The "Great Replacement Theory:" New for the GOP? Nah!
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, Aug., 2018)
NYC: The Five Points - Worth and Baxter. What they all look like now.
(Image by wallyg from flickr) Details DMCA
Introduction
As is well-known, leaders of the Republican Party have in recent months been making a great deal out of what they call "The Great Replacement Theory" (TGRT) and what it means for "White America." The term "Leaders of the Republican Party includes those both in- and outside of it, formally. And of course, there are those in the latter group, such as the Fox"News" personalities who directly advise the Party and certain of its candidates, sometimes directly "over the air.” That is of course they are "leaders" except for as when they are asked directly about the subject, subsequent to, say, the Buffalo Massacre or the likely first murder of an abortion provider. Many non-Republican commentators have been aghast at this development, in re in particular to TGRT, as well they should be.
Well, the promotion of TGRT is horrifying, and as usual, Repubs. have used it as a rallying cry particularly against the Dastardly Dems. and their "open borders" policy. (That the Dems. don't have such a thing, and that the Repubs. offer no solutions whatsoever to the increasingly serious problems of poverty, crime, drought, and the illegal drug trade South of the border seems to be ignored by most commentators.) But the point that I will be making in this column is that one version or another of the "TGRT" is nothing new for the Repubs.
As it happens, some version of racism and xenophobia has been in the DNA of the Party, regardless of its name at any given time, varying over time to a greater or lesser extent, since its founding in the 1850s. Which is the point of a previously published column of mine: "Xenophobia and Racism: They're in the Republican Party's DNA." That column is for the most part reproduced just below, with some editing and updating. And yes, I have been publishing one version or another of this column for some years now, for it is VERY important to understand this tradition that is central to the Republican Party. Especially, if progressive forces are going to be able to successfully combat it as it becomes ever more intense.
Xenophobia and the Republican Party: It's Nothing New
At a House of Representatives hearing on the mass shooting of Asians in Georgia and more generally on the massive rise in anti-Asian hate crimes since President Trump and other Republicans began referring to the COVID-19 pandemic as the "China flu" (and worse), Cong. Chip [on-his-shoulder] Roy of Texas spoke fondly of lynching as a way to achieve what in his mind passes as "justice," and then subsequently doubled-down on his estimate of the value of this particular method of racist murder.
Then the House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, (in both attacking a reporter and using racist tropes) blew up when a reporter asked him about the propriety of using terms like "kung flu" or "China virus," giving every indication that he had no problem with the term. So, this is where the Republican Party currently stood in 2021 on both racism and xenophobia (at least to date there have been no denunciations of either Congressman from within the Republican mainstream for either set of thoughts). And now we can add in TGRT.
Now it is often thought that it was Trump who brought this sort of thinking (both types) to the Republican Party. Indeed, while Trump is a racist and xenophobe extraordinaire, was what he was/is doing anything new? Was it a sudden violent departure from traditional Repub. policy? Well, no. In fact, the xenophobia part has been in the genes of the Party since its beginnings and the racism part began with the abandonment of Reconstruction in 1877.
On Xenophobia
Millard Fillmore was the 13th President of the United Sates, and the last Whig to hold that office, succeeding to it upon the death of Zachary Taylor in 1850. Denied his own party's Presidential nomination for re-election in 1852 he joined the newly-minted American Party (otherwise known as the "Know-Nothings") and became their Presidential candidate in 1856. His party was known for its violent (sometime literally) antagonism towards the Irish (Catholic) immigrants who had been fleeing a very poor homeland since the 1830s, a flow that only increased with the Potato Famine in the mid-1840s. Following his failed Presidential campaign, the opportunistic Fillmore went on to become one of the founders of the Republican Party, not surprisingly bringing his "know-nothingism" with him, where it festered over the years. As it happened, as Reconstruction gradually collapsed, the xenophobia of the Know-Nothings was gradually incorporated into the doctrines of the Republican Party.
For example, it was in 1875, even before Reconstruction officially came to an end, that the Republicans enacted the first specifically anti-immigrant law, the Page Act, which prevented the immigration of Chinese women (can't be birthing Chinese-ancestry people here, now can we --- sound familiar?). Then in 1882 they enacted the both-sexes Chinese Exclusion Act. About 40 years later came the infamous, Republican, Immigration Act of 1924. Propaganda very similar to TGRT echoed in the propaganda promoting it. It banned all immigration from Asia and set severe quotas for immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, among other restrictions. (This led to, among other things, the virtual impossibility for Jewish refugees from the Nazis getting into this country during the 1930s and early 40s, until the Second World War cut off emigration from Europe completely.)
