Ugly, paranoid, divisive politics: The GOP are all Know-Nothings now

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http://www.salon.com/2014/06/14/ugly_paranoid_divisive_politics_the_gop_are_all_know_nothings_now/



Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting in "Gangs of New York," Eric Cantor

Ugly, paranoid, divisive politics: The GOP are all Know-Nothings now
Paul Rosenberg
Saturday, Jun 14, 2014 1:30 PM UTC

Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning primary defeat to political unknown David Brat sent shock waves through the political world on Tuesday, and nobody seems certain of how or where it will all end. But we can say something about where it began: the 1850s. That’s when the Republican Party emerged from the collapse of the Whigs. But it was not alone. Another party emerged alongside it in the 1850s — the conspiracy-minded anti-immigrant/anti-Catholic American Party, also known as the “Know-Nothings,” which initially overshadowed the Republicans — winning 52 House seats in 1854 to 13 for the Republicans — but quickly faded from sight. Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” is a fictionalized account of the actual ground-level conflicts out of which the Know-Nothings arose. Daniel Day Lewis’s character, Bill the Butcher, was based on an actual Know-Nothing leader, William Poole — a Joe the Plumber type with homicidal tendencies. Now, Cantor’s out-of-the-blue defeat is the clearest signal yet that the Know-Nothings and their bleak vision are back, full force. Ultimately, they didn’t have to knock off the Republicans; they’ve simply taken them over from within.

The Know-Nothings began as a grassroots, anti-immigrant/anti-Catholic movement based in local lodges. When asked about their activities, members were sworn to say “I know nothing” — hence the name. But the willingness to embrace ignorance also reflected something broader about them: a focus on their own self-defined cultural values, and a disdain for learning anything outside the sphere of what they already “knew.” This is what the term “know-nothing” has come to signify ever since, and though it gets the exact letter of its origins wrong, it captures their spirit precisely.

The most obvious tip-off that the Know-Nothings are back is the salience of immigration in Cantor’s upset. Although immigration wasn’t everything, as early stories took it to be, it did play a crucial role in mobilizing activist support, shaping the campaign narrative, and highlighting how Cantor’s careerist ambitions clashed with the sentiments of his political base. Still, the most important way immigration figures into this story is in terms of the party’s future, not Cantor’s past: it further derails the GOP’s efforts to escape from the consequences of feeding their own paranoid, xenophobic base, lo these many decades. That base is what’s transformed the Republicans into Know-Nothings right before our very eyes — but it was politicians like Cantor (like Bush, Gingrich, Reagan and Nixon before him) who manipulated the base to that point in the first place.

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The objects of demonization have changed, but today’s anti-immigration rhetoric, and its embedding in the broader rhetoric of “taking our country back,” along with various means of voter suppression to limit the influence of cultural others is virtually identical to what the Know-Nothings were up to, but bears no resemblance at all to the Republicans of that same time.