Alien Enemies

Summary

History As It Happens: "Alien Enemies"

Episode Release Date: March 28, 2025
Host: Martin Di Caro
Guest: Michael Kazin, Distinguished Scholar of American Political and Social Movements at Georgetown University

---

Introduction: The Modern Echoes of Historical Repression

In the episode titled "Alien Enemies," host Martin Di Caro delves into the Trump administration's controversial use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport individuals accused of gang affiliations. Through an insightful conversation with historian Michael Kazin, the podcast examines the parallels between contemporary policies and historical instances of civil liberties erosion in the United States.

---

Trump Administration's Use of the Alien Enemies Act

Martin Di Caro opens the discussion by highlighting President Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, a century-old wartime law, to deport 137 men accused of gang activities. He states:

"The Trump administration is deporting accused gang members to El Salvador without due process." ([01:23])

Michael Kazin elaborates on the administration's rationale, emphasizing national security concerns:

"Argue that their use of the Alien Enemies act targets gang members, that they're invoking national security reasons and national security secrets." ([00:37])

Kazin underscores the administration's stance that these actions are necessary to address public safety and national security threats.

---

Historical Context: The Red Scare and McCarthyism

To provide a comparative backdrop, Di Caro references the Red Scare and the era of McCarthyism, drawing direct lines between past and present:

"When you hear the words red scare, the McCarthy era may come to mind." ([02:28])

He recounts Joe McCarthy’s aggressive hunt for communists, culminating in his confrontation with President Eisenhower:

"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" ([03:28])

Michael Kazin connects these historical episodes to the current climate, highlighting a recurring American tradition of suppressing civil liberties under the guise of national security:

"Resistance to militarism ran wide and deep... The ethnic groups that had spurned the allies at the start of the war recoiled..." ([02:28])

Kazin emphasizes that such measures are not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern in American history where crises lead to conformity and repression.

---

The Palmer Raids: Methods and Impacts

Diving deeper into historical parallels, the podcast revisits the Palmer Raids of 1919, orchestrated by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover. Di Caro describes the aggressive tactics used to suppress radical elements:

"Break ins and arrests were frequently made without warrants, and prisoners were treated roughly." ([36:42])

Kazin explains the socio-political environment that fueled these raids, including widespread strikes and labor unrest:

"There were race riots... the police str in Boston... major strikes all over the country." ([34:11])

The impact of the Palmer Raids was profound, effectively dismantling anarchist and communist movements through both official actions and vigilant citizen involvement:

"The anarchist movement had never been that large in America, but it basically was destroyed entirely by the Palmer raids." ([36:42])

---

Comparisons Between Past and Present Civil Liberties Erosion

Drawing direct comparisons, Di Caro questions the motivations behind the Trump administration's actions:

"If anything here is fascistic, it is creating a climate or just claiming that there's some kind of crisis or national emergency that warrants the use of a wartime law during peacetime." ([14:52])

Kazin responds by illustrating the continuity of such practices, where nationalistic fervor and fear of foreign influence justify the suppression of dissent:

"The idea that foreign influences are corroding the greatness of America... the state has to make sure that the forces that might make for disunity are repressed." ([15:06])

He further compares the vagueness of the Alien Enemies Act to historical laws used to undermine civil liberties:

"It's so vague. What would possibly be against the foreign policy interests of the United States?" ([17:35])

This vagueness allows for broad interpretation, enabling administrations to target individuals and groups without concrete evidence, reminiscent of past abuses.

---

Motivations Behind Repression and Nationalism

The discussion shifts to the underlying motivations driving such repressive actions. Di Caro highlights right-wing populism and its role in fostering an environment conducive to civil liberties violations:

"We are not under invasion right now... they're really about cracking down on dissent or the others, the others we don't want in our country." ([14:52])

Kazin elaborates on the nationalist ethos that equates conformity with patriotism, advocating for a homogenous American identity:

"Much more powerful appeal than just talking about illegal immigrants... they believe in a much more pluralistic kind of nationalism." ([15:06])

This form of ethnic nationalism contrasts with liberal civic nationalism, which champions inclusive rights irrespective of origin or beliefs.

---

Societal Response to Repression

Examining societal reactions, Di Caro notes the passive or even supportive attitudes toward governmental repression, both historically and in contemporary settings:

"The very highly publicized videos and photos of the suspected gang members sent off to El Salvador... some people cheer this on." ([40:48])

Kazin reflects on historical instances where public support facilitated repression, drawing parallels to today's social media-driven vindictiveness:

"In wartime, people are willing to do things that they would abhor if they were done in peacetime." ([29:48])

He warns of the dangers inherent in such societal dynamics, where fear and nationalism override individual liberties.

---

Conclusion: Lessons from History

In wrapping up, both host and guest acknowledge the cyclical nature of civil liberties erosion during times of national stress. Di Caro expresses concern over the Trump administration's actions':

"We'll see if this can continue in the current climate." ([40:54])

Kazin reiterates the importance of vigilance in preserving constitutional rights, drawing lessons from past mistakes to safeguard against repeating history's darker chapters.

