Anti-immigrant racism leads fascism’s resurgence in the US. Today, amid a capitalist crisis of accumulation, the owners of production are forced to defend and preserve their rule over the working class. These elite owners do so by combining racism and xenophobia with state and vigilante violence, so as to repress and divide rising workers’ movements that challenge the capitalist system. And this is the definition of fascism.
This is not the first time capitalist elites have deployed antimigrant racism to defend their interests. The prototype of fascists allied with big capital was a century ago, with the smashing of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) between 1917 and 1920.
Composed mostly of migrants, the IWW was America’s first significant revolutionary workers movement. Founded in 1905, the movement included many who had immigrated from southern and eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Its estimated 150,000 members—known as “Wobblies”—belonged to over 900 locals in more than 350 cities and towns across many US states (and parts of Canada and Latin America). With these tens of thousands of international workers, the IWW directed relentless class struggle against the capitalist class of their day, known as the “robber barons.” Between 1905 and 1920, the IWW organized more than 400 specific strike actions and free speech fights—including mass strikes like the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike in Massachusetts and the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike in New Jersey—and played a significant role in the 1919 Seattle General Strike. The IWW also agitated against World War I, which they decried as a capitalist war for profit and colonies: organizing strikes, promoting sabotage of war production, and encouraging workers to refuse the draft.
The IWW’s success in mobilizing such large-scale, worker-led militancy led the capitalist state to crush the movement. To do so, the state weaponized immigration policy to exclude and deport immigrant radicals. And it redirected the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) to unleash a nationwide political police force targeting radical immigrant workers for deportation. While the federal government passed the 1918 Immigration Act, 35 states passed some form of antianarchist and antiradical legislation. This coordinated effort expanded federal and state power to arrest and deport those identified as anarchists, antiwar activists, and radical labor activists.
All this culminated in 1919, when Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer led the BOI to carry out nationwide crackdowns. Known as the Palmer Raids, this three-month law enforcement surge rounded up 10,000 people, mostly without warrants. Many were beaten and tortured in confinement; ultimately, more than 550 were deported.