We’ve had a lot of parties with America in the name. They’ve been, um, problematic. The post Elon Musk’s America Party: Lessons from History appeared first on Washington Monthly.
Elon Musk has announced plans to start a new political party, the “America Party.” The party’s name suggests that the immigrant Musk should occasionally talk to a historian—or maybe even read an American history book.
Numerous political parties have called themselves some variation of the “American Party.” Most have been obscure and short-lived with little impact on the nation. These are almost entirely (and deservedly) forgotten. For example, in 1920, James E. “Farmer Jim” Ferguson (who had been impeached and removed as governor of Texas) received almost 10 percent of the Lone Star state’s popular vote for President, running on his newly created American Party. Similarly, the American Workers Party ran local candidates in 1934 and disappeared. In 1965, George Lincoln Rockwell ran for governor of Virginia as the candidate of the American Nazi Party. He received about 6,500 votes. Rockwell was assassinated in 1967, and the organization changed its name, removing both “American” and “Nazi,” but retained its racism and hatred.
If Musk succeeds at creating a political organization on a larger scale, he will be the sixth “American” party with some national visibility. All of them have three things in common. They were all anti-immigrant and/or anti-Black parties rooted in religious bigotry and racism. They were all short-lived. And they all failed to have much impact on any elections. Their parties used the term “American” in a futile attempt to wrap themselves in the flag and patriotism. Musk has emphasized bringing down the deficit as he talked about his new venture; simultaneously, he’s vociferously criticized Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act as a profligate mess. But given his anti-immigrant tenure during his DOGE stint, it’s hard to avoid thinking he would suddenly favor a more open-door policy.
The first American Party appeared in 1842. Its main goal was to stop the immigration of Catholics from Ireland and Germany and to limit the power of Catholics already in the nation. One of the American Party’s founders, Lewis Charles Levin, grew up in South Carolina, graduated from South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina), and never wavered in his support for slavery or opposition to abolitionists. He eventually ended up in Philadelphia, where he was a newspaper editor, an uncompromising supporter of temperance, and an opponent of Catholic immigration and power. He denounced the pleas of Catholics to be exempt from required Protestant prayers in public schools. In 1844, he was arrested for inciting anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant riots in Philadelphia, but the case never went to court. In these riots, there were some fatalities, and arson attacks destroyed at least three Catholic Churches. In 1844, Levin was elected to Congress, serving three consecutive terms as the only member of the American Party. In 1844, James Harper, the American Party candidate, was elected mayor of New York City,
Ironically, this anti-immigrant crusader was the son of two immigrants from England. Perhaps even more ironic, this founder of a party dedicated to religious bigotry was a member of an even smaller religious minority. Levin was the first Jew elected to Congress. There are parallels here to our times. Donald Trump, who has made a career of bashing immigrants and now threatens to denaturalize citizens who came here as immigrants and became American citizens, is the son of an immigrant mother and has married two women who were naturalized immigrants, one of whom quite possibly worked here illegally when she arrived on a tourist visa. Musk, who has an equally dim view of immigrants, is one himself.
Levin lost his fourth run for the House in 1850, and his American Party died. But in a few years, a second American Party emerged. The new party initially called itself the Supreme Order of the Star Spangled Banner, but in 1854, it took the name the American Party. However, it was soon called the Know-Nothing Party, because when members were asked about the Party, they would say they “knew nothing” about it.
In the mid-1850s, this second American Party was enormously successful briefly. Between 1855 and 1859, members of the party, campaigning against Catholic immigration, were elected as governors in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. Campaigning on an anti-Chinese platform in California, American candidates were elected governor of the state and mayor of San Francisco. In 1854, the American Party won an astounding 397 of the four hundred seats in the Massachusetts legislature. In the next few years, the party held 40 percent of the Pennsylvania legislature and 51 percent of the New Hampshire legislature. In 1854, American Party candidates won fifty-two seats in the House of Representatives and held five seats in the Senate in 1857. In 1856, Nathaniel Banks, an American Party politician from Massachusetts, was elected speaker of the House of Representatives. Know Nothings were elected mayors of Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and many smaller cities. In 1856, former president Millard Fillmore ran for the White House on the American Party ticket, winning 21 percent of the national popular vote and carrying Maryland with eight electoral votes. During this period, the Party was involved in anti-immigrant riots in a number of cities, with some fatalities and some Catholic Churches being burned to the ground.
