YOU CAN DEPORT PEOPLE BUT NOT THEIR IDEAS

YOU CAN DEPORT PEOPLE BUT NOT THEIR IDEAS

Steven Levi

If there was any one thing the founding fathers knew in agonizing detail, it was the importance of dissent. They were, after all, dissenters, and had the American Revolution gone the other way, they would have all been hanged for treason. Proof of their understanding of dissent can be seen in the First Amendment, which guarantees the freedoms of speech, press, and religion along with the right to dissent, assemble, and petition the government.

It is easy to give lip service to these rights but it is quite another to publicly support giving the Ku Klux Klan, American Nazi Party, or the National Abortion Federation the right to “peaceably assemble.” The problem is not so much allowing the extremist to gather as it is anguishing with their advocacy of long-term goals that you believe are detrimental to a democracy. America has a long and proud tradition of freedom of speech and even extremists have the right to express their opinion in public, regardless of how odious it is. But there are times when the speech of radicals appears to generate violence. When this happens, the governmental reaction will be quite un-democratic. A good example of an extreme of patriotism played out a century ago, in December of 1919.

In December 1919, the U.S. government deported 249 noncitizens to Russia because of their alleged ties to anarchist or communist movements. Dubbed the Soviet Ark or the Red Ark, the ship that carried them today serves as a reminder that you can deport people but not their ideas.

In the decade leading up to December 1919, America was rife with violent terrorism. On Oct. 1, 1910, an iron worker used 16 sticks of dynamite to bomb the Los Angeles Times building, killing 21 and completely destroying the edifice. While the carnage and high-profile location were novel, the bombing wasn’t. Amidst labor disputes, iron worker union members blew up 110 iron works between 1906 and 1911.

On July 22, 1916, a suitcase bomb exploded during the Preparedness Day Parade in San Francisco, instantly killing 10 and wounding more than 40. The perpetrators were never apprehended. At the end of the same month, the United States suffered what might be its largest ever artificial, non-nuclear blast, the Black Tom explosion. In New York Harbor, German agents exploded more than a ton of ammunitions bound for World War I Allies. The concussion was so great it was felt in Maryland.

It was a decade of social strife in America. The women’s suffrage movement was at full steam and would reach a crescendo when the 19th Amendment was sent to the states for ratification in June 1919. Margaret Sanger opened the first family planning clinic in October 1916 and was promptly arrested. Released, she continued her work and was arrested again. This time she went to prison for distributing contraceptives, a violation of New York law. Convicted and sentenced to 30 days for running a “public nuisance,” she went on a hunger strike and became the first U.S. female hunger striker to be force-fed. Coinciding with this progressive period for women was a temperance movement that by 1920 had succeeded in outlawing alcohol. And labor strikes were erupting across the country, often with violent results.

Internationally, the waters were no calmer. Starting in early 1918, an influenza pandemic began ravaging populations across the planet. Known as the Spanish Flu, it would infect 500 million people — about one-third world’s population — and kill at least 50 million. In the United States, the toll was 675,000, about six times the number of American soldiers who died fighting in World War I.

Revolution shook Russia in 1917, with the monarchy overthrown in March and the professional government overthrown in November. It was not the Bolshevik Revolution alone that chilled American hearts toward Russia. Americans feared a communist revolution fomenting in their country but also had practical reasons to be weary of Russia, namely the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Soviets signed with Germany in March 1918. This effectively took Russia out of World War I. As a result, millions of German soldiers who had been fighting in Russia were transferred to the Western Front, where Americans were fighting in the trenches with other Allied powers. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was looked upon as a betrayal of the Allies — and America. Overnight, anything Russian became suspect. Because many anarchists were publicly pro-Russia in speech, press, and assembly, they were immediately considered pro-German and against the American war effort.

In June 1917, just a couple months after entering the war in Europe, Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917, which made any interference with the work of the armed forces a crime. (The Sedition Act of 1918 expanded its range of offenses to include speech and expressions of opinion critical of the government or the war effort.) Then in October 1918, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1918, which allowed for the deportation of “non-citizens” who “disbelieve in or are opposed to all organized government,” i.e., anarchists.

The Espionage Act and Immigration Act were supposed to quell the activity of the anarchists but did no such thing. The spring of 1919 saw a series of bombs targeting government and law enforcement officials, and in April a postal clerk discovered 36 dynamite-filled bomb packages addressed to a laundry list of politicians and businessmen, including U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchel Palmer. And on June 2 an anarchist blew up himself and the front of Palmer’s house in Washington, D.C. Eight other bombs detonated that day in seven cities, targeting government officials and proponents of anti-sedition legislation. It did not take Palmer long to respond. That month he warned Congress that radicals in America would “on a certain day … rise up and destroy the government in one fell swoop.” He asked for funding for investigations and within a month had conducted the first of what would be called the Palmer Raids.

By November of 1919, Palmer claimed to have arrested the proverbial worst of the worst and prepared to deport them to Russia. Of the alleged 60,000 names he collected, Palmer culled the list down to 249. Only two of those to be deported had a national reputation: Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. Both were prolific writers, tabloid publishers, and public speakers. But only Berkman had a track record of violence. On July 23, 1892, Berkman entered the office of industrialist Henry Clay Frick and tried to kill him with a pistol. After Berkman shot and missed — twice — he pulled out a dagger and stabbed Frick three times. Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison, served 14, and eventually moved to San Francisco. There he published one of the country’s most popular anarchist tabloids, The Blast, whose logo was an exploding bundle of dynamite sticks. He started printing the magazine in January 1916, just months before the Preparedness Day bombing. Naturally, Berkman was questioned, but no investigation then or since has turned any link between Berkman and the bombing.

