Matthew Sherlock

11/25/19
HIST 281, John Abbot
Racism, step by step, Know Nothing to Internet Trolls
Americans have a complicated relationship with their own past. In particular the ways

that the American dream was monopolized by one people over all other. The predominance of

the prototypical W.A.S.P. (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant for those that are not familiar with

this specific shorthand) was a specter in American life for a long time. So long that it was not

even articulated as such for a long time, it was just something that people understood and

more or less accepted. As time went on and society evolved the definition of white expanded,

but there was always an out group. The people that they refused to allow an equal shake, the

slave, the foreigner, and the native. Regardless of what the “Whites” for lack of a better term

wanted however, society continued to evolve and the lines between them and the outcast

blurred. The slaves were freed, the foreigners assimilated with the larger populace, and the

natives though faded refused to disappear. Time kept ticking and these groups kept pushing,

gaining what had been denied, recognition that they were as much a part of America as the

whites were and deserved the same rights that they got. These changes got push back, and that

is where we will turn our gaze. Our story begins (or at least starts, as racial tension is as old as

the first colonies) in the 1850’s with north eastern port cities and the Know nothings.

The 1850’s was a time of questions. The question of what kind of nation that the united

states would become, or if it was even a nation at all. Americans were much more local in those

days. The train was a recent addition to American life, the union army small, and the south

were still slaves’ states. The civil war was still in the future, and the cities of New York, New
England, and the emerging cities of the Midwest were being flooded by new arrivals from all

over Europe. Crop failures in Ireland, political unrest on the continent, it is little surprise that

they would come to the united states. The problem was where they were coming, and who was

coming. The new immigrates were not the good well-off Anglo-Saxon Englishmen that some

would prefer, they were desperate Irish and German Catholics. They were seen as drunken,

rowdy, culturally subversive, and not their best (not to different to modern concerns with

Latino immigrants, to quote a certain politician "When Mexico sends its people, they're not

sending their best…They're sending people that have a lot of problems, and they're bringing

those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And

some, I assume, are good people."1) The reaction took the form that would repeat so often, the

formation of so-called nativist movements. They are remembered as the know nothings, so

called because of the secret societies that made up the initial wave of the movement. The

secretive nature of this movement attracted many members, but without an ideology behind

them (and the tensions that make such a ideology attractive) they wouldn’t get far. Tyler

Anbinder states “at the heart of the Know Nothing lays six basic tenets…first…Protestantism

defined American society…Second, Know Nothings maintained that Catholicism was not

compatible with the basic values Americans cherished most…third [“papists” had more power

than their number should allow] … Antipathy for political parties… Finally [legal limits of slavery

and liquor consumption2”. These tenets are still reflected today, cries of how Islam is

incompatible with democracy, that politicians are corrupt, and that power too concentrated in

1
Mark, Michelle. “Trump Just Referred to One of His Most Infamous Campaign Comments: Calling Mexicans
'Rapists'.” Business Insider. Business Insider, April 5, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-mexicans-
rapists-remark-reference-2018-4.
2
Tyler Anbinder, Nativism & Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850's (Oxford University
Press,1992), 104-106.
the blue states. The Know nothing party was extremely prevalent in the north and helped to

entrench the hold of republican politicians. They faded into the background however, they

were a one trick pony and as popular as they were their views had niche appeal. When the

Know Nothings fell apart, the members found a new place to voice their hate. The KKK had

arrived on the American scene in 1866, and race relations got worse.

The first Klan was created by a former confederate commander by the name of Nathan

Bedford Forrest. They were a terrorist group that was made up of former rebels that killed

black men and their allies, burning crosses, and created a myth of hooded men going out to