By 1860, the American Party was dead, killed off by the sectional crisis, revulsion against the violence and riots started by party members, and the rise of the Republican Party, which denounced the American Party. Abraham Lincoln welcomed Americans of all faiths and ethnicities into his party, and appointed Catholics and Jews, as well as many immigrants, to military and civilian offices. When the Civil War began, all Union military chaplains were White Protestant ministers. By the end of the War, some chaplains were Catholic Priests and Jewish Rabbis, and some were Black men.
Despite its short life, the legacy of the American Party lived on, with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and the formation in the late 1880s of a third major “American” political organization: the American Protective Association (APA). The APA was not a political party as such. Still, many of its members ran for office on anti-Catholic platforms, and the organization campaigned vigorously, usually against Democratic candidates because of the high percentage of Catholics voting for that Party. The APA welcomed Protestant immigrants from Great Britain and Scandinavia, even as it worked to stop Chinese and Japanese immigration and Catholic and other non-Protestant immigration from Ireland, Central and Eastern Europe, and Mediterranean countries. Its influence helped lead to the passage of numerous restrictions on immigration, culminating in the immigration Act of 1924, which effectively shut the Golden Door of American opportunity to immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
The America First Committee was organized in 1940 to oppose American involvement in World War II and to support better relations with Nazi Germany. This fourth “American” political organization was not initially a party but eventually morphed into one. From the beginning, it was deeply involved in electoral politics. The America First Committee attracted numerous bigots, antisemites, and admirers of Hitler. Its most prominent members included Charles A. Lindbergh, who had received a medal from the Nazis before World War II began (which he refused to return), made numerous antisemitic statements, and was generally seen as a Nazi sympathizer, and Henry Ford, a notorious antisemite who accepted a Grand Cross of the German Eagle from the Nazis in 1938. In the 1920s, Ford published a four-volume attack on Jews, The International Jew. In the 1930s, Ford’s auto company manufactured war materiel for the.
The America First Committee did not run candidates. Still, it was deeply involved in political campaigns and supported candidates who opposed Jewish immigration and who were sympathetic to Hitler and the Nazis. Lindbergh, Ford, and the America First Committee opposed the US supplying ships and other material to Britain in a program known as “lend-lease,” as well as any other efforts to help Britain fight off the Nazis. The Committee dissolved after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
However, in 1943, it reemerged as the American First Party, led by Gerald L.K. Smith, a well-known racist and antisemite who would later crusade against Catholics as well. He ran for president on the American First ticket in 1944, denouncing both FDR and the Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey. Smith won just under 1,800 votes nationwide. Since then, other minor and obscure candidates ran on the America First Party, but none have gained traction or a meaningful following. It is worth noting that Elon Musk’s former buddy, Donald Trump, has resurrected the phrase “America First,” harkening back to the pro-Nazi, racist, and antisemitic America First movement of the 1930s and 1940s.
In 1968, Governor George Wallace of Alabama ran for president on the fifth major American party, the American Independent Party. It was a self-consciously racist party, campaigning against civil rights and supporting segregation. Although seen as a sectional southern candidate, Wallace ran a national campaign, holding rallies nationwide. He won nearly ten million votes (13.5 percent of the popular vote), carried five deep-South states, and gained forty-six electoral votes. Leaders of both major parties agonized over the possibility that the American Independents might peel away enough votes to throw the electoral college vote into the House of Representatives. Wallace is most remembered for one infamous line in his 1963 inaugural address when he became governor of Alabama: “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny…and I say…segregation now…segregation tomorrow…segregation forever.”
“American” has been used as a Party name by assorted bigots, racists, and reactionaries, who have consistently wanted to define “America” as a White, Protestant nation that has no place for Catholics, Jews, non-Whites, and immigrants from much of the world. The “American” party’s name suggests their insecurity and paranoia. If they define themselves as the true “Americans,” they can work to exclude others. Successful parties in the United States have been broad-based and generally open to people of all faiths and backgrounds.
Elon Musk’s America Party and its challenge to the status quo seem like a desire to return to the past. His company, Tesla, has been sued for race discrimination and has settled at least one case out of court. He has verbally attacked South Africa’s government for diminishing White privilege in the post-apartheid world. While Musk denies any Nazi intent, his stiff-arm salute, at a minimum, illustrates his failure to recognize the historical connection to Nazism and the Holocaust. Musk, the white immigrant raised in apartheid South Africa, should understand that we are all immigrants or their descendants.
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