Shot in the Dark

Waiting On “Wilson Derangement”

I flipped on NPR last night to catch a (large) part of a Terry Gross interview with historian Adam Hochschild, on his new book about the grave threats to democracy during World War 1.

And it was a dismal time indeed. “Sedition”, defined broadly, threw thousands in jail. The Department of Justice deputized people to enforce government speech codes and arrest people for suspicion of, basically, thought-crime; it was the first time in history that federal institutions had enough power and budget to get weaponized, and that is exactly what happened. Jim Crow was, by the way, federalized.

But here’s the thing; while Hochschild calls the repression “Trump-y” at one point, and Gross makes a raft of her usual Kaelian innuendos, you can listen to the piece all the way through…

…in vain for a reference to the fact that Woodrow Wilson, the father of modern “progressivism”, and an enthusiastic actual white supremacist to boot, drove all of this from the ground up.

“He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past”.

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9 responses to “Waiting On “Wilson Derangement””

  1. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    During WWI the feds would send speakers out to give patriotic, pro war public talks and demonize any person who questioned the war.
    Oh yeah:

    Woke MSNBC contributor Dean Obeidallah has been ridiculed for pledging to investigate new Twitter boss Elon Musk’s immigration status and ‘strip him of US citizenship’ if there are errors.
    Obeidallah, a lawyer-turned-comedian, posted details of a Freedom of Information Act request for Musk’s application documents.
    The radio show host, who also writes for CNN, told his 150.9k followers: ‘As a lawyer Im going to do research to see if @elonmusk in any way lied on his application for US citizenship.
    ‘I’ll be making a FOIA request for his immigration application. If he lied anywhere on application we will move to strip him of US citizenship. Stay tuned.’
    Tweeting a photo of the FOIA request, Obeidallah added: ‘I formally made a request via FOIA today for Elon Musk’s immigration application documents.
    ‘I will let you know what I hear back. The application may be 100% fine with no misinformation or lies. Then again… We will see’.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11377341/Woke-MSNBC-guest-slammed-vow-investigate-Elon-Musks-citizenship.html

  2. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    It would be helpful if more time was spent on the why here. Wilson was the first Southerner to win the Presidency since the Civil War and he was an avowed racist but for a long while he was known as being very pro labor and was elected due greatly by his progressive agenda.

    It’s also ironic that the alt-right see Wilson as the architect for intrusive Government today. He seems hated by all sides. Maybe there is a lesson for today — finding agreement in opposition to common threats to liberty.

    Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is worth reading to get a sense of where the US was as it entered this period.

    For a great fictional account of this period, written shortly after the events happened, read “USA” by John Dos Passos.

  3. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Wilson was also the rat bastard that caved into a bunch of private big money bankers and turned over our sovereign currency to them, aka the lying Fed. He even knew that he was doing the wrong thing, because after signing the papers, he said; “I’ve just killed my country.”

  4. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    The alt-right narrative summarized: The country got out of this terrible period because it had the sense to elect libertarian Republicans. Harding and Coolidge were good men, disgracefully smeared by New Dealist historians.

    One doesn’t seem to appreciate the mistakes made by Herbert Hoover that led to the doom loop that became the Great Depression.

    Coolidge was simply rudder amidships on Good Ship Lollypop. The opportunity losses of the decade were huge.

  5. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    The most important part of Wilson’s bio is not that he was southerner. It is that he was an intellectual. He began his academic career (political science and law). He was a humanities lecturer at several universities and after a distinguished career was named president of Princeton University in 1902.
    While many people like to blame Wilson’s overt racism on the fact that he was born and raised in the South, in fact racism was not only respectable, but was the academic “political correctness” of late 19th century & early 20th century progressivism. This was not racism based on any religious ideas, it was based on what was believed to be the best science of the age.
    Kind of like today.

  6. Blade Nzimande Avatar
    Blade Nzimande

    “Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is worth reading to get a sense of where the US was as it entered this period.”

    Yeah, it’s a great primer on “C0mmunist Propaganda of the early 20th Century”. Did you just glean an insight from “The Daily Worker”?, rAT?

    Lol…you fucking moron.

  7. Blade Nzimande Avatar
    Blade Nzimande

    If one were to research what some consider the racist polemics of the early 20th century, the insightful observer would think he was reading the front page of any major metro newspaper written today, in the 3rd person.

    That’s why one so rarely sees a period citation from any of the hundreds of race baiting, poverty pimps on the grifting circuit today.

  8. golfdoc50 Avatar
    golfdoc50

    “Threats to democracy” seems to be a prog talking point. I got into an internet debate with the editor of my college alumni magazine after I objected to an article about an alum who made a film about WWII internment camps in California. Somehow Trump got dragged into the article because of the alleged “Muslim ban.” I pointed out that the article made no mention of the political party of the President in charge of putting the Nisei into camps. It was FDR, don’t you know!

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