---

Key Takeaways

• Historical Recurrence: The misuse of emergency powers to suppress dissent is a recurring theme in American history, evident from the Red Scare and Palmer Raids to the Trump administration's recent actions.

• Vague Legislation: Laws like the Alien Enemies Act provide broad authority that can be exploited to target individuals without due process, undermining constitutional protections.

• Nationalism and Fear: Ethnic and racial nationalism, fueled by fear of foreign influence, often serves as the foundation for justifying repression of minority groups and dissenters.

• Societal Complicity: Public support or indifference toward repressive measures amplifies their impact, making societal attitudes a critical factor in either resisting or enabling civil liberties violations.

• Need for Vigilance: Understanding historical patterns is essential in recognizing and combating contemporary threats to individual freedoms and constitutional rights.

---

For more insightful analyses on historical events and their modern-day implications, tune into "History As It Happens" hosted by Martin Di Caro. New episodes are released every Tuesday and Friday. Subscribe to the newsletter at Substack by searching for "History As It Happens."

Transcript

[Narrator]

History is defined by the names that stand the test of time. Names that inspire, unite, and lead. Now it's your turn to create a lasting legacy with a Dot Vote domain. Whether you're running for office, driving change, or rallying support, a Dot Vote domain ensures your name is as memorable as those in the history books. Visit GoDaddy.com, type in your name, dot vote and secure a web address that stands out. Claim your place in history with dot.

[Martin DeCaro]

Vote history as it happens. March 28, 2025 Alien enemies trump officials.

[Michael Kazin]

Argue that their use of the Alien Enemies act targets gang members, that they're invoking national security reasons and national security secrets. We're going to continue to arrest public safety threats and national security threats will continue to deport them from the United States.

[Narrator]

President Trump invoked a centuries old wartime law called the Alien Enemies act to deport 137 of the men.

[Martin DeCaro]

The legal battle between the Trump administration.

[Michael Kazin]

And Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University My.

[Martin DeCaro]

Husband was taken away from me in.

[Michael Kazin]

The middle of the night.

[Martin DeCaro]

Her confrontation with federal agents was caught on home security video. You see it here. Investigators say she supported the terrorist group Hamas.

[Marco Rubio]

If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States and with that visa, participate in that sort of activity, we're going to take away your visa.

[Martin DeCaro]

The Trump administration is deporting accused gang members to El Salvador without due process. Federal agents are snatching foreign born students for the thought cron of criticizing Israel. A century ago, a progressive administration shredded the Constitution during wartime and then during the first red scare, there's an American tradition of trampling civil liberties in the name of national security. That's next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.

[Michael Kazin]

The idea that foreign influences are corroding the greatness of America and to make America great again, we have to go back to some imagined period in the American past where Americans were unified. And this also goes back to an earlier sense that as you said, that when America's in danger, unity has to be enforced. It can't just be left to its own devices. The state has to make sure that the forces that might make for disunity are repressed and if they're not citizens, that they're cast out of the country entirely.

[Martin DeCaro]

When you hear the words red scare, the McCarthy era may come to mind.

[Joe McCarthy]

In 1950, men throughout the world learned to look on the brutal face of communism. Berlin powder keg of Europe saw a mass demonstration. My fellow Americans, there's nothing accidental about this picture. It Is a pattern of deliberate communist infiltration impossible, you say? Yes. Unbelievable. Yes. But there you have is all a matter of cold record. Adopted violent methods to prevent the unloading of Marshall Plan aid. And across the world, in Japan, America's stronghold in the Pacific, the busy Commies were at it again.

[Martin DeCaro]

As chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on investigations, Joe McCarthy hunted for communists, ruining people's lives with rumors and innuendo until he picked a fight with the wrong opponent. Ole Eisenhower's army.

[Joe McCarthy]

Look, look, you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

[Martin DeCaro]

By the end of 1954, Joe McCarthy was censured and his career in politics finished. There was a Red Scare a generation earlier, and it witnessed some of the worst political repression in U.S. history. The bill of Rights shredded in order to enforce unity, enforce patriotism, to weed out dangerous subversives and radical anarchists. We'll talk about this in a moment with historian Michael Kazin. So this history came to mind as I watched the Trump administration blowtorch civil liberties by deporting alleged gang members to a gulag in Central America without due process under the Alien Enemies act, which was meant for wartime in the event of a foreign invasion. So it was no surprise when news reports said some of the deportees were wrongfully accused.

[Michael Kazin]

On that list was a Venezuelan migrant living and working in Dallas with no criminal record. They believe he is now being held among some of the most dangerous.

[Martin DeCaro]

I also thought of Woodrow Wilson and the Palmer Raids, when federal agents kidnapped foreign born students. Under a 1952 law, it allows the Secretary of State to determine if a visa holder's presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. And there have been a half dozen or so of these arrests. You may have seen the footage of Rumesa Ozturk, who is from Turkey, a doctoral student at Tufts University, kidnapped by federal officers wearing masks and plain clothes as she walked down the street. Here is Secretary of State Marco Rubio disingenuously suggesting this harmless woman was some kind of threat or supporter of Hamas.

