[#363] JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE: A Global History of Temperance and Prohibition

Dimitri and Khalid explore the often misunderstood, over-simplified, and polemicized history of alcohol prohibition in the US under the 18th Amendment from 1920 to 1934. Questions considered: was the temperance movement an evangelical Protestant aberration in the heartland of the wet, as Richard Hofstadter declared in the 1960s? Was Prohibition pushed through by silk topper WASP capitalists who wanted to engineer the perfectly optimized American worker/consumer for the automobile age? Was the saloon a despicable ruling class trap to rob the working man of his wages and dignity, or the secret clubhouse of the heckin’ worker’s movement that had to be stamped out by the bosses? Was Prohibition a thinly veiled repression strategy against Catholic immigrants and African-Americans by Klan-adjacent church ladies, or the culmination of Progressive social movements deeply intertwined with slavery abolition, women’s suffrage, and anti-colonialist struggles (or a little bit of both)? And last but not least, did Prohibition “work” at all? The complexity of the answers may shock you… For access to weekly premium SJ episodes, upcoming installments of DEMON FORCES, and the Grotto of Truth Discord, subscribe at https://patreon.com/subliminaljihad.