The other nationally known anarchist was Emma Goldman. She had emigrated to the United States in 1885 from what is today Lithuania and became the spokeswoman for controversial causes such as birth control. She had been sent to prison numerous times for “inciting to riot” because of editorial content in her popular anarchist journal, Mother Earth, and for distributing information on birth control. Goldman and Berkman had both been arrested in June 1917 on the charge they “induce[d] persons not to register” for the newly instated draft. They were both convicted and served time in prison but arrested again in the Palmer Raids and sentenced to deportation.

At 6 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 21, 1919, Berkman, Goldman, and 247 other “undesirables” were on their way to Russia aboard the USAT Buford, deported because of their political beliefs. The press dubbed the ship the “Soviet Ark” and the “Red Ark,” and today it represents the reactionism of America’s first “Red Scare.”

The deportations, of course, did not end political violence in America. Nine months later, the country suffered what was then the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil. On Sept. 16, 1920, a massive blast shook Wall Street in New York. At 12:01 p.m., a horse-drawn wagon with 100 pounds of dynamite and 500 pounds of lead weights exploded, killing 38 people and injuring 143 others. The blast was so intense it derailed a streetcar a block away and sent shrapnel to the 34th floor of the Equitable Building. A hair’s breadth away from death was a stockbroker who was lifted off his feet by the blast. His name was Joseph P. Kennedy, father to a then 3-year-old John F. Kennedy.

Eventually, this era of violence ended because of the embodiment of the most American of truism: America does not have racial, social, or political problems; it has economic problems. With the end of World War I, the focus of American industrial might changed from war armaments to consumer products. Shortages and rationing disappeared, and the stores across America filled with goods. Prices dropped. The decade of the 1920s roared and the ranks of the middle class swelled. Yes, there was economic inequality then as there is today but the key to the vibrancy was the vast expansion of occupations available. With more and more people working and prices coming down, there was less and less incentive for violent action to increase wages. Thus the era of violence passed.

That being said, the fertile economic soil of the Roaring Twenties planted a poisonous garden that would take a decade to bloom. Then, like today, there was a lack of sufficient government regulation to control the level of corporate greed. Then, like today, the richest Americans saw staggering increases in wealth while the middle and lower class saw inflation eat away at their income. Yes, there were more economic opportunities but then, as with now, the income from those opportunities kept most working families on a financial treadmill. The rising cost of living negated the increases in their wages.

And what happened to the 249 anarchists who were deported? The fates of Berkman and Goldman are well known. Both became disenchanted with Bolshevik-style socialism and left the Soviet Union. Berkman fell into poverty and committed suicide in 1936 in Nice, France. Goldman lived to see the gathering clouds of World War II and died in Toronto in 1940. As for the rest of the deportees, it is reported that 90 percent of them were dead within a decade of their deportation from the U.S. The Bolsheviks did not trust them because they had been overseas. Behind Berkman and Goldman, the two most prominent anarchists were Peter Bianki and Ethel Bernstein. Bianki was killed as part of a Bolshevik food requisition squad that was extorting hay and other supplies from a village, probably in the 1930s. Bernstein, at some period, served 10 years in a forced labor camp. She was still alive in Moscow in 1972, but the trail ends there.

What’s the historical lesson here? History is not the story of the past; it is the study of the future. A century ago, 249 Socialists were deported for their beliefs. You can deport people but not their ideas.

Proof?

One of the blazing issues in the upcoming 2020 election season is socialism. Donald Trump is already accusing the Democrats of being ‘socialists’ and says this is a bad thing. Well, a century ago socialists were advocating for an eight-hour day, health insurance, unemployment insurance, retirement accounts, popular election of United States Senators. All of these are now part of the fabric of our Democracy. Socialism, the collective paying for things we all use, is part of that fabric. We drive on roads constructed before we were born. We pay municipal taxes to support police and fire services even though we many never make a 911 call. We borrow books we did not buy from public libraries, camp in public parks and enjoy low, regulated rates for the water and electricity we use in our homes. The education of our children — whether we have them or not — is guaranteed to citizens and noncitizens alike. The basic concept of socialism is alive and well even though 249 socialists were deported for their beliefs a century ago. Is socialism a crazy idea. America was founded on crazy ideas. When it comes to crazy ideas from non-American-born individuals that changed the world, try the founding fathers and the Bill of Rights.

*Steve Levi has more than 80 books in print or on Kindle. He specializes in books on the Alaska Gold Rush and impossible crimes. An impossible crime is one in which the detective has to solve HOW the crime was committed before he can go after the perpetrators. In the MATTER OF THE DESERTED AIRLINER, an airplane with no pilot, crew or passengers lands at Anchorage International Airport. As the authorities are pondering the circumstances of the arrival, a ransom demand is made for $25 million in diamonds and precious stones. Chief of Detectives for the Sandersonville, North Carolina, Police Department, Captain Heinz Noonan, is visiting his in-laws in Anchorage when he is called onto the case. For the next 36 hours, he pieces together the puzzle of how the crime was committed. But can he solve the crime, free the hostages and locate the perpetrators before the ransom is paid? https://www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi