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Manoeuvring Mixed Signals Manoeuvring Mixed Signals Swedish American newspapers' response to nativism during, and after the Great War Master's thesis 45 credits Author: Johan Ragnvaldsson Supervisor: Dag Blanck Semester: Spring 2021 HISTORISKA INSTITUTIONEN ii Abstract This thesis aims to explore how the nativism which emerged in the United States during the Great War affected the political discourses conducted in three Swedish American newspapers on the West Coast. The fluid, contextual, and sometimes contradicting inter-ethnic relationship between Swedish-Americans and Anglo-Americans is studied by examining how the papers responded and interacted with Anglo-American opinions. Political discourses that directly addressed the Great War were deeply affected. A divide emerged between native-born Anglo-Americans and Swedish Americans, which the papers resented. The native-born population was continuously agitated against and criticized in the Swedish papers. A response to the agitation that the Swedish papers themselves perceived. Other political discourses yielded completely different results regarding prohibition and women’s right to vote where the papers willingly aligned themselves with the Anglo-American hegemony. The results have implications for the understanding of inter-ethnic relationships as this thesis proves that a subordinate ethnicity can have simultaneous, somewhat contradicting, relationships to the dominant ethnicity in different political discourses. Keywords: Swedish-American History, American Ethnic History, Swedish-American newspapers. List of Figures Figure 1. Model for visualizing a disloyalty nativism hierarchy, in tiers ordered by the dominant class’s perception and treatment of the subordinate ethnicity. ............................................................ 76 Figure 2. Model for visualizing a cultural nativism hierarchy, in tiers ordered by the dominant class’s perception, treatment, and acceptance of the ethnicity’s culture. ........................................... 77 Innehåll 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Purpose and research questions ................................................................................................ 2 1.2. Historical background ................................................................................................................. 2 1.2.1. Nativism, before the Great War ........................................................................................ 2 1.2.2. The nativism of the Great War ......................................................................................... 4 1.1. Previous Research ........................................................................................................................ 6 1.1.1. How Swedish Americans were perceived. ....................................................................... 6 1.1.2. Swedish American political participation and attitudes ................................................. 8 1.2. Method ........................................................................................................................................ 10 1.3. Theory ......................................................................................................................................... 13 1.3.1. Ethnicity.............................................................................................................................. 13 1.3.2. Hegemony .......................................................................................................................... 13 1.3.3. Subaltern counterpublics .................................................................................................. 16 1.3.4. The ethnic hierarchy ......................................................................................................... 17 1.4. Sources ........................................................................................................................................ 19 2. Prologue, 1912 – An ethnicity divided. .......................................................................................... 22 3. Facing disloyalty nativism ................................................................................................................ 23 3.1. The Great War at home ............................................................................................................ 23 3.1.1. The Hyphenated American .............................................................................................. 24 3.1.2. Woodrow Wilson – Root of all evil ................................................................................ 33 3.1.3. The 1916 election .............................................................................................................. 35 3.2. The Great War abroad .............................................................................................................. 40 3.2.1. The capitalists’ war. ........................................................................................................... 41 3.2.2. Germany or England? ....................................................................................................... 43 3.2.3. The Great War abroad in the 1916 election .................................................................. 47 3.3. 1917-1920. Hyphenate Solutions. The right to exist ............................................................ 49 3.3.1. Americanization ................................................................................................................. 49 3.3.2. Hyphenated Americans remain a threat. ........................................................................ 51 2 3.3.3. The Norblad bill ................................................................................................................ 53 3.3.4. The 1920 presidential election ......................................................................................... 55 4. The first red scare .............................................................................................................................. 58 5. Domains of cultural nativism .......................................................................................................... 63 5.1. Suffragism ................................................................................................................................... 63 5.2. Prohibition .................................................................................................................................. 65 6. How other hyphenated groups were portrayed after the war ..................................................... 70 7. Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................... 73 8. Sources and Literature ...................................................................................................................... 80 1. Introduction The Swedish American community could not possibly have fathomed how deeply the Great War would affect them when Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914. In San Francisco, California, the Swedish paper Vestkusten worried that Sweden would get involved.1 In California's northern neighbor state, Oregon, the Swedish paper Oregon Posten reiterated the worry in an editorial.2 Their colleagues in Pacific Tribune, the Swedish paper in America's northernmost state along the Pacific Coast, Washington, were more optimistic. Seemingly not too worried of Sweden possibly becoming involved, but instead publishing an article on the front page on the possible benefits the war will have for the state's wheat production.3 They could not possibly have foreseen at this point that the war would threaten their enterprise and make the Anglo American population suspect every Swedish American of potentially being disloyal to the republic. Before the war, Swedish immigrants were considered desirable. The Anglo-American society viewed them as a welcome addition to the republic, especially compared to the Catholic and Jewish immigrants that emigrated during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When the war broke out in Europe, 1914, United States looked both outward and inward as it examined itself and its population. If the United States were to join the fight, could they count on their massive immigrant population to be loyal to the United States and not their countries of origin if the states would end up on opposing sides? Nativism permeated the American mind. Immigrant communities were being attacked. Their allegiance to their adopted country was under scrutiny. The nativism of the first world war differed from the nativism that preceded it both in accusations and in scope. Immigrants were suspected of being subversive, not only the "new" immigrants stemming from eastern and southern Europe, but all immigrants were accused of holding international sympathies. Vestkusten, Oregon Posten, and Pacific Tribune resented the sudden discrimination Swedish Americans faced from Anglo-American society and would discuss and oppose it continuously throughout the war and after. This thesis examines how heightened nativism affected the Swedish American papers' political coverage and how it affected their relationship to the Anglo-American hegemony. Before the war, Swedish Americans were on good terms with the Anglo
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