[Marco Rubio]

We revoked her visa. She said, it's an F1 visa. I believe we revoked it, and here's why. And I'll say it again, I said it everywhere. Let me be abundantly clear, okay? If you go apply for a visa right now, anywhere in the world, let me just send this message out. If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us that the reason why you're coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus. We're not going to give you a visa. If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we're going to take away your visa. And once you've lost your visa, you're no longer legally in the United States. And we have a right, like every country in the world has a right to remove you from our country.

[Martin DeCaro]

300 students have had their visas revoked. Austerk's offense was writing an op ed critical of Israel. The current administration is abolishing the First Amendment for foreign born students who protest Israel's destruction of Gaza. So about this 1952 law. The new York Times reports it was tested in 1996 in federal court and the judge, I kid you not was Donald Trump's sister, Marianne Trump Barry. And the case involved Mario Ruiz Massu, a former Mexican official whom the Clinton administration wanted to deport to Mexico for the same stated reason. The Trump administration is after students a threat to foreign policy interests. Judge Barry ruled the law confers upon a single individual, the Secretary of State, the unfettered and unreviewable discretion to deport any alien lawfully within the United States if that person's mere presence here would impact in some unexplained way on foreign policy interests. You know, a century ago, the US Congress passed an Espionage Act, a Sedition act and an Alien and Immigration Act. These were used by the Woodrow Wilson administration to crush anti war dissent and then in 1919 to hunt down suspicious immigrants in the Palmer raids. In his book the First World War in American Society, historian David M. Kennedy writes, Palmer's methods and those of his agents were high handed in the extreme. Break ins and arrests were frequently made without warrants and prisoners were treated roughly. Palmer concentrated his efforts on aliens because they could be deported through a purely administrative process mandated by the alien act of 1918. He thus avoided the formal indictments and public trials that would have been necessary had he prosecuted radical citizens under the Espionage or Sedition Acts. The Alien act specified mere membership in an organization considered to be advocating violent overthrow of the government as sufficient grounds for deportation. Kennedy writes. The star chamber tactics Palmer later defended. I apologize for nothing that the Department of Justice has done. He testified to a Senate Committee in 1921 I glory in it. I point with pride and enthusiasm to the results of that work. And if some of my agents out in the field were a little rough and unkind, or short and curt with these alien agitators whom they observed seeking to destroy their homes, their religion, and their country, palmer said, I think it might be well overlooked in the general good to the country which has come from it. You'll see some similarities here, some echoes. The means justify the ends protecting the country against some vague threat supporting the overthrow of the United States. Well, how? By writing on a piece of paper? In some ways, it's hard to believe this happened in a country founded on the principle of individual liberty. But the early 20th century was a strange time in America. In his book War Against War, Michael Kazin details the patriotic efforts to prepare Americans, including hyphenated Americans, for possible entry into the First World War because, as Kazin says, resistance to militarism ran wide and deep. There is something called the National Security league, founded in December 1914, Kazin writes, and financed in part by such wealthy Americans as railroad owner Cornelius Vanderbilt, the financier Bernard Baruch, and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick. Its board was packed with a variety of renowned figures, two former secretaries of state and a secretary of the Navy 17 governors, says Kazin, the editors of such respected magazines as the Outlook and Scientific American and Thomas Edison. But, as Kazin goes on to say, a traditional distaste for standing armies and foreign entanglements mingled with a populist suspicion of the war trust corporations eager to produce munitions for domestic as well as overseas consumption. The ethnic groups that had spurned the allies at the start of the war recoiled at the campaign by the National Security League and its allies, as did every major labor union and, of course, the Socialist Party. So it'll come as no surprise that when the war began and efforts to educate and enlighten did not convince anti war people to become pro war, the government and ordinary patriotic citizens alike resorted to repression, violence, and terror. So what's happening today is disturbing, but it is not entirely unprecedented, because during times of national stress, during times of war, or during times of manufactured hysteria, civil liberties fall prey to the demands of conformity and security, however defined. Michael Kazin is a distinguished scholar of American political and social movements at Georgetown University. He is a frequent guest on the podcast. His most recent book is what It Took to Win the History of the Democratic Party. Michael Kazen, welcome back.

[Michael Kazin]

Good to be here.

[Martin DeCaro]

Would you say, as we look at this from 30,000ft, that there is a long history, a tradition in our country of civil rights abuses in the name of national security, patriotism, what have you.

[Michael Kazin]

That's certainly true. I mean, you can say it goes all the way back to the War for Independence, where a lot of loyalists, those who were still supportive of the British Crown, some killed, some tarred and feathered, a lot were sort of driven into Canada where their descendants still live. And then there were the Alien Sedition acts in late 1790s, when it looks like the United States, under the presidency of John Adams, might get involved in the Napoleonic wars on the side of the British and other monarchies at the time. And then World War I, perhaps, which I know we'll talk about probably the most egregious and most sustained period of repression in American history. And students, by the way, have been non citizen students have been deported before, too. There were a bunch of students in the late 1930s who were pro Soviet, who were thought to be pro Soviet, who were deported. They were foreign students from Europe. Whenever the party in power argues that free speech is a threat to national security, you have repression setting in, sometimes people being put into jail, being deported if they're not citizens. And often the population is sort of egged on to, to hate them and to even use vigilante justice against people.

