The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History [Paperback]

According to historian David Bennett, the parties of fear took many forms, from the anti-Masonic parties of the 1790s to the Know-Nothings of the 1850s. The American Protective Associations of the 1890s subscribed to nativist formulas, as did the acolytes of the Red Scares after World War I. The Ku Klux Klan became an archetype of anti-alienism during the raucous 1920s. A different sort of nativist ideology emerged after the fall of the Klan, in the form of McCarthyism, the John Birch Society, and the New Right of the 1970s and 1980s. Bennett finds common threads in all of these movements and organizations. Subscribers to the ideologies of hate believed in an America resembling a Garden of Eden, a perfect paradise that promised "freedom, opportunity, individualism, equality for all true Americans." Aliens, outsiders who spoke strange languages, practiced inferior religions, and looked different represented a threat to this concept of an edenic America. Nativists abhorred the foreigners' presence, and they were willing to abandon the very principles they cherished in the fight to preserve their country. Moreover, rising to the endless challenges presented by waves of immigrants and foreign ideas allowed these super patriots to find shelter from status anxiety by banding together with like-minded people.

The history of nativism from the inception of the United States to the 1930s oscillated between anti-Masonic, anti-Catholic, and anti-communist sentiments. Concerns about Freemasonry welded with suspicions of Illuminism offered a hope for Federalists who wished to regain their waning influence in the 1790s. The early anti-communist attacks occurred shortly after the First World War with the Palmer Raids. By far the most important fuel for nativist fires during this period was the Catholics. Hatred of "Romanists" and "Papists" first surfaced during the colonial era when religious animosities between England and Spain traveled across the Atlantic to America. By the middle of the eighteenth century, anti-Catholic attacks by Protestants reached a fever pitch as Irish immigration into the country soared to undreamt of heights. The secret societies of the 1830s fought pitched battles with recently arrived men of Eire in the streets of eastern cities. These gangs eventually coalesced into the Know-Nothings of the 1850s, a third party that gained success in local and state elections on a platform filled with anti-Catholicism. The disintegration of this party due to divisions over slavery, and the subsequent Civil War, briefly quieted nativism. The American Protective Associations of the late eighteenth century and the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s marked the high water of anti-Catholic attacks.

When the United States failed to fall prey to the Vatican, anti-alienists moved on to other lucrative ventures. They also, according to Bennett, shifted their fears from foreigners to foreign ideas. The old nativism declined due to a number of factors. Immigration slowed thanks to the national quota acts of 1924, cosmopolitanism triumphed, and the economic policies of the Roosevelt administration greatly alleviated the old fears traditionally transferred to immigrants. Additionally playing a part were the rise of corporate ethics, which placed an emphasis on performance over ethnicity, and academics such as Franz Boas who eroded the old concepts of Social Darwinism and racial superiority. From the 1930s on, those movements that still insisted on blaming foreigners for the ills of the country moved further and further to the fringes of the right. The "mainstream" parties of fear attacked communism with a zeal reminiscent of the old anti-Romanist fanatics, but it was an "inverted" nativism led by Catholics like Father Coughlin and Joseph McCarthy who launched salvos against a Protestant elite perceived as soft on Moscow.

Bennett's book resembles in no small way Seymour Lipset's and Earl Raab's "The Politics of Unreason." Both studies recognized fear and anxiety over status as motivating factors of American nativism. Bennett does a better job in his book, however, because he examines the myriad factors that inspired anti-alienism. For example, chapters describing the rise of the secret societies and the Know-Nothings also describe the host of ills caused by a flood of Irish immigrants. Crime rates and public expenditures exploded in eastern cities unequipped to handle the huge influx of uneducated foreigners unfamiliar with the American system. Moreover, citizens worried about immigrants driving down wages, diseases, and the swelling size of the cities where the Irish stayed after arriving in the country. By showing the very real circumstances behind the rise of anti-Catholic, anti-Irish attitudes, the author allows nativist attitudes to assume context.

