With the notions of relocation and political opportunism in "carpetbaggery" echoing more than a little in the news these days, it seemed interesting to see how it was understood specifically here.
Probably we need another word for it, since it seems too strongly embedded in pro-Southern, anti-Reconstruction polemic to be useful in a more neutral way to describe "mere" political opportunism in moving to a new and distant district to run for office.
In the national expose and critique of the second Klan printed in the afternoon paper during 1922, which in the past has seemed laudable, and still is mainly so, it was alarming to read how uncritically it took the "lost cause"/Dunning take on Reconstruction, too much of "Birth of a Nation," and thoroughly trashed the Carpetbaggers, accusing them of "atrocities" and "stirring up hatred against the white people." This center-right perspective of ostensibly "reasonable" racism was dominant.
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| August 7th, 1922 |
It was surprising to see the morning paper just a few years later serialize Sinclair Lewis' novel, It Can't Happen Here, running from September through October and into November of 1936.
They did not appear to make enough of a connection between Fascism in Europe and our homegrown varieties. It was only a little over a decade before when the paper seemed thrilled by the parade of the second Klan on November 10th, 1923.
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| September 9th, 1936 |
In an editorial on "bogeyman," they compared it to the Red Scare instead. They did not think the anti-Reconstruction Redeemers, subsequent Jim Crow, and the recrudescence of the Klan counted as any kind of home-grown fascist threat or tendency.
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| September 13th, 1936 |
History doesn't exactly rhyme, but it sure echoes sometimes.
The Statesman starts publishing today as a serial, one of the important novels of our time, "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis. It fictionizes "America under dictatorship." We publish it not to exorcise a bogeyman; but to educate the people in the technique of politicians without scruple, and even of those who may have good purposes but endanger political security by short-cut political methods. The translation from parliamentary government to a dictatorship may be catastrophic as in Italy with the "march on Rome"; or it may be gradual as in Germany where Hitler edged into power by degrees. In this country the course would be to make the congress subservient to the executive, a mere rubber stamp for his will; to strip the supreme court of its power to invalidate laws; to weaken and then to ignore the constitutional guarantees; and finally to abolish the congress and govern by decree.
It mentions Huey Long, but not Father Coughlin or the Silver Shirts, about whom they had editorialized just a few years prior.
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| October 4th, 1933 |
The afternoon paper had also editorialized about the threat from the "shirts."
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| July 30th, 1934 |
You might think of contemporary relevance for "shirts."
And with the filibuster so much in the news, one older discussion of its chief use. (See also this amazing thread with a much longer and larger view.)
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| March 8th, 1949 |
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| March 13th, 1949 |
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| Front page, March 12th, 1949 |
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