[Martin DeCaro]

So, as you know, Michael Kazin, there's a big debate about what is motivating the Trump administration to do this. Not just President Trump himself, but others in his administration, like Stephen Miller. There's been a long running debate over fascism. Right. We're going to talk about World War I and what motivated the crackdown on dissent during those days. But in the name of national security or a national emergency or a crisis, we often find these justifications. What, in your view, is motivating, what are the motivating factors here today?

[Michael Kazin]

Well, there's a fear of non citizens in the country, some students, some not. And there's a general sense. You mentioned Stephen Miller, who's sort of the anti immigrant czar, if you will, a sense that America's letting too many people with different views that are undermining the national culture as well as they claim, undercutting American wages and American working conditions. And this is a, you might call it a kind of a racial ethnic nationalism as opposed to a more liberal civic nationalism, which is what most people, liberals, progressives support. That is, everyone should have the same rights. No one should be seen as an enemy. No one should be seen as hostile to American ideals because of where they come from or because of the views that they hold a much more pluralistic kind of nationalism than Stephen Miller and Trump and people on that side believe in.

[Martin DeCaro]

There's a right wing populism, which is sort of a vague way of describing what the ideology is there. It's often said that Donald Trump is not an ideologue, but he does have some core convictions. He doesn't like immigrants, illegal immigrants. He likes tariffs, et cetera. There's been the debate about fascism as well. If anything here is fascistic, it is creating a climate or just claiming that there's some kind of crisis or national emergency that warrants the use of a wartime law during peacetime. We are not under invasion right now. Okay? The Alien Enemies act is being cited now, and this is the deportation flights, not the arrests of the students. That deals with a 1952 law dealing with foreign policy. But it's just these vague assertions of national security, foreign policy, when it's really about cracking down on dissent or the others, the others we don't want in our country.

[Michael Kazin]

Yeah, I mean, first of all, we know that from his first term, through his four years out of power into now, one of the consistent forms of rhetoric that Trump has used is seeing that America is being invaded. He uses that term all the time.

[Donald Trump]

You know, when they let. I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They're poisoning the blood of our country. That's what they've done. They poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we.

[Michael Kazin]

Think about the idea that foreign influences are corroding the greatness of America. And to make America great again, we have to go back to some imagined period in the American past where Americans were unified. And this also goes back to an earlier sense that, as you said, that when America's in danger, unity has to be enforced, forced. It can't just be left to its own devices. The state has to make sure that the forces that might make for disunity are repressed, and if they're not citizens, that they're cast out of the country entirely. And there's an important similarity that Trump and Miller and their advisors make between draw between immigrants who are not political people and student protesters who might come from other countries who clearly are interested in. In protesting what the country's doing politically. So if you can cast both of those groups, defy both those groups as an equal danger to the unity of the country, then you know, it's a much more powerful appeal than just talking about illegal immigrants on one hand or supposedly pro Hamas protesters on the other hand.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. The 1952 law cited by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others in the administration to justify the arrests of campus protesters who were opposed to Israel's war in Gaza, it's vague. It talks about the foreign policy interests of the United States. And this actually was tested one time, thanks to Adam Liptak at the New York Times, wrote an article about this. It was Donald Trump's sister who passed away some years ago, but she was a federal judge. And in the mid-1990s, a case involving this 1952 law came up. And she said it's ridiculous. It's. And this is my analogy, Professor Kazin, it's so vague. So you're going down a street and there's just a sign that says do not speed. So you say, all right, I'll go 15 miles an hour and get pulled over anyway. And the officer says, why were you speeding? Well, it just said don't speed. It didn't actually say what the speed limit was. Same thing here with this law. It's so vague. What would possibly be against the foreign policy interests of the United States? Well, these college students are finding out now.

[Michael Kazin]

And this was, by the way, this law called McCarran Walter act was passed in 1852, right in the middle of the Red Scare of that period. Joe McCarthy was not yet the head of a Senate committee because Republicans didn't take over the Senate until the election in 52. But this law was named after a very right wing senator from Nevada named Pat McCarron and a pretty right wing congressman from Pennsylvania named Walker, who was actually also the chair of a group that doesn't exist anymore, fortunately, called the House UN American Activities Committee. The very idea of their UN American activities one can commit, and that itself should be enough to get you hauled in front of a congressional committee and maybe put into jail.

[Martin DeCaro]

Having a different opinion was considered un American. Yeah. I think what's fascinating about this, if not disturbing as well, is how a society can slide into repression, how a government can repress. And During World War I, there were private citizens, local groups who were doing this, and then how other people just simply shrug their shoulders or look the other way and don't protest against it. So why don't we dive into some history here, then demonstrate to our listeners that this type of thing is not new. There was a mood in the country leading up to the declaration of War in 1917, April 1917. There was a notion in the country that the recent tidal waves of immigration brought people to the country who maybe weren't assimilating as fast as they should have or not at all, who therefore could not necessarily be trusted to be 100 percenters. Right? They were hyphenated Americans like my people, Italian Americans.

