Trump Stirs Up Immigrant Hatred But He Didn’t Start It
Trump has nothing on Ellison DuRant Smith.
Smith was a proud, unrepentant, uber racist, Democratic U.S. Senator from South Carolina for three decades and was a spokesman for the anti-immigration movement that was exploding across the nation in the early 20th century. The senator was infamous for his rants about white power, xenophobia and anti-immigration. To his many supporters, his comments were famous.
Trump makes up stories about pet-devouring Haitians to justify his plans to expel millions of immigrants. Smith had a simpler rationale that the nation should block immigration until it can “breed up a pure, unadulterated American citizenship.”
Smith was a cotton planter, lobbyist and Senator from 1909 to 1944. He was widely revered for his savagely racist and segregationist views and his advocacy of white supremacy. His support for the Southern cotton industry earned him the nickname “Cotton Ed.”
While in Congress, Smith’s goal was to “keep the Negroes down and the price of cotton up.”
Among some of his worst comments, in 1935 Smith opposed a government plan to ensure that Southern landlords actually paid their sharecroppers for their labor, which most did not. Smith stormed into the office of the author of the directive, Alger Hiss, and shouted, “Young fella, you can’t do this to my niggers, paying checks to them. They don’t know what to do with the money. The money should come to me. I’ll take care of them.”
At the time, Hiss was part of a liberal legal team headed by Jerome Frank that defended the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). In 1948, during the era of the “red scare,” Hiss was accused of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. He was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950.
At the 1936 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Smith stalked out of the convention hall after he learned that the invocation was to be given by a black minister, the Rev. Marshall L. Shepard, a former member of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and Philadelphia City Council, where he served until his death in 1967.
At the sight of Shepard, Smith yelled, “By God, he’s as black as melted midnight! Get outa my way. This mongrel meeting ain’t no place for a white man! I don’t want any blue-gummed, slew-footed Senegambian praying for me politically.”
Smith reflected the xenophobic views of his fellow South Carolinians and sponsored many bills restricting immigration that drew widespread support from the north and the south.
In the U.S., opposition to immigration began in the late 1790s in reaction to an influx of political refugees from France and Ireland. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 severely restricted the rights of immigrants. Nativism affected politics in the mid-19th century because of the large inflows of immigrants from cultures that were markedly different from the existing Protestant culture. Nativists primarily objected to Roman Catholics, especially Irish Americans.
The first organized opposition to immigration was the Immigration Restriction League, which formed in 1894.The league supported literacy as a prerequisite for immigration. In 1895, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, D-Mass., introduced a bill to the Senate to impose a mandate for literacy for immigrants, using a test requiring them to read five lines from the Constitution. The bill passed but it was vetoed by President Grover Cleveland in 1897.
In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt supported the idea but it was defeated in Congress in 1903. A literacy test was included in a Senate immigration bill of 1906, but the House of Representatives did not agree, and the test was removed from what became the Immigration Act of 1907. Literacy as a requisite for immigration was introduced again in 1912 and it passed but was vetoed by President William Howard Taft.
By 1915, yet another bill with a literacy requirement was passed. This time it was vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson. The Congress later overrode Wilson’s veto.
Smith and others supported creation of the first major federal obstacle to immigration, the Immigration Act of 1917. The act passed over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto.
Smith offered his longest and most passionate diatribe in arguing for passage of the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, also known as the Immigration Act of 1924. The act limited emigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and effectively entrapped European Jews who were facing the emergent danger of fascism in Germany. It limited immigration based on a national origins quota and provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. It completely excluded immigrants from Asia.
The quota system was not repealed until 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act, praising “those who can contribute most to this country — to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit.”
Ever since, U.S. immigration has avoided overt discrimination by national origins, until trump issued an executive order in 2017 temporarily barring entry visas from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
During congressional debate over the 1924 Act, DuRant Smith drew on the racist theories of Madison Grant to argue that immigration restriction was the only way to preserve America.
Grant was a lawyer, zoologist, anthropologist, and writer known for his work as a conservationist, eugenicist, and advocate of scientific racism. He was noted for his pseudoscientific advocacy of Nordicism, a form of racism which views the “Nordic race” as superior.
As a white supremacist eugenicist, Grant played an active role in crafting immigration restriction and anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S. His works on scientific racism have been cited to demonstrate that many of the genocidal and eugenic ideas associated with Nazi Germany did not arise specifically in Germany, but many actually originated in other countries, including the United States. Almost all senators supported restrictions based on Grant’s views and the bill passed with only six dissenting votes.
By 1924, pressure was growing on both sides, to decrease and to increase immigration. Those in favor of greater immigration saw the growing need for continuing immigrant labor. In a long-winded speech before Congress on April 9, 1924, Smith said with the end of World War I, it was time to severely tighten immigration laws.
“It seems to me the point as to this measure — and I have been so impressed for several years — is that the time has arrived when we should shut the door,” said Smith. “We had an experience just a few years ago, during the great World War, when it looked as though we had allowed influences to enter our borders that were about to melt the pot in place of us being the melting pot.”
He said the nation had “sufficient stock” for it to end immigration and “Americanize what we have, and save the resources of America for the natural increase of our population.”
“I think we now have sufficient population in our country for us to shut the door and to breed up a pure, unadulterated American citizenship,” Smith said. “Thank God we have in America perhaps the largest percentage of any country in the world of the pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock; certainly the greatest of any nation in the Nordic breed. It is for the preservation of that splendid stock that has characterized us that I would make this not an asylum for the oppressed of all countries, but a country to assimilate and perfect that splendid type of manhood that has made America the foremost Nation in her progress and in her power, and yet the youngest of all the nations.”
Smith said that maintaining the character of America was more important than admitting immigrants to work on the nation’s undeveloped resources.
“I believe that our particular ideas, social, moral, religious, and political, have demonstrated, by virtue of the progress we have made and the character of people that we are, that we have the highest ideals of any member of the human family or any nation,” said Smith.
In short, Smith said the nation did not need immigrants.
“We have enough in this country to engage the brain of every lover of his country in solving the problems of a democratic government in the midst of the imperial power that genius is discovering and placing in the hands of man,” he said.
Smith, the avowed racist and white power advocate, said the debate over immigration was “a question of maintaining that which has made you and me the beneficiaries of the greatest hope that ever burned in the human breast for the most splendid future that ever stood before mankind, where the boy in the gutter can look with confidence to the seat of the Presidency of the United States; where the boy in the gutter can look forward to the time when, paying the price of a proper citizen, he may fill a seat in this hall; where the boy to-day poverty-stricken, standing in the midst of all the splendid opportunities of America, should have and, please God, if we do our duty, will have an opportunity to enjoy the marvelous wealth that the genius and brain of our country is making possible for us all.”
A Pew Research Center survey of 27 nations conducted in the spring of 2018 found that a median of 45 percent of the population in the nations surveyed said fewer or no immigrants should be allowed to move to their country. A total of 36 percent said they want about the same number of immigrants while just 14 percent said their countries should allow more immigrants.
Worldwide, a record 258 million people lived outside their country of birth in 2017, up from 153 million in 1990. Their share of the global population is also up, reaching 3.4 percent in 2017, compared with 2.9 percent in 1990.
The U.S., with 44.5 million immigrants in 2017, has the largest foreign-born population in the world, followed by Saudi Arabia (12.2 million), Germany (12.2 million) and Russia (11.7 million). Immigrants make up the largest shares of national populations in Australia (29 percent), Israel (24 percent), Canada (22 percent) and Sweden (18 percent). About 14 percent of the U.S. population is foreign born, a share comparable to that of Germany (15 percent), the UK (13 percent) and Spain (13 percent).
At its root, the straight line between arguments from Smith’s day up to the time of trump are about whites maintaining power. Critical to those fears are falling birthrates among whites which studies show are in part because of declining sperm counts and falling testosterone.
The anti-immigration movement is gaining power around the world. There was no name for the movement in Smith’s time, but today is it known as the “great replacement” conspiracy. The American version is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory that racial minorities are displacing the traditional white American population and taking control of the nation.
