Tormented by Treachery
6th February 2006, 05:49
I was thinking that we could 'share' (for lack of a better word) personal and historical instances of specific, documented persecution of anarchists, marxists, leninists, communists, trotskyists, socialists, maoists, et. al. I know, I know, Germany in 1940, but I mean specific cases, such as this one I am about to write. The text is a quote from the American History book I'm reading.
The foreign connections of so many political radicals strengthened the sense that the seeds of sedition were foreign born. In the early 1920s, over half the white men and a third of the white women working in manufacturing industries were foreign born, most of them from central or eastern Europe. That socialism and anarchism were popular in these regions made such immigrant workers especially suspicious in the eyes of "old stock" Americans.
The most celebrated criminal case of the times seemed to prove the connection. It involved two Italian-born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Arrested on May 5, 1920, for a robbery and murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts, they were brought for trial before a judge who privately referred to the defendants as "those anarchist bastards." A belief persists in some quarters that they were sentenced for their political ideas and their ethnic origins rather than for any crime they had committed. The case became a great radical and liberal cause celebre of the 1920s, but despite public demonstrations around the world on behalf of the two men, Sacco and Vanzetti went to the electric chair on August 23, 1927. More recent investigations have pointed to their guilt.
Not the most clear-cut case, but a good example.
The foreign connections of so many political radicals strengthened the sense that the seeds of sedition were foreign born. In the early 1920s, over half the white men and a third of the white women working in manufacturing industries were foreign born, most of them from central or eastern Europe. That socialism and anarchism were popular in these regions made such immigrant workers especially suspicious in the eyes of "old stock" Americans.
The most celebrated criminal case of the times seemed to prove the connection. It involved two Italian-born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Arrested on May 5, 1920, for a robbery and murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts, they were brought for trial before a judge who privately referred to the defendants as "those anarchist bastards." A belief persists in some quarters that they were sentenced for their political ideas and their ethnic origins rather than for any crime they had committed. The case became a great radical and liberal cause celebre of the 1920s, but despite public demonstrations around the world on behalf of the two men, Sacco and Vanzetti went to the electric chair on August 23, 1927. More recent investigations have pointed to their guilt.
Not the most clear-cut case, but a good example.