[Michael Kazin]

A couple things were going on then. First of all, the war began in Europe in 1914, almost three years before. It was very clear the United States was going to stay neutral. However, the US also claimed the right, which was a right under international law of being able to ship war supplies to any side in the war. And that was going to mean, for various reasons, because the US economic ties to Britain and France, that the war supplies are going to Britain and France and not going to get into Germany. You had to get around a British blockade to get those goods in Germany, and that didn't happen. So the US in effect, was already siding with Britain and France and. And also Russia. Triple Entente, it was called, even before the US actually declared war. And also there was. Germans tried to stop US Supplies and going over there. So there was sabotage, some acts of sabotage, isolated. But nevertheless, some Germans did try to stop the war effort, German spies, by blowing up things in the US but as you say, a lot of immigrants were in the United States then and came in large numbers from a lot of the countries that were fighting the war. Russians coming from the Tsarist empire, many of them Jews, like my own people, my own father's family. There are, of course, many Germans in the country. It was a very large immigrant group. They were Irish Americans, Irish Catholics among them. Didn't like the idea of the US siding with Great Britain because Ireland was then still a colony of Great Britain. So this was a real cauldron of animosity which could be used once the war began to turn the government against those who seem to be in some way shirking duty, trying to get out of the draft, or saying things that were pro German or even being suspected of being pro German because they were German American and were not gung ho for the war. This was the environment, this environment of fear, a desire to suppress disloyalty during the war that gave rise to really the most egregious period of repression in American history.

[Martin DeCaro]

There had been efforts before the repression. We'll get to that. But there had been efforts before the repression to Americanize the immigrants. Right. And this was on both ends of the political spectrum. You had more progressive or liberal reformers.

[Michael Kazin]

Teddy Roosevelt, when he was president, he popularized the term the melting pot, which comes from a play, ironically, by a British Jewish playwright named Israel Zangwill, a popular play that was on Broadway at the time, 1908. He said, Fine, for people to come to this country, we want immigrants to come to this country, but they must Americanize. They must learn English. They must give up, not just him, but other people said they should give up their weird habits of eating things like spaghetti. People actually talked about spaghetti as this foreign food. You shouldn't be. You shouldn't be making and serving. Well, we've gotten past that, luckily. And they shouldn't be singing songs in their own language and so forth. Yes, there was a drive to Americanize, to assimilate, I think is the right way to put it, to make sure that America was a stronger country because everyone was speaking the same language, share the same ideals. And also, this was part of a labor question too, because lots and lots of immigrants worked in basic industries at the time, steel and coal and making of clothing. And they spoke their own languages at the workplace. And some of them joined radical groups like the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World. So this was all a push by people like Roosevelt to try not just to Americanize the immigrants, but also to, how should I say it? De. Radicalize immigrants who themselves were sometimes pretty radical in their politics.

[Martin DeCaro]

Now, let's share a short passage here from David M. Kennedy's great book. Over here. Kennedy talks about two different types of reformers, and he cites another historian, John Higgum. One type of reformer sought to temper as well as improve the ordinary course of assimilation by providing a receptive environment for old world heritage heritages. Preaching the doctrine of immigrant gifts, Jane Addams and her fellow workers concentrated less on changing the newcomers than on offering them a home. The other source of the Americanization movement was a loose coalition composed of old stock Americans who feared for the continued ascendancy of their cultural values and social position, and businessmen who sought to discipline a troublesomely varied labor force, meaning they might become radical unionists or communists or something. This type of Americanizer, Kennedy goes on, preached a loyalty that consisted essentially of willing submissiveness. Their chief motive was fear. So April 1917, it's decided the federal government must educate and enlighten the public to manufacture consent for the war. George Creel, what was known as cpi, Committee for Public Information. Who was George Creel? Michael Kazin.

[Michael Kazin]

He was actually a reformer. He was progressive who had supported a lot of causes that progressives supported at the Time. He supported women's suffrage, he supported urban reform, getting the bosses out of politics. He supported labor unions as well. And so in some ways he was a perfect choice to sell the war because the war was sold. And this is part of the irony of the war. The most oppressive period in American history was also a time when this war sold in very gloriously progressive ideal terms. This was a war, as Woodrow Wilson said in his famous speech in April 22, 1917, a war to make the how the world made safe for democracy. Not to make the world safe for democracy. How the world made safe for democracy. He used the passive tense actually in the speech because everyone had to be involved in that making. And so he sold the war through the Committee on Public Information, which trained civilians, mostly middle class men, to give four minute speeches in factories, in city streets, in, in men's clubs, everywhere else they could go. They were called Four Minute Men because they were supposed to sort of sum up the argument for this speech in idealistic terms in just four minutes. And they also had information in different languages because they understood that a lot of Americans did not speak English, at least didn't speak it fluently or read it fluently. And they also subsidized a group in the labor movement called the American alliance for labor and Democracy, run by Samuel Gompers, the head of the American Federation of Labor, seen as a counterweight to an anti war group called the People's Council for Democracy and Peace, which was active especially among radicals, socialists and others in opposing the war. This was an unprecedented organization, the Committee on Public Information. Never before had the federal government had a propaganda agency that was funded by Congress.

