Alien Enemies

Suspicious foreigners arrested without warrants. The suppression of free speech in the name of national security. Civil liberties shredded in a climate of hysteria. During and immediately after the First World War, the federal government under President Woodrow Wilson and ordinary patriotic Americans enforced conformity and loyalty while hunting for dangerous subversives and radical anarchists. Today, the Trump administration is abrogating the First Amendment for foreign students and deporting suspected Latin American gang members without due process. In this episode, historian Michael Kazin delves into parallels between past and present, the continuities in the American tradition of repression of civil liberties. Further reading: War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918 by Michael Kazin