America was at its Trumpiest 100 years ago. Here's how to prevent the worst. - Hochschild WaPo
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Just over a century ago, a major war, fear of foreign subversion and an administration with little respect for civil liberties unleashed several years of the worst repression in the United States since the immediate aftermath of slavery. What is unfolding in the country today is different in many ways, but this earlier period holds lessons for us about how swiftly the government can take away basic freedoms — and about our need to be vigilant to be sure it doesn’t happen again.
Woodrow Wilson was in his second term as president from 1917 to 1921. We think of him as a progressive idealist, and in his passionate belief in the League of Nations, he surely was. But after he persuaded Congress to declare war on Germany in April 1917, he was determined to silence the sizable minority of Americans who opposed the decision. He vigorously and successfully lobbied for the Espionage Act, a sweeping measure that had little to do with espionage and provided prison terms of up to 20 years for anyone who “shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation of the military or naval forces of the United States.” The following year, that legislation was toughened to make it criminal to provide “disloyal advice” about buying war bonds, or to “utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States.”
The law’s vagueness was a prosecutor’s dream. It was the tool that jailed thousands of war opponents, leftists and labor unionists. Big business had long been looking for excuses to imprison the unionists. The most famous political prisoner was Eugene V. Debs, a gentle, peaceful man and perennial Socialist candidate for president, who had won 6 percent of the popular vote in 1912. Six years later, for giving an anti-war speech from an Ohio park bandstand, he was sentenced to 10 years behind bars.
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The federal Espionage Act also enabled censorship, without using the word, by giving the postmaster general the power to declare a newspaper or magazine “unmailable.” Before the internet, this meant a publication would have no way of reaching a broad national readership. Not unlike what has happened since Jan. 20 of this year, the changes in 1917 came with amazing speed. Postmaster General Albert Burleson, a right-wing former congressman from Texas, shut down the first newspaper even before the Espionage Act passed Congress. (It was the Rebel, of Hallettsville, Texas, which had criticized him for using prison labor on farmland he owned.) The very day the act went into effect, federal agents arrested anarchist leader Emma Goldman for agitating against the draft. By that point, the American Protective League had already injured many people when it broke up a peace rally in Chicago’s Grant Park.
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How could the repression have lasted so long? For one thing, all three branches of government moved in lockstep. The president remained convinced of his righteousness and determined to suppress opposition. Some members of Congress spoke out in protest, but they were a small, increasingly frightened minority. And in 1919, the Supreme Court upheld the Espionage Act twice: the first time unanimously, the second with only two dissenting votes.
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First, speak out in every way possible. Unlike 1917 or 1918, there are not — so far — federal agents and vigilante mobs breaking up peaceful demonstrations. .. It’s especially crucial that prominent people sound off. Second, celebrate that we’re a nation of states, and make use of it. States have considerable power and can often outflank Washington’s madness. ..Third, despite the fire hose of distortions from right-wing TV and radio, despite Facebook abandoning fact-checking, we still have independent news media.
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https://wapo.st/4iZLULg
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Adam Hochschild is the author of “American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.”
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