The Raid
And the playbook
This raid was the first of its kind. A major American city besieged by local, state and federal law enforcement and an undefined agency operating as the President’s goon squad. Just the sheer number of people detained seemed impossible—not to mention the raid was, in fact, illegal. Americans were outraged. So was the media. There was even congressional pushback, believe it or not.
This wasn’t Portland or Chicago. It was New York City and by the time it was over 75,000 people would be detained and 500 arrested.
The year was 1918, the President was Woodrow Wilson and his goon squad was the American Protective League (APL), a 250,000-member, white supremacist, vigilante, official auxiliary of the Department of Justice. Their targets were “slackers”—a catchall pejorative meaning anything from people who dodged the draft to those who didn’t buy war bonds to folks who just generally weren’t patriotic enough. This “slacker raid” happened over three days in September of 1918, months from the end of the first World War.
At that point the APL had been committing vigilante-style violence across the country for over a year. They raided offices. They burned down homes. They lynched people. But the NYC slacker raid was too much. Mass outrage meant the APL would soon be shut down.
While many were relieved by the shuttering of the vigilante mob, the APL itself was only a symptom and vigilante violence persisted. This included the Red Summer of 1919 in which mass white-on-Black violence was carried out in dozens of cities across the country. It also included the Palmer Raids, a series of raids so devastating to American civil rights that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was created in response.
The United States had fallen into fascism and decay and Woodrow Wilson wanted a third term. Luckily, he got hit with multiple infections from the influenza pandemic and a series of strokes and what I can only hope was an excruciating UTI, leaving him unable to continue with his American Autocracy.
The goons. The illegal raids. The blundering of a pandemic. The plans of a third term. The fundamental white supremacy. It’s clear that the Trump administration not only knows this history, but is counting on us not knowing it. They’re practically rubbing it in our faces with their posters. So, please share this post, click the links and educate yourself as much as possible. It’s an old, forgotten playbook, but it works and you’re going to need to know it.