[Martin DeCaro]

George Creel had a background in advertising, I believe. I don't know if this is true. There may have been a recommendation or a suggestion that they should call it a propaganda office. But propaganda doesn't work if people know it's propaganda.

[Michael Kazin]

But it's also that poor propaganda was associated with the Catholic Church, which had an office for propaganda. You know, propaganda is not itself a pejorative term. It means propagating your ideas, you know.

[Martin DeCaro]

And Joseph Goebbels had his, his office under the Nazi regime was the propaganda Office. Although even Goebbels did not want Nazi movies to be heavy handed propaganda and political films. He wanted to be more subtle to try to win over people who hadn't supported the Nazis. Not to digress about that, but I am reading a book about this right now. But yeah, about Creel and the cpi. They wanted to enlighten and they wanted to educate. There was something called the Bureau of Education that worked in close collaboration with his committee. There was something called a war Americanization plan. There was also something called the division of work with the Foreign Born Loyalty Leagues. So this massive effort to try to get people on board, but under the tension of war, there was repression to try to get people on board faster. We had the espionage act of 1917, Sedition act of 1918. These were not designed to crack down on spies. These were designed to crack down on dissenters.

[Michael Kazin]

The Espionage Act 1917 was supposed to penalize and make illegal any actions to try to impede the government from prosecuting the war. So for example, Eugene Debs in 1918 gave a speech. Eugene Debs was the leading socialist in America, had run for president four times and run again in 1920 from jail. He gave a speech basically against the draft in 1918 at a socialist party picnic in Canton, Ohio. And he was prosecuted under the Espionage act for doing that. The sedition act in 1918 was even more draconian. You didn't have to do anything specifically to impede the act. You just have to speak out in disloyal ways against the government or against the draft. This was undertaken in part because the government was wanting to sort of get out ahead of a lot of vigilante activities that were taking place around the country. There were some German Americans who were lynched for supposedly opposing the war or even for saying something nice about the Kaiser. And so the Sedition act, which was repealed luckily in 1920, was really specifically an act that. That made the First Amendment a dead letter, at least as long as it was in operation.

[Martin DeCaro]

David m. Kennedy, page 68 of over here. In one of the war's most infamous cases of vigilantism, near St. Louis in April 1918, a mob seized Robert Prager, a young man whose only discernible offense was to have been born in Germany. He'd actually tried to enlist in the American Navy, but had been rejected for medical reasons. You're familiar with the Prager story, Michael Kazin.

[Michael Kazin]

Yes. There was a member of the IWW named Little in Butte, Montana who was lynched for saying that people should be able to keep striking during the war. There wasn't a lot of individual violence of this kind, but there was a lot of repression of people and putting them in jail for prosecuting them or and putting them in jail for opposing the war. Not just that, but also newspapers. Anti war newspapers were put out of business by the post office department for publishing editorials or columns that were critical of the war. So this was not just about individuals, also about institutions. And there were a lot of famous Americans, radical Americans like Emma Goldman, who were put in jail for posing the draft. Later on, Emma Goldman was deported to Russia because she was not a citizen.

[Martin DeCaro]

Prager was lynched to the cheers of 500 people. A trial of the mob's leaders followed in which the defendants wore red, white and blue ribbons and the defense attorneys called their deed patriotic murder. The jury returned a not guilty verdict after 25 minutes. The Washington Post commented, in spite of the excesses such as lynching, it is a healthful and wholesome awakening in the interior of the country. Michael, what does it tell us about our society? The need for conformity and loyalty? People who otherwise wouldn't do something like this are cheering on a murder.

[Michael Kazin]

In wartime, people are willing to do things that they would abhor if they were done in peacetime. I think that's fair to say so. I mean, look, there were people who thought that mosques should be closed down after 9, 11. If you remember that there were 110,000 Japanese American citizens were put in what we call relocation camps in fairly barren parts of California and the Rocky Mountains during World War II and were only allowed to leave if they were men, if they joined the army. So again, this is not unusual in American history. You have to understand or at least appreciate both the tremendous heterogeneity of the American population and also heterogeneity. People can come from different countries, different times, different ideas, different religions also can breed at times of crisis a kind of desire among a lot of people for a forced homogeneity, for a forced unity, which otherwise people don't worry about quite so much. Crises, especially war crises, are not. Are not good times for freedom in America.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's like an insecurity among people. Well, today's mobs are often found on social media, which is bad. I mean, it's mean comments. It's not the same as lynching somebody. But I see it. I see people on social media cheering on the immigration agents who, who have arrested these students for protesting the war in Gaza. So the Palmer raids. I'm such a great interviewer. I get to the topic I really wanted to talk to you about at the end here. These come after World War I and this is where we get the deportations of suspicious foreigners. What was the backdrop to the Palmer Raids? Obviously, there had been a Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and then an emerging red scare in the United States. What was happening in the country that Made Congress pressure the Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer to do these raids.