Factual errors are not as troubling as the author's occasional forays into psychohistorical speculation. For example, after a lengthy section detailing the popularity of anti-Catholic books describing the sexual debasement of women, Bennett begins using the words "might" and "could have" more times than is comfortable. To explain the lure of these degrading tracts, he cites "psychoanalytic literature" that "suggests an inextricable alliance between sadism and masochism. Both seem to represent means of defense against castration anxiety; by performing symbolic castration on others, the sadist gains assurance that he is the castrator and not the castrated." This claim seems to be far outside the realm of the historian, to say the least. Students of the past must recognize they do not possess the necessary tools to perform psychological analysis. Even if the historian holds a degree in psychology, the subjects did not leave behind the type of evidence required to make such sweeping judgments. The author should have avoided making these conclusions. "The Party of Fear" is a monumental achievement, a learned, exceptionally researched, highly readable tome of great significance for students of extremist politics. Investigating the far right is never an easy task due to the enormous amount of primary source material churned out in reams by hundreds of its adherents. David Bennett did an excellent job successfully navigating his way through three hundred years of the lunatic fringe.

Bennett provides an insightful and concise detailing of American history dealing with the rightist movements. From the nativist / anti-papacy movements of the 1840's to the Christian Militia movements with their stress on government conspiracies that are guided by a Jewish elite, this work provides the basis for understanding the reactionary movements which seem so vogue today.

Following the 2004 elections, citizens of the U.S. learned that they were less United than they had previously thought. It turned out that there were two countries in the space formerly called America, one red and one blue. The strange thing was that the citizens of each color-coded country believed that the people in the other part of the map were actively working against their own interests. Blue-staters saw red-staters as voting for rich people who exploit them, and red-staters believed blue-staters to be recklessly building up a wasteful government.

I live in a blue state (Canada), and so I was naturally curious to find out what the red-staters were all about. I bought and read Thomas Frank's blockbuster What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, which turned out to be a kind of character study of the type of person who votes Republican. The analysis is interesting, but rather superficial -- the conclusion was that a lot of working class people vote based on what the media like to call "moral values", which is a felt need to be patriotic, god-fearing, independent, etc. They're drawn to candidates who have personalities that seem to exemplify such values, even when their actions don't. Reagan is the canonical example.

(Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of a similar analysis of blue-staters. Every attempt I've seen is almost comically inflammatory and patently wrong. I realize it makes no sense to expect thoughtful insight from the likes of Coulter/D'Souza/O'Reilly, but I haven't seen much else. I also realize that the problem of summarizing the shared political outlook of 100 million people in 200 pages is formidable, but Frank actually makes it seem doable).

What's great about The Party of Fear is that David Bennett traces the origins of this brand of reactionary thinking to the beginnings of the U.S. It turns out that the kind of anxieties expressed by the folks in Frank's book have been part of the American political landscape for centuries. In all likelihood they typify a sort of personality trait that can be summarized most succinctly as pathological fear of uncertainty. Hence the recent rightward lurch in American politics can be attributed to renewed fears of terrorism, just as previous political movements were sparked by fear of immigrants, Catholics, Irish, etc. As Bennett points, in each case there really was a legitimate reason to be afraid (e.g. immigrants actually were more likely to carry certain diseases), but in each case the reaction of a certain segment of the population was exaggerated in its magnitude and irrational in its substance. The appeal of the current "War on Terrorism" is just the latest example. Yes, terrorism is a threat. No, it does not help to attack random countries or to set up secret prisons.

I'm not sure whether or not it's comforting to learn that paranoia has always been a driving force in American politics. On the one hand, as Party of Fear documents, its influence waxes and wanes from decade to decade. On the other hand, it is totally irrational, surprisingly pervasive, and neither of these aspects is likely to change.

For further information on the same subject I can recommend the more scholarly The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism America and the really outstanding Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.