nothingism

Donald Trump's re-election would entrench a particularly vicious brand of Know Nothingism, advocated with tireless arrogance, combined with resolute ignorance, enabled by steadfast sycophancy.

In response, I have decided to invent a new movement: Nothingism. If you feel overwhelmed, emotionally and physically, you may too be a budding Nothingist.

His most infernally insinuating and fatally alluring name is that all but indetectable disguisement of brute force and cruelty, "Moral Principle." His great allies are Hypocrisy, Sanctity, Habit, Fanaticism and NOTHINGISM.

The San Bernardino Weekly Times carried an article in 1875, titled "Know Nothingism Revived" although few additional mentions appear until the mid-1880s (Issac 1875).

Johannsen ed., 1961) ("Abolitionism, Know Nothingism, and all the

See also Michael E Holt, "The Politics of Impatience: The Origins of Know Nothingism," Journal of American History 60, no.

Holt points out that "know nothingism" (59) had proved lethal to the Whig party in the 1840s and 1850s; "Men could not remain simultaneously loyal to both the Whig party and the Know Nothing organization." (60)

Atlantic Records' Jerry Wexler, who grew up in the Great Depression as the son of an immigrant window-washer, has observed in his recent autobiography: "Suffering teaches us only that suffering has absolutely no value." Farrell's novel is also a reminder, if any were needed, that the exiles of the most distressful nation, who confronted not only nativist violence that Know Nothingism sanctioned but also economic discrimination ("No Irish Need Apply"), did not become champions of universal human rights.

Some insist that ethnocultural antagonisms between native-born Protestants and Irish-Catholic immigrants over conflicting values and lifestyles spilled into politics and precipitated the movement.(4) Others acknowledge the ethnocultural dimension of Know Nothingism, but are also impressed by its antiparty and reform tendencies.(5) Yet while recent work has expanded our understanding of the movement's plebeian cast and pervasive antiparty tone, the standard treatments share a conceptual imprecision.