JD Vance and the return of the Know Nothing Party

JD Vance spouts prejudices about immigrant crime as the basis for his nativist view of immigration policy, citing as evidence the movie Gangs of New York.  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/18/us/politics/vance-immigration-gangs-of-new-york.html?smid=url-share

These are precisely the views that launched the Know Nothing Party in the 1850s.  That party, whose presidential candidate former President Millard Fillmore came in third in the 1856 election, was based on opposition to Catholic immigrants, who were central (along with white Protestant gangs) to the story told in Gangs of New York.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1856_United_States_presidential_election  It is ironic that Mr. Vance is a recent convert to Catholicism. 

It is also worth noting that the once-patron saint of the Republican Party Abraham Lincoln vigorously opposed the Know Nothings, as set forth in this 1855 letter to his law partner Joshua Speed:

I am not a Know-Nothing– That is certain– How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid– As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal”. We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and  foreigners, and catholics”. When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty– to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/documents/D200860b

Russia.  This brings us back to the Tsar’s spiritual and political descendant, Vladimir Putin, so admired by Donald Trump and the homophobic Right in the United States today. 

Yes, America, we have a choice in November.  May we choose wisely.