Friday, October 9, 2020

When Love of Country = Hatred of Ordinary People: A Look Back At Capitalist "Patriotism"

 

1920: Nationwide

Class-Warfare Glossary

Hyphenated Americans n.—recent immigrants from Central Europe who were “disloyalists” during WWI because of their “split” national identities

100% Americans n.—Americans of undivided loyalties, blindly devoted to the state and the private interests that dominate it. Soon to be known as fascists.

American Plan n.—the inalienable right of all workers to rent their labor for whatever desperation allows them to get; syn., the Open Shop

Bolshevism n.—an absurd and outrageously dangerous doctrine holding that the worker’s lot can be improved through collective action

Bolshevist front n.—the ideological arm of Satan, i.e. a union

Industrial Freedom n.—(1) the employer’s freedom to buy and sell workers; (2) the workers’ liberty to rent themselves or starve

Radical n.—an extremist dedicated to the heresy that starvation ought to be cured before luxury is indulged

Parlor Pink n. a middle class reformer who fails to see diabolic trickery in the radical

Patriotic Society n.—a band of rabid vigilantes whose love of country is expressed with the hangman’s noose

Superpatriot n.—a professional killer with a roving commission

Subversive n.—a worker unconvinced of the need to labor to exhaustion for poverty wages

Traitor n.—a worker who fails to see good will in his exploiters9

 

Sources: 

Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement In The United States, Volume 8, Postwar Struggles, 1918-1920 (International Publishers, 1988) p. 172-3; Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume 7, Labor and World War I 1914-1918, (International Publishers, 1987) p. 254; Louis Adamic, Dynamite - The Story of Class Violence in America, (Chelsea House, , 1958) pps. 325-6

1920: New York City

Portrait Of An Extremist Program

W. E. B. DuBois draws up an NAACP litmus test for the presidential campaign. Its alarming content proves too radical for any candidate to support: (1) a federal anti-lynching bill (2) reduction of Southern representation in the federal government proportional to the politically excluded black population under Jim Crow (3) abolition of Jim Crow cars in interstate travel (4) an end to segregation in federal civil service (5) withdrawal of U.S. forces from occupied Haiti (6) equality of federal aid in elementary education (7) the enrollment of black officers in the armed forces proportionate to their numbers in the general population.10

 

Source:

 

David Levering Lewis, Vol. 2, W. E. B. DuBois - The Fight For Equality and the American Century 1919-1963 (Henry Holt, 2000) p. 28

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