Presidency in Republican hands, it very soon clearly and openly turned a blind eye to the successor to slavery, Jim Crow. Over time, there were two bright Republican exceptions to this rule (to a greater or lesser extent), Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. But in neither case did their influence last very long.
And then came Richard Nixon. He was successively: a violent political red-baiter from his first (successful) run for Congress in Southern California in 1946; an avatar of Joseph McCarthy (and his right-hand man, Roy Cohn, who would later become Trump's mentor); in the 1950s a virulent "anti-communist" abroad (who nevertheless later engaged in the first "de'tente" with the Soviet Union in the late 1950s when he was the Vice-President); when he became President in 1968, an expander of the war on Viet Nam; but then later, as President he "opened the door to China." But with all of this, in his first 20 years in politics he was not known, particularly, as a racist.
However, then, in the late 1960s, as is well-known, following the passage by the Democrats of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (!965), both of which of course thoroughly alienated the old-line "Southern Democrats," Nixon invented the Republican "Southern Strategy." It openly moved into the Southern racist politics that the Democratic Party had left behind when it got solidly behind the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The Southern Strategy has dominated Republican Party politics ever since. Even before that, they nominated Barry Goldwater for President in 1964 (Goldwater had famously voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Then in the 1970's, after the Nixon resignation, the Party began the "clean-out" of the (relatively) liberal wing of their party, starting with getting rid of the last major "big-government" voice in it, that of Nelson Rockefeller.
Ronald Reagan, elected President in 1980, then consolidated the historical stream of GOP-led right-wing Reaction that we now see in front of us, every day, for example on racism. The first campaign stop that Ronald Reagan made following his nomination for President by the Republican Party in 1980 was to the tiny hamlet of Philadelphia, MS. The village is significant historically only because it is the place that three northern civil rights workers were murdered by a white gang, including members of law enforcement, in the "Freedom Summer" of 1964. Nothing outrightedly racist, but very symbolic to those Southerners who took note of such things.
That was followed by his usage of racist terms, during his Presidency, like "welfare queen" and "young bucks." Such epithets and actions came to be known as "dog-whistles," because they were not openly racist. African-Americans, however, clearly knew where Reagan was coming from. Asked in an interview on NPR, a person with an African-American accent was asked if John Hinckley, Jr. (Reagan's attempted assassin) did anything wrong, she promptly replied "he missed."
Although comprising an overall minority in the country, as is well-known far right-wing voters are concentrated in the Republican Party. And is also well-known they came to dominate the Republican primaries, meaning, of course, that Republican reactionaries always had a better chance of winning their party's nomination at any level than did liberal Republicans. And so, within the Republican Party the "Rightwing Imperative," that is to be able to win a Repub. nomination one had to move ever-further-and-further to the Right, was born. And so, did the party eventually end up with the Louis Gohmerts, the Steve Kings, the Jim Jordans, and now the Chip Roys and Kevin McCarthys of this world.
Trumpian Racism/Xenophobia
And so, it came to Trump to "take the hood off," politically, starting with his open and virulent sponsorship and use of the birtherism myth against President Obama, beginning in 2011 (as dealt with frequently in this space), then continuing in the 2015-16 election campaign, through 2020, and on to a Trump win again, now with "Expulsion-of-Latino-Immigrants" (and others-not-specifically-mentioned) right up there at the top of his agenda. (See also on that agenda the prime necessity of "going after his enemies." E.g., Kash Patel's primary list of his goals if he becomes Director of the FBI. That is, in Patel's words, is to attack every "enemy of Trump" he can get his hands on by the use of the FBI as he would reconstruct it.)
And so, is xenophobia something new for Republicans and Republican political doctrine? Is it something that Trump has just introduced to Republican politics? Well, no. It goes all the way back to Millard Fillmore and the Know-Nothings and their role in the founding in the 1850's of what became the Republican Party.
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