[Michael Kazin]

As you say, there was a fear not just that the Bolsheviks had taken over Russia, but also that the Bolsheviks were going to recruit, persuade a lot of Americans, especially non citizens to support them and to try to bring about a revolution in this country as well. The possibility of that actually happening was pretty far fetched. But again the fear. Bread of the war, bread of the crisis. Egged on by the Espionage act and tradition amendments to the Espionage act made it possible for Congress to to support a crackdown on people who were in any way pro revolution or radical. There were socialists who were not Bolsheviks but who were elected to this to the assembly in New York State for example, who were not allowed to take their offices because they were seen as disloyal. There was a Congressman Victor Berger who had opposed the war. A socialist Congressman who was expelled from Congress for opposing the war. And he got elected later on again and he was allowed to keep his seat after the war ended. And the Palmers actually really should called the Hoover raids. Yes, a Mitchell Palmer was the Attorney General but there was a group called in the Justice Department called the Radical Division. It's actually called the Radical Division run By this young, 24, I think he was years old, very smart, aggressive guy named J. Edgar hoover from Washington D.C. himself who really ran on a day to day basis the raiding of radical headquarters and radical bookstores, rounding up people like the anarchist Emma Goldman for deportation and generally putting a atmosphere of fear into anybody who had opposed the war and after the war was in any way friendly towards the Bolshevik cause. And you know there were some real things that Americans who didn't like radicals could be afraid of. There were bombings and anarchists did leave a bomb on the doorstep of Abe Mitchell Palmer in Dupont circle in Washington D.C. other anarchists tried to do the same and were blown up. And the Socialist Party which was a pretty large radical party up until 1918. 1919 Split in two parts in 1919 and part of that split were mostly from Eastern Europe, immigrants from Eastern Europe and they founded the Communist Party. So you did have people talking and acting in revolutionary ways in America though it was a very small minority and clearly they were not really threatening the security of the United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right. One bomb blew up Attorney General Palmer's home in Dupont Circle here in Washington. There had also been a major strike in Seattle in February of 1919. The Palmer Raids took place in November.

[Michael Kazin]

Not just major strike in Seattle, there were major strikes all over the country.

[Martin DeCaro]

Wow.

[Michael Kazin]

20% of all American workers went on strike in that one year, 1919.

[Martin DeCaro]

So this wasn't a phantom. I'm not justifying the Palmer raids, but yeah, this was something that people could actually be.

[Michael Kazin]

Yeah, I mean, it was a time of chaos and disruption. There were race riots. There was a terrible race riot in Chicago. Dozens of people, mostly black people, were killed by white mobs. There was a police str in Boston. Police actually went on strike and they all lost their jobs for going on strike. So you shouldn't say that. Americans were irrational to think that the country was imploding.

[Martin DeCaro]

Do you remember the name of the mayor of Seattle, Ole Hanson? Yes. I can't get anything past you. A bomb showed up at his house. He was not killed. The next day, a bomb showed up at the home of a Georgia senator. It severely wounded his maid. So, yes, there was the shipyard strike in Seattle. 35,000 shipyard workers. And Hanssen said, well, he requested federal troops to occupy the city. And he denounced the strikers as deep red revolutionists who, quote, want to take possession of our American government and try to duplicate the anarchy of Russia. So if I could add, that wasn't.

[Michael Kazin]

Just a shipwreck strike, it became a general strike.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right.

[Michael Kazin]

That is all workers were asked to go out on strike. And the only industries that the strike committee wanted to operate were allowed to operate. So dairies could make milk, for example. And the post office was allowed to operate as well and so forth. But for about five days, the workers actually controlled Seattle. And this looked a lot like a Bolshevik revolution to some people, like Mary Hanson.

[Martin DeCaro]

All right, now to the raids. Citing David M. Kennedy here, the Senate was angry to discover that Most of the 54 alien radicals arrested during the Seattle general strike had not been deported. So the Senate requested unanimously that Attorney General Palmer in October 1919, explain his failure to prosecute more ruthlessly in the war against sedition. Palmer moved to satisfy his critics on November 7 with simultaneous raids against the Union of Russian Workers in a dozen cities. These and subsequent strikes by both federal and state agents eventually netted several hundred radical aliens. On December 21, 1919, 249 were deported to Russia aboard the Buford, or Soviet Ark, as it was dubbed. Palmer's methods and those of his agents were high handed in the extreme, writes Kennedy. Break ins and arrests were frequently made without warrants, and prisoners were treated roughly.

[Michael Kazin]

But of course, part of the reason for the raids was not just to oppress specific people, but also to intimidate anybody who wanted to follow in Their stead. So the anarchist movement had never been that large in America, but it basically was destroyed entirely by the Palmer raids and the new Communist party. There are actually two new Communist parties, to be technical about it. One was mostly native born Americans, one was mostly immigrants. They began under an atmosphere of fear. You talked about citizens lynching people. More importantly than that, actually during the war, after the war were, you might say, sort of vigilante organizations of citizens who were particularly enthused about cracking down on Americans. There was a group called the American Protective League, which had about 300,000 members. Ordinary citizens who had badges they were given by the Justice Department, made it seem as if they were actually government agents. But they weren't government agents. They were just civilians who at the end of the war carried out raids in cities like New York and Pittsburgh. They asked, not politely, men, to show their draft documents, and if they didn't have them, they took them to the police station and tried to put them in jail. They cracked down on prostitution in New Orleans, a very big city for prostitution at the time. And the American Legion was very involved in prosecuting what they called anybody who was un American. They want 100% Americanism. And they also were involved in cracking down on union meetings, cracking down on communist meetings. So the Palmer Raids were the official part of this repression. But there was citizens too who were involved in their own ways, sometimes with official sanction, sometimes not.