In the mid-60s, what is now looked back upon as a remarkably liberal Republican Party agreed to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which liberalized matters very significantly. But with xenophobia gradually rearing its ugly head in portions of the Republican Party in this century (specifically among the members of misnamed "Freedom" Caucus), Trump put it back at the head of the line of Republican policy, beginning with the speech that accompanied his entrance into Presidential history on the gold (or is it "gold"?) escalator. BUT, again that was nothing new for the Repubs. It was just a resurgence of a policy that has been in the blood (one might say) of the Party since its founding. Kevin McCarthy and his fellows are just doubling down on it.
On Racism
As is well-known, for most of its existence since the end of Reconstruction following the election of 1876, the Republican Party has been the party of reaction in the United States. In fact, the only reason that Rutherford B. Hayes, the GOP candidate in that disputed election, won, was that he agreed to end formerly-Republican-sponsored Reconstruction, essentially turning over the Southern states to the former slaveholders and the Ku Klux Klan. Very quickly, despite the best efforts of President Grant, 1869-1877, "The Party of Lincoln" (some Repubs. amazingly still use that term) became the Party of Grant's predecessor, the racist, pro-slavery, Andrew Johnson (who most unfortunately Lincoln had chosen to "balance" his ticket in 1864). With the end of Reconstruction, the party clearly and openly turned a blind eye to the successor to slavery, Jim Crow. There were two bright Republican exceptions to this rule (to a greater or lesser extent), Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. But their influence did not last long.
And then came Richard Nixon. In his early days he was an avatar of Joseph McCarthy (and his right-hand man, Roy Cohn, who would later become Trump's mentor), a violent political red-baiter, a virulent "anti-communist" abroad (who nevertheless later engaged in the first "de'tente" with the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and later than that opened the door to China) as well as an expander of the war on Viet Nam. But in his first 20 years in politics he wasn't known, particularly, as a racist.
However, then, in the late 1960s, as is well-known, he invented the Republican "Southern Strategy," openly moving into the Southern racist politics that the Democratic Party had left behind when it got solidly behind the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The Southern Strategy has dominated Republican Party politics ever since. Even before that, they nominated Barry Goldwater for President in 1964 (Goldwater had famously voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Then in the 1970's, after the Nixon resignation began the "clean-out" of the (relatively) liberal wing of their party, starting with the dumping of the last major "big-government" voice in it, that of Nelson Rockefeller.
Ronald Reagan truly initiated the historical stream of GOP-led right-wing reaction that we now see in front of us, every day, for example on racism. Symbolically, the first campaign stop that Ronald Reagan made following his nomination for President by the Republican Party in 1980 was to the tiny hamlet of Philadelphia, MS. Why there, one might wonder? After all, the village is significant historically only because it is the place that three northern civil rights workers were murdered by a white gang, including members of law enforcement, in the "Freedom Summer" of 1964. But indeed, it is very symbolic to those white Southerners who take note of such things.
That was followed by his usage of racist terms, during his Presidency, like "welfare queen" and "young bucks." Such epithets and actions came to be known as "dog-whistles," because they were not openly racist. African-Americans, however, clearly knew where Reagan was coming from. For example, asked in an interview on NPR, a person with an African-American accent was asked if John Hinckley, Jr. (Reagan's attempted assassin) did anything wrong, she promptly replied "he missed."
Although comprising an overall minority in the country, as is well-known far right-wing voters are concentrated in the Republican Party. And as is also well-known they came to dominate the Republican primaries, meaning, of course, that Republican reactionaries always had a better chance of winning their party's nomination at any level than did liberal Republicans. And so, within the Republican Party the "Rightwing Imperative," that is to be able to win a Repub. nomination one had to move ever-further to the Right, was born. And so too, did the party eventually end up with the Louis Gohmerts, the Steve Kings, the Jim Jordans, and now the Chip Roys and Kevin McCarthys of this world.
Trumpian Racism/Xenophobia
And so, it came to Trump to take the hood off, politically, actually beginning in 2011 with his open and virulent sponsorship and use of the birtherism myth, (as dealt with frequently in this space), then continuing in the 2015-16 election campaign with birtherism still, and with the anti-Mexican/anti-Muslim tropes. And the Trumpublicans© are now stuck with it, mainly because, whether they themselves are racist, they support his policies. Further, "Jan. 6" to the contrary notwithstanding, it is difficult for many Republicans to separate themselves from his person, as embarrassing (the Repubs. don't seem to care much about this one) and possibly politically toxic (they do care about this one, although they may never be in a position to move on that concern) it may be.
And so, is TGRT something new, and even worse, for Republicans to associate themselves with? Well, no. It goes all the way back to Millard Fillmore and the “Know-Nothings." And it is time for the attacks on the Republicans to begin to deal with this history.