Others banned the use in public of all foreign languages. Several states banned the teaching of German in school.
Goldstein’s crime? The film’s portrayal of the British (now US war allies) was considered too unsympathetic. In 19 alone, more than 1,000 people were convicted under the two Acts ‘for voicing criticisms of the war effort or the government’.įor example, filmmaker Robert Goldstein was sentenced to 10 years in prison after the opening in 1917 of his silent film about the US war of independence, The Spirit of ’76 – which had been made prior to the US joining the First World War. Its successor, the 1918 Sedition Act, went still further, making it a crime to ‘utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States’. (Julian Assange was recently charged under an amended version of the Act.)
The Espionage Act of 1917 ‘defined opposition to the war of almost any sort as criminal’ with penalties including ‘a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than 20 years’. The domestic crackdown began at once, drawing on pre-existing anti-immigrant movements, lessons learned in the United States’ recent brutal counter-insurgency campaign in the Philippines, and the country’s deeply-rooted culture of racism. Indeed, at the time, the US ambassador in London reported that: ‘Perhaps our going to war is the only way in which our present preeminent trade position can be maintained and averted.’ However, as Hochschild makes clear, ‘if anyone had thrust war upon the country, it was the United States itself, by becoming a bastion of the British and French military.’ Then-US president Woodrow Wilson claimed that the US had had its belligerent status in the war ‘thrust upon it’.
Adam Hochschild’s latest book tells the story of the extraordinary wave of repression that took place in the US during the years 1917 – 1921.īrilliantly told, it’s ‘a story of mass imprisonments, torture, vigilante violence, censorship killings of Black Americans’, kickstarted by the USA’s formal entry into the First World War in April 1917.īut it’s also the story of incredible bravery and resilience on the part of those who resisted this madness.
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