The Ugly History of Trump's "America First"

In his inauguration speech last week, President Trump stated "“From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first.”  "America First" is the rallying cry of the Trump Administration, and for students of history it recalls an ugly chapter in American history.  The America First Committee was formed in 1939 to keep the US out of the war in Europe.  Like Trump's presidential campaign the original America First movement was isolationist and centered in mid-west. Like Trump and his followers, the leaders expressed admiration for a dictator - then Adolf Hitler, today Vladimir Putin.  Like Trump's campaign, the America First movement was energized by racism and - most notably - anti-Semitism. The movement was led by Charles Lindbergh, who, in his speeches railed against the Jews:

Lindbergh made his infamous speech at an America First rally in Des Moines, Iowa, in September 1941. After charging that President Roosevelt had manufactured "incidents" to propel the country into war, Lindbergh proceeded to blurt out his true thoughts. "The British and the Jewish races," he declared, "for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war." The nation's enemy was an internal one, a Jewish one. "Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government." Lindbergh's unambiguous message was that Jews living in the United States constituted a wealthy, influential, conspiratorial foreign "race" that had seized "our" media and infiltrated "our" political institutions. They were the alien out-group, hostile to "us."

The great American novelist Philip Roth wrote a novel in 2005 - The Plot Against America (Deutsche Version: Verschwörung gegen Amerika ) which imagines an America under President Lindbergh.  I recommend that everyone read it to get a sense of what America is facing for (at least) the next four years. 

 

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to compare Donald Trump to Charles Lindbergh.  As Philip Roth himself wrote an e-mail to The New Yorker Magazine:

“It is easier to comprehend the election of an imaginary President like Charles Lindbergh than an actual President like Donald Trump. Lindbergh, despite his Nazi sympathies and racist proclivities, was a great aviation hero who had displayed tremendous physical courage and aeronautical genius in crossing the Atlantic in 1927. He had character and he had substance and, along with Henry Ford, was, worldwide, the most famous American of his day. Trump is just a con artist. The relevant book about Trump’s American forebear is Herman Melville’s ‘The Confidence-Man,’ the darkly pessimistic, daringly inventive novel—Melville’s last—that could just as well have been called ‘The Art of the Scam.’ 

Yet another instance of (to quote Marx) "history repeating itself, first as tragedy, second as farce?"

Comments

[Zyme]

I so knew you would pick this up :-)
I did associate the slogan with Lindbergh as well.

However this seems to be in too distant a past for the media. I was surprised this comparison did not surface elsewhere.

[koogleschreiber]

I am old enough to remember being a rightwing extremist meant to hate Russians, Jews and Americans. Today they have found a way to love Putin and Trump at the same time...

This is the Trump quote which explains everything: Even if the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, I won’t lose a penny.

Maybe he is about to create a world in which his pennies will be worthless?

I hope he is the good poker player he must be to say things like this:"That’s the problem with our country. A politician would say, ‘Oh I would never go to war,’ or they’d say, ‘Oh I would go to war.’ I don’t want to say what I’d do because, again, we need unpredictability."

The Maniac is a dangerous player at the table, but his disadvantage is everybody knows he can't have good hands (here: arguments) all the time. Almost alway they finally lose all their money, stand up and are never seen again.