[Martin DeCaro]

He had to be a 100 percenter. Just one more remark about the Palmer Raids of November. There was another round of raids in early 1920. January. 4,000 suspected subversives in 33 cities, mostly Communists, were rounded up by Palmer's Raiders under a process, an administrative process mandated by the alien act of 1918. Many of them were deported. About 500 were deported out of the many thousands who were arrested. But in all, wouldn't you say that due process was ignored here? Basically the Constitution was torn up to do this.

[Michael Kazin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For the time being, yes. And something else happened too, that people often don't recognize. People have heard about this repression, probably. But in 1921, again in 1924, there were immigration acts passed by Congress and signed by the presidents, all Republicans at this time, which really cut drastically down the number of immigrants allowed to come to the country, especially from places like Russia and Poland and Italy and Greece and places where immigrants were suspected of having radical sympathies. And the 1924 act, the most draconian of them, called the Johnson Reed act, basically gave quotas for every country in the World, world. How many could come over outside the Western Hemisphere? Western Hemisphere is not affected. So I think Italy had 100 people who were allowed to come to the country after the 1924 act was passed. Russia about 120.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's crazy.

[Michael Kazin]

Great Britain, Ireland, even Germany have much larger quotas. Norway have much larger quotas. So there's an attempt to make America a great Anglo Saxon country, retain the Anglo Saxon majority, as it was called in America, because all the other immigrants were seen by those who passed the laws, mostly white Protestants, as potentially dangerous to the unity of the country.

[Martin DeCaro]

Something people may not be aware of. It was the Department of Labor that was in charge of deportation in those days, not the Bureau of Investigation, which would become the Federal Bureau of investigation, the FBI. 591 Aliens of the thousands originally arrested were actually deported. I identified or located the number here. Courts began to order the release of radicals who had been incriminated on the basis of evidence illegally seized. The Department of Labor officials began to cancel many of the deportation orders because the hysteria started to die down. And apparently Palmer's reputation took a hit as well, because he predicted there was gonna. A revolution was gonna happen in the United States, and that never happened.

[Michael Kazin]

He wanted to be nominated for president in 1920.

[Martin DeCaro]

Didn't work out.

[Michael Kazin]

So that was part of his motivation. Certainly, you know, the Palmer Raids did become unpopular. The idea of free immigration also was unpopular. But the raids themselves. I mean, after all, you can't continue to have this kind of repressive laws being carried on a regular basis when there's no war happening anymore and when the revolution clearly was not going to happen either. After a while, Palmer and even Hoover were seen as crying wolf and they stepped back. And especially once the Sedition Act, Sedition Amendment were repealed, then the legal basis for just repressing people based on what they were saying or articles they were publishing was no longer viable.

[Martin DeCaro]

We'll see if that happens in our country today. The very highly publicized videos and photos of the suspected gang members sent off to El Salvador. As I mentioned at the top, some people cheer this on. Some people were appalled by it. I was appalled by it because we know that some people were scooped up in that dragnet who weren't gang members. It did nothing at all. No crime at all. They just had the wrong tattoo and they've been sent to a gulag. We'll see if this can continue in the current climate. You mentioned before private groups during those days, there was something called the National Security League. You wrote about this in your Book, War Against War, the National Security League. It had very popular Americans on its board, including Thomas Edison. What was the purpose of the nsl?

[Michael Kazin]

Well, it was more. It wasn't really involved in repression in the same way the American Protective League was. It was basically involved in promoting the cause of expanding the military and getting Americans happy about the idea of having a larger military. So its repressive acts were not as important as those of some of the groups I mentioned. The other groups I mentioned, we're going.

[Martin DeCaro]

To need a group like that today. Because back In World War I, we've discussed this in the past, there was a lot of resistance to what was called militarism.

[Michael Kazin]

Yeah, and preparedness, too. I mean, the National Security League was begun before the US Entered the war. It was a group that was trying to promote the idea of preparing Americans for war, to expand the military. The American military was quite small before the war compared to the militaries of other countries. I think it had about 130,000 men in the army, about the same size as the Serbian army. Now, the Serbs were a pretty aggressive power at the time. And of course, it was a Serbian terrorist who arguably started the war by killing the Archduke of Austria, Hungary. But the United States was a country with National Guard and police everywhere, but not with a very large standing army until the U.S. entered World War I. And then the army ballooned up to 4 million.

[Martin DeCaro]

The World War I era, the progressive era in America. So fascinating, yet it takes up less space in popular culture, in popular memory, than the Second World War. On the next episode of History As It Happens, the JFK Files. If you're looking for conspiracy theories, you're gonna have to go somewhere else. That is next. As we report History As It Happens. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter every Friday. Just go to substack and search for History As It Happens.