“protect” innocent white men. This initial Klan was not as successful as their later descendants,

with the pressure of government garrison troops and limited appeal outside of the former

confederation keeping them regional. The second Klan of the 1920’s however, was truly a

national movement. Surprisingly enough what lit the fires of the second Klan was a movie, a

murder, and a book. The gist is that “Birth of a nation” was released in the 20’s and the

portrayal of the KKK as heroic guardians they though of themselves as instead of the glorified

bandits that they actually were was the best propaganda they could have asked for. The

fictitious “protocols of Zion” were published in the US, inflaming existing anti-Semitism by

making their irrational fears seem justified. Leo frank, a Jewish businessman, was falsely

accused of rape, murder, then lynched in 19153. The KKK reborn, from ink, from celluloid, and

from blood. This KKK however was not content with being simple killers, no they had bigger

ambitions than that. They wanted to be a political movement. So they did all they could to

increase their mystique, and clean up their image. They hired professional PR firms, advertising
3
Lind Gordon, The second coming of the KKK: the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American political tradition
(Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017), 11.
in mass media, and large-scale events. These were not country rubes; they treated the

movement like a business and they sold themselves to the public 4. Politicians feared their

wraith, “Neither major political party…---could be persuaded to condemn the Ku Klux Klan. 5”

Then they collapsed, internal power struggle, criminal embezzlement, and arrests of their

leadership for various violent crimes took their toll on the organization. They grew weaker and

weaker, fading into obscurity. In a time of fascism and rising nationalism it is unsurprising that a

hate group like the Klan would gain so much influence, but unlike the Nazis they had very little

interest in over throwing democracy. In the 1920’s, racism was a widely accepted part of life

and White Anglo-Saxon Protestant were an iron clad majority. That world no longer exists in the

year of 2019, which bring us to the successors of the KKK that fester in the dark rancid corners

of the internet. The right-wing echo chamber that we know as the Alt-Right.

The Alt-Right is something that has been building in the background for a long time. The

obvious ancestors of the Alt-Right are the KKK, the Nativists, and the Nazi party. However, the

Alt-Right has more Immediate roots in 9/11 and the bush administration. The Fall of the twin

towers and the war that followed supercharged the ultra-nationalists set, to question the

motives and methods of the republican president would be to be a traitor to the good old USA.

Anti-war liberals were pushed to the wayside, making reporting more one-sided. Demographics

shifted as more Latinos immigrated, with the wartime attitude of the conservatives at a fevered

pitch it took little for the inhabitance of formerly white only communities to make the

connection between the brown people that they were fighting oversea and the brown people

4
Lind Gordon, The second coming of the KKK: the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American political tradition
(Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017), 63.
5
Lind Gordon, The second coming of the KKK: the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American political tradition
(Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017), 165.
that “invaded” their neighborhoods6. When Obama was elected and the wartime posture of the

conservatives faded into the background, you would think that racial tensions would start to

abate. Instead the rage of the old school racist flared up, they did all they could to remove his

legitimacy as a president. But the thing that really led to the rise of the Alt-Right was the

internet. For the good it caused and is capable of, the Alt-Right found a home on the

information superhighway. The internet could be flooded by false information, offer complete

anonymity, and allow connectivity of like-minded racists. This toxic mixture manifest in

seemingly inconsequential ways, like gamergate, to potentially dangerous ways, white

nationalism and men’s rights “activism”7. Trump rode this cresting wave all the way to the

white house, in many ways he is the prototypical Alt-Right Troll. Loud, brash, attention hogging,

and extremely reactionary.

So why have we spent nearly six pages talking about this. Well it a message of hope. As

hard as these times are, this is not the first time. It won’t be easy, and it is likely that the cycle

of abuse and racial hatred is not going away anytime soon. Someday though, it will end. Every

time that racism gets an upswing, soon after it fails. Every time it comes back, it gets less

powerful, less prolific, and more fringe. No one knows what the future hold, but if history is any

indication, when this is over the future will be more little more open.

“Works Consulted”

-Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850's By Tyler

Anbinder, Oxford University Press, 1992

6
David Neiwert, Alt-America: the rise of the radical right in the age of Trump (Verso,2017), 73-86.
7
David Neiwert, Alt-America: the rise of the radical right in the age of Trump (Verso,2017), 213-261
-The second coming of the KKK: the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American political

tradition by Lind Gordon, Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017

- Alt-America : the rise of the radical right in the age of Trump by David Neiwert, Verso, 2017

- Mark, Michelle. “Trump Just Referred to One of His Most Infamous Campaign Comments:

Calling Mexicans 'Rapists'.” Business Insider. Business Insider, April 5, 2018.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-mexicans-rapists-remark-reference-2018-4.