There are two cancerous traditions of American politics that have combined to create an ugly blot on Midterm Elections 2018.  The first is slavery, and the second is xenophobia. 

It is hard to accept the idea that slavery is an ongoing tradition in American politics, but in this election, it is very much in evidence.  Physical slavery of African-Americans, for the most part, ended with the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.  The slavery tradition lived on, however, with the efforts of a large sector of white Americans, North and South, to relegate African-Americans to second class citizenship.  The Jim Crow laws, school segregation, and the deprivation of African-Americans of the right to vote in the postbellum South all represented a continuing manifestation of the slavery tradition in American politics. 

The most recent manifestation of the slavery tradition in American politics is evident in the state of Georgia in Midterm Elections 2018.     

The Democratic candidate for governor, Stacey Abrams has a realistic chance to become Georgia’s first elected African-American governor.   Her Republican opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, is using his official state powers and a distorted application of state law in a disgraceful effort to deprive African-Americans of the right to vote.  The slavery tradition lives on in a Republican Party that was once the party of Lincoln. 

The tradition of xenophobia is one that Donald Trump is utilizing to overcome in the closing weeks of these midterms the substantial advantage the Democrats have in the races for the House of Representatives. This is Trump’s only hope.  

This malignancy of xenophobia is deeply rooted in American political history, and Trump is using it in the context of the issue of the caravan of refugees from Honduras fleeing life threatening death squads and seeking asylum and a new life in the United States of America.  A historical review of the American tradition of xenophobia suggests that the Trump demagoguery on the issue just may work. 

The most famous political xenophobic movement in 19th century America was the Know Nothing Party and its presidential candidate in 1856, former President Millard Fillmore.  The Know Nothing movement was vehemently opposed to the immigration of Catholics from any nation.  The Know Nothing Party was unsuccessful from an electoral point of view, but it gave voice to the anti-Catholic sentiment of its era. 

Later, the tradition of xenophobia served as the basis for anti-Semitic appeals that very much affected my family. 

Three of my four grandparents were refugees from the anti-Semitic violence that engulfed Czarist-controlled Poland and Lithuania in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  They immigrated to America in the early 20th century, endured poverty, learned the English language, fought anti-Semitism, established businesses, and eventually achieved their American dream.  My grandparents will always be heroes in my life.  Every day in my life, I think of my immigrant heritage, and two memories come to mind.  

The first is a story my father told me about my grandfather, Archie Steinberg, for whom I was named.  He came to America to escape the anti-Semitic violence prevalent in Czarist-controlled Poland, just as the families in the Caravan want to come to America to escape the Honduran death squads.  He told my father, “Moishe, when I got off the boat at Ellis Island, I didn’t walk off – the bugs carried me off!”  My grandfather became a successful businessman and attained his American dream.  And I want to give the opportunity to the parents in the Caravan, whom Donald Trump defames as criminals and drug dealers, to have the same opportunity to attain their American dream that my grandfather had. 

The second is a story that my beloved maternal grandmother, Bessie Perr Miller, told me about her voyage from Czarist-controlled Lithuania to America and her arrival in New York Harbor.  Her parents were impoverished, and like the members of the Caravan, they came to America with little but their clothes in a sack and spent the whole voyage in steerage.  Like the members of the Caravan fleeing the Honduran death squads, however, it was vital that my grandmother and her family escape the violence of the antisemitic pogroms.  When their ship came into New York Harbor, the first thing my grandmother saw was the Statue of Liberty.  The words of Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor” applies so perfectly to the participants in the Caravan.  These good people do not come to America seeking welfare.  They are ideal candidates to take the jobs that business executives claim go unfilled because of current labor shortages.

My grandparents came to America at a time when xenophobia was at a low ebb.  My paternal relatives looked forward to the arrival in America of their remaining family members in Pultusk and Rozan, Poland. 

Then, after World War One, a new wave of xenophobia against Eastern European immigrants, particularly Jews arose in America.  New laws were passed in the early 1920s severely limiting immigration to America from Eastern Europe.  The remaining members of my paternal family were barred from America and had to remain in Poland.  After Hitler invaded Poland, a majority of them were exterminated in the Holocaust. 

So I know how American xenophobia can have literally deadly consequences.  And I know how potent a political weapon xenophobia can be when used by effective demagogues like Donald Trump.  And in Trump’s war against the members of the Caravan, he is assisted by one of the most mendacious and contemptible figures in modern American history, the former Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. 

Gingrich has said that the Republican midterm campaign for the duration would be defined by two issues: Kavanaugh and Caravan.  The Kavanaugh issue has largely played out, so Gingrich is now totally focused on the Caravan.

Gingrich has joined Trump in his demonization of Caravan members.  He refers to them as “invaders.”  This is an obscenity.  Gingrich is being just as careless and ignorant of proper use of the English language as he was of ethics laws as Speaker.  If Gingrich looked up the dictionary definition of “invader”. he would find that it refers to people who enter from the outside into another country with hostile intent, usually to subjugate its people.  The members of the Caravan are coming here with intention to join the American people, not to inflict damage upon us.  

Yet it must be said that Gingrich’s demonization of political refugees is very much part of the xenophobic tradition in American politics.  And the xenophobic tradition is very much part of what the late eminent historian Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics.”   

Gingrich’s demonization of Caravan members as “invaders” is reminiscent of the demonization of Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi-occupied lands in 1939 and 1940.  In opposing legislation that would provide for the admission of these refugees, the wife of the then US immigration commissioner testified that “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow into 20,000 ugly adults.”  This is quite a tradition that Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich are following. 

Fortunately, we in New Jersey will more than likely avoid the intolerance of the Trump-Gingrich revival of Charles Coughlin-style rhetoric over the next two weeks.  New Jersey is a national leader in tolerance, and the immigration issue has not been a top tier issue in either our Senate or House races. The elections in the Garden State will be decided on the issues of health care and taxes, and not immigration. 

Indeed, in New Jersey, Tom Kean’s politics of inclusion will always prevail over Trumpian politics of demonization and xenophobia.  For that, we can be most grateful. 

Alan J. Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission under former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman.