Creeping authoritarianism and Historical Revisionism

[David Bernstein]

Hmm. Leaving aside the dubious view that the "labor movement" was ever really
"persecuted"  (or that it represented primarily immigrants, whom some unions
excluded, albeit less frequently than they excluded blacks or women) I see
some unfortunate revisionism in Lynn's statement.  The labor movement itself,
which for good reason is generally not considered "right-wing," was the
primary purveyor of anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese sentiment in the US, and
therefore was probably more responsible than any other identifiable
ideological group for Chinese exclusion and Japanese internment.  Tellingly,
Earl Warren a major player in the Japanese internment.  The two Justices most
likely to dissent from anti-Chinese cases during the early exclusion period
were also two of the most "right-wing," Peckham and Brewer.

The modern (1920s) KKK was not obviously "right-wing" in its day, as its
constituents were probably much more likely to support the likes of William
Jennings Bryan' views than Calvin Coolidge (or has Bryan been revised into
right-wingedness, too).  As for Father Coughlin, he was an early preacher of
the Social Gospel, whose "left-wing"economic populism has been overshadowed
historically by his anti-Semitism.  He was in favor of nationalization,
inflation, redistribution, and was prone to saying things like "You
industrialists, surrounded as you are by your economists are anxious to form
organizations for the protection of your property rights and for the
perpetuation of your profit system. But, may I ask you, of what value are
property rights unless they are firmly established upon the sanctity of human
rights?"  I don't think left-right distinctions in this context are
especially meaningful, but if such labels must be used for historical
figures, they should not be used anachronistically.  And more narrowly, the
historian of racism and anti-racism in American hardly breaks down along
left-right lines, as I discuss in some detail in my Vanderbilt Law Review
article on residential segregation laws, which had the overwhelming support
of "progressives" during the 1910s.



In a message dated 10/22/2002 4:29:57 PM Eastern Standard Time,
hendersl at IX.NETCOM.COM writes:


>      Further, in relatively recent US history, the more politically
> efficacious authoritarian movements appear to have come from the right and
> to have embarced these characteristics--for example, Father Coughlin, the
> KKK, McCarthyism, the persecution of the labor union movement (in part
> because of the labor unions being "them"--the great unwashed imigrant
> population), the *Chinese Exclusion Cases*, *Korematsu*,  but that hardly
> means that left wing groups haven't been authoritarian(





David E. Bernstein
Associate Professor
George Mason University
School of Law
http://mason.gmu.edu/~dbernste
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