As a "republican," Sarah Palin must have supported the salting of Carthage in the wake of the Third Punic War.

Ilya Somin's response to my London post is a nifty little walk-back, but he does have a point:

“Progressive” is a general term routinely applied to all those early 20th century writers and political activists who supported large-scale increases in government control of the economy.

That's not it. That is a definition so broad as to be utterly useless. The trusts "supported large-scale increases in government control of the economy" as a means of putting and keeping labor in its place; manufacturers lobbied first for higher, then lower, then higher tariffs; but I doubt Somin wants to include those interests among his "Progressives." The point he does make is this:

Perhaps Kaufman was confused by my use of a capital “p” rather than a lower-case one.

I was, but only because I applied a standard that's been around for about a hundred years instead of Somin's idiosyncratic non-distinction. Those who ignore this distinction typically did so for practical political reasons, like the fellow who wrote this introduction, who wanted to include lowercase-p progressives under his uppercase-P umbrella in order to make his newly founded party look a little more substantial.

I'm not saying this is a distinction universally upheld, only that it's more common than not in contemporary scholarship for the simple reason that most scholars abide by the rules of capitalization: proper nouns refer to unique entities and are therefore capitalized. The niceties of orthography are a side show, however, because the main problem with Somin's post is that he still claims that London was both spectacularly racist and, as he wrote in the first post, "no anomaly among early 20th century Progressives." London's racism still only differs in degree, not kind, because as he wrote in the second post, "it was part of a broader pattern of racism among many Progressives of that era."

Except that it wasn't. London's atypical in all respects, and as I demonstrated in my earlier post, neither part of the "Progressive movement" proper and only obliquely involved in the humble-mumble of internecine conflict that defined leftist and liberal politics at the turn of the last century. But I've repeated myself. Very dull. How about we venture into the comments over there?

It appears that Scott Kaufman is maintaining the faux history that progressives aren’t either fascists or socialists, when the plain fact of the matter is that they are both.

Or maybe not. If elements of that crowd can't tell from my post that London couldn't have been a progressive because he believed they were insufficiently radical, the cause is already lost. But I'm a soldier, so once more into the breach:

As far as I can tell, Google says that Kaufman is the only connection between “nature fakir” and Jack London. And, FWIW, that part about “Darwinian determinism” is nonsense.

Seriously? The first return from Google is too far for someone to tell? What could be closer? Wait, wait, these could be swells of stupidity in an otherwise tempered sea. Let me try one last time:

If you’d like a detailed look at it I’d suggest Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. Like the excesses of Communism, most of this has simply been written out of history.

Uncle.

As a "republican," Sarah Palin must have supported the salting of Carthage in the wake of the Third Punic War.

Comments

[John Emerson]

Off topic (this is all really about Scott and Ilya and Jack, with Jonah looming grandly in the background), but during the period 1900-1910 were there any American authors who made a significant number of statements about racial questions without making any racist statements? This is not necessarily a rhetorical questio0n.

I still hold a grudge about Democrats, of all people, accusing the Populists of racism. My own preliminary research tells me that almost everyone was anti-Catholic except the Catholics, almost everyone was anti-Semitic except the Jews, almost everyone was anti-black except the blacks, and everyone was anti-Chinese -- though from time to time most were willing to make pragmatic adjustments to their principles on these questions.

[SEK]

during the period 1900-1910 were there any American authors who made a significant number of statements about racial questions without making any racist statements? This is not necessarily a rhetorical question.

Twain's anti-imperialist sentiments never turned anti-Spanish, and a whole slew of African-American writers like James Wheldon Johnson spent most of their time attacking or defending W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington from one another. Frank Norris's depictions of migrant workers and Upton Sinclair's treatment of foreigners in The Jungle were both sympathetic. That's off the top of my head, which admittedly is a bit dull after a day of reading Pierce on indexicality. (Don't ask.)

[John Emerson]

Foreigners and migrant workers can be white, though. Knut Hamsun was both of those (in Minnesota) and a Nazi too.

And I've heard Twain described as racist, and not just for "Huckleberry Finn". IIRC, while defending the Fiipinos against US aggression he referred to them as naked savages.

Proving a negative is supposedly impossible, but not if you have a given corpus.

