United States. “America First”, the story of a racist slogan

Trump did not invent the concept “America First” and its double meaning, “America first” or “America leader”. Here we find the concept of American exceptionalism of “The white and Christian city on the hill”destined to rule the world.

So America First was quite naturally the name of a committee which, under the pretext of pacifism and non-intervention in World War II against the Axis powers, provided a platform for supporters of Nazi Germany.

Charles Lindbergh, figurehead of the AFC

Founded in 1940, the America First Committee (the “America First Committee” or AFC) quickly had more than 800,000 members (1). It seems – not surprisingly – that Trump was unaware of the story of his favorite slogan. Two personalities illustrated this current in the years 1930-1940.

First we find Charles Lindbergh, the aviator who first crossed the Atlantic in May 1927 and whose tragedy of the death of his kidnapped son had moved tens of millions of Americans. Sent on a mission to Germany, he was fascinated by the Nazi military-industrial successes.

On October 18, 1936, Hermann Göring decorated it with the Order of the German Eagle. “Europe and the whole world are fortunate that a Nazi Germany today stands between Communist Russia and a demoralized France”, he says. And, in an article by Reader summary in November 1939, he warned “Against a war in our own family of nations that would destroy the treasures of the white race”.

Newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst is another such promoter of Nazism in the United States. Since 1932 he regularly published in his twenty newspapers articles about Hitler, whom he admired, as the future Führer wrote, because he had torn Germany apart. “seductive arms of Bolshevism”. Taking up the password again “America first” of FD Roosevelt to turn it over, had a banner printed at the top of one of his newspapers: “An American newspaper for the American people. “

Henry Ford, inspiration of the Führer

Of all these prominent American propagandists, Henry Ford is certainly the character who inspired Hitler. Probably a too prominent member of the America First committee, from which he was excluded, the automaker had been the propagandist of anti-Semitic theories since the 1910s.

Take over the fakes Protocols of the Elders of Zionhe published more than a thousand articles of the same kind in his diary, which he grouped into four volumes under the title The international Jew. “The main source of the disease of the German national body (…) is the influence of the Jews” is a favorite theme. The racist epic of DW Griffith, the film Birth of a nation (1915), is dedicated to him. Hitler had a portrait of Ford on one of the walls of his office. There international Jew it was one of his favorite readings.

The role of the inventor of assembly line work in the formation of American and Nazi anti-Semitism is considerable. Indeed, it was the United States that “invented” a racist social hierarchy legal system.

Breakdown of multilateralism

“From that day on it will only be America First. ” It is in an interview with New York Times, On March 26, 2016, Donald Trump, then the only candidate in the Republican primary, uttered this slogan for the first time, which has become the emblematic slogan of his presidency.

And in the same movement he immediately clarified that it was not a question of isolationism, but on the contrary of guaranteeing American supremacy over the world by breaking with multilateralism in favor of possible bilateral agreements, the famous profitable “deals”.

White and Christian supremacy

On June 15, 2016, Eric Rauchway, of Washington Postécrit: ” It didn’t really offer “America über alles”, but it comes close. “ The four years of Trump’s presidency have amply demonstrated the correctness of this observation: a sort of modern form of government that could be called national-populism. That is to say, in American ideology, in white and Christian supremacism.

Reject outlawed ” First of all “ They “non-white foreign immigrants”also born in the United States, which describes how “Mexicans”from “muslims”, for which he also considered the idea of ​​creating a surveillance file. Asked if this was reminiscent of Nazi Jewish laws, he replied: “You’re going to tell me …” As for African Americans, “We have to deal with it”.

We also remember the very perverse answer“There are wrongs on both sides” when asked to condemn a neo-Nazi racist assault on an anti-racist protest on August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one person and injuring 19 others while driving his car in the march.