The great replacement theory is promoted in Europe but its origins are in American nativism around 1900. Worldwide, the anti-immigration movement and fears of a great replacement have led to unsubstantiated fears of invading alien tribes stealing jobs and benefits, spreading terrorism and crime and diluting national cultures and identities.
The far right recently scored big in elections to the E.U. Parliament and in France. And recently, Germany ordered further border controls along its wide-open western and northern borders to catch undocumented immigrant. Because of political pressures, Germany is shoving unwanted refugees back into neighboring countries. A recent poll in Germany found that 44 percent of respondents said migration and refugees are the country’s most immediate problem, and about 77 percent said Germany needed to change policies.
In the United States, the great replacement conspiracy holds the view that “political elites” are working to increase the number of racial and religious minorities in an attempt to displace the Christian white American population.
The great replacement conspiracy along with white supremacy and anti-Nazi sentiments have infected the highest levels of government and some of the most influential people.
Most recently, white supremacists applauded Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, after a new price for one of the company’s products mirrors a numerical neo-Nazi symbol.
Lindell is known as “My Pillow Guy” after “My Pillow,” the pillow, bedding and slipper company he formed. He is a conspiracist, prominent financial supporter and advisor to trump, and he played a major role in attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Trump has continued to make the false claim that widespread voter fraud cost him the election.
Lindell has been at various trump rallies and has spent $40 million on conferences, activist networks, a digital media platform, legal battles and researchers that promote the election denial movement. He has spread disproven conspiracy theories about electoral fraud and has promoted unproven medical treatments for COVID-19.
Recently, Lindell’s standard pillow has been discounted to $14.88, down from the previous price of $29.99. The number 1488 is recognized as a white supremacist symbol; 14 represents a 14-word slogan coined by white supremacist David Lane and 88 refers to HH, a symbol for the salute “Heil Hitler,” as H is the 8th letter of the alphabet.
The Anti-Defamation League has reported that some white supremacists price racist merchandise, such as t-shirts or compact discs, for $14.88.
Lindell has said he had no idea that 1488, also known as “The Fourteen Words,” is considered a Nazi symbol. Lindell said that 88 cents was a common price point and has been used by other companies such as Walmart. He was referring to a pricing and marketing strategy that is based on the theory that certain prices have a psychological impact. For example, numbers that are just a little less than a round number, like $19.99, appeal to consumers.
A report on WalMart’s pricing policies showed that numbers other than 99 are used, such as $9.97 or $5.95. Use of 88 cents is not mentioned as a valid, price point.
Among those who have frequently referred to 1488 is Jack Posobiec, a far right conspiracy theorist and trump supporter who promoted the “Stop the Steal” movement that made the debunked claim that trump had been robbed of reelection in 2020 by widespread voter fraud. Posobiec is an internet influencer with around 2.7 million followers on X. He has used white supremacist and antisemitic symbols and talking points, including the white genocide conspiracy theory. He has promoted fake news, including the QAnon debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory claiming high-ranking Democratic Party officials were involved in a child sex ring.
Posobiec also hosts a show for the right wing student group, Turning Point USA. During the 2016 election, he was a special projects director of the political organization Citizens for Trump. In 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center listed Posobiec as an extremist, citing his links to hate groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, as well as his links to white nationalists, neo-Nazis, anti-government extremists, and the Polish far-right.
This month, Posobiec was invited by the Republican National Committee to speak to a group of volunteers about how to monitor elections in Michigan.
“The Fourteen Words” refers to two slogans originated by David Eden Lane, one of nine founding members of the defunct white supremacist terrorist organization The Order.” The slogans have served as a rallying cry for militant white nationalists internationally.
The Fourteen Words slogans, coined by Lane, includes, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,” and “because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the Earth.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center said that inspiration for the Fourteen Words are derived from a passage in Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical book “Mein Kampf.”
Lane died in prison in 2007 for his role in the 1984 assassination of the Jewish talk show host Alan Berg, who was murdered by another member of the group. Lane was sentenced to 190 years in prison.