[Tom Elrod]

It appears that Scott Kaufman is maintaining the faux history that progressives aren’t either fascists or socialists, when the plain fact of the matter is that they are both.

A "plain fact," eh? That's some serious fail right there. But I guess Jonah Goldberg's already blazed that trail.

[Ahistoricality]

Well, that answers my question!

[DEO]

$arah would support the salting of Carthage IF someone PAID HER! Simple as THAT!

[John Emerson]

Hm: Dangerous Liaisons: Prostitution, Disease, and Race (http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/modern_fiction_studies/v042/42.1bower.html) Don't have MUSE.

"The writings of muckraker Upton Sinclair were sprinkled with and assortment of racist references to black people":

http://books.google.com/books?id=D4HRwT55XfwC&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=upton+sinclair+racial+attitudes&source=bl&ots=mBDHL4yThF&sig=ODqZay1wf5bsRVFudEHrtQoWb-U&hl=en&ei=HXV0TIvnG5CRnwfu0vTABg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&sqi=2&ved=0CDMQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=upton%20sinclair%20racial%20attitudes&f=false

[John Emerson]

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3176113

http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?act=justtop&url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/92.3/br_100.html">http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/92.3/br_100.html">http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?act=justtop&url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/92.3/br_100.html

[Stephen]

John Emerson has a point. Racialist thinking was pretty much taken for granted amongst turn-of-the-century U.S. writers; you'll even find Du Bois in his early work making statements about the "Negro race"'s essential good-nature, love of dance, etc., that make readers wince today. It wasn't until Franz Boas's brilliant demolition of racialist thinking in The Mind of Primitive Man that a significant number of social scientists and other educated readers began to seriously question the idea that there are distinct races with essential, negative and positive qualities.

So, yes, like virtually everyone writing between 1900 and 1910, progressives tended to make racist statements.

[John Emerson]

These arguments are bizarre. One factor is that MLK has been a saint for 42 years now, and kids have grown up learning that and getting a day off school, so he has to be recruited by every political position, or at least neutralized (just like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, whose actual political positions are usually ignored by people claiming to affiliate with them.)

Likewise overt racism is taboo, even though everyone remains a bit racist, or a lot. So "racist" is defined to mean a big fat tobacco chewing Southern sheriff releasing attack dogs on little children, and people are infuriated if you call them racist for anything less than that.

As a result of the new taboo, though, anyone can zero in on the heroes and ancestors of anyone else and prove that they were racists, since almost everyone was (and my bet is that when we do finally find a 1910 non-racist, they will be so eccentric or utopian or mystical or sectarian that no one really can claim them).

As I've said elsewhere, my interest in this argument comes from the way Hofstadter and others used it (along with other arguments) to discredit the Populists and the Progressives in "The Age of Reform", a book which is regarded as authoritative for a large chunk of the liberal intelligentsia.

[SEK]

So, yes, like virtually everyone writing between 1900 and 1910, progressives tended to make racist statements.

But who is progressives, precious? (Ahem.) I mean, Stephen, you're replicating the very error I'm thwumping here.

[Stephen]

Precious? Am I Frodo or the ring?

Small "p" progressive is as nebulous a term as "liberal" is today. But yes, reformers whom we today think of as progressives tended to distinguish themselves from outright socialists like London. At the same time, there was significant overlap between the two groups (Doug Rossinow has a great book on this - Visions of Progress).

[John Emerson]

That is a definition so broad as to be utterly useless.

But not so broad as not to be frequently used.

[Charles Sarno]

How about this frame then? "At the beginning of the 20th century racism wasn't just a conservative thing, but today it is much more likely to be so and can we just move along..."

[Andrew]

Regarding the fakir stuff, didn't TR use "nature faker?" I remember running across that in the last few days (annoyingly I can't find the citation, though I was just reading Hofstadter). I see the "fakir" too, but I just wondered about using it instead.

[Neil Bates]

Note that the American founders held slaves and had some racist sentiments (and didn't want women to vote, etc, yet most patriotic Americans don't consider that a smear against the basic principles behind the Constitution, American government etc. The way it works: if people don't like a movement, they'll pretend that the faults of its founders/early actors are relevant derogations, but if they like the movement then it will be considered unfortunate personal shortcomings that don't matter.