Populism, Immigration, and “Ambivalent Americanism” in Recent US History

Saturday, January 4, 2020: 4:10 PM
Sutton North (New York Hilton)
Eric Larson, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
The rise of Trumpism has ushered in a seemingly new era of support for an “America First” approach to the world. Yet today’s political scenario has clear predecessors in the 1990s. Throughout the decade, trade-oriented Republicans and centrist Democrats sparred with left- and right-wing anti-globalists. Themes of globalization and the U.S. place in the world were integral components of the decade’s election cycles, and they galvanized multitudes of protesters at the 1999 “Battle of Seattle” outside the World Trade Organization ministerial.

As liberals and left-leaning populists sought out answers for the era’s right-wing resurgence, they sometimes realigned themselves with symbols of the nation’s power and self-sufficiency, often seeking to reclaim the patriotic terrain Republicans had so successfully captured. This paper examines how liberals and left-wing populists mobilized narratives of American exceptionalism in the era. Some of these populist figures and organizations sought to re-equip the themes of Jeffersonian democracy for the late twentieth century. Others offered a nostalgic lament to the industrial power and influence of the U.S. in the American Century. The paper suggests that liberals, and especially progressive liberals, adopted a kind of ambivalent Americanism. They were both attracted to its appeal and electoral power, but simultaneously wary of the way it could bolster racism and xenophobia.

Ambivalent Americanism ultimately highlights the limits of liberalism in the era, a political boundary most clearly illuminated by the question of immigration. While liberal populists, in particular, celebrated a producerist vision of a nation of small farmers, struggling factory workers, and Heartland values, they implicitly mobilized a whitened vision of tradition, change, and the nation’s moral center. As immigrant rights struggles emerged as increasingly important as the twentieth century came to a close, immigrant advocates often discovered the limits of liberalism in the liberal and populist ambivalence about their demands.

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