The Global War on Anarchism

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320 : diplomatic historyanarchy to include all those hostile or opposed to “any and all government.” 96Eventually, forty states followed suit and passed laws modeled after New York’scriminal syndicalism statute. Most of these laws are still operative today. 97The anarchist press also came under attack through both legal and extralegalmeans following McKinley’s death. Vigilantes across the United States violentlyattacked foreign-language anarchist presses and editors. 98 In Chicago, police arrestedEmma Goldman on conspiracy charges, along with other anarchist leadersassociated with the publication of Free Society, the leading English-language communist-anarchistjournal in the United States. 99 Additional arrests included theGerman exile and militant radical Johann Most, whose journal, Freiheit, had coincidentlypublished an earlier article by the German revolutionary Karl Heinzenin which he had called tyrannicide a “chief means of historical progress.” 100Detained in New York, Most was charged with violation of Section 675 of NewYork’s penal code, which made it a misdemeanor to commit an act that “‘seriously’disturbed ‘the public peace’ or ‘openly’ outraged ‘public decency.’” 101 He wassentenced to one-year imprisonment on Blackwell’s Island. At his trial, JusticeHindale declared that Section 675 was “applicable to the teachings of anarchy,which he defined as ‘the doctrine that the pistol, the dagger and dynamite may beused to destroy rulers.’” 102 In April 1902, New York State’s Criminal Anarchy Actofficially prohibited the publication and distribution of anarchist literature. 103The federal government also took steps to stop the dissemination of anarchistpublications. In the tiny anarchist colony of Home in Pierce County, Washington,federal agents twice brought several residents to trial for violating the ComstockAct, which provided penalties for sending obscene materials or indecent picturesthrough the mail. Concomitantly, postal authorities attempted to suppress thedissemination of the colony’s anarchist journal, Discontent. Finally, on April 30,1902, the Home post office was abolished. 10496. Ibid., 794.97. Colin M. MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution: The Political Trials of RicardoFlores Magón in the United States (Berkeley, CA, 1991), x. In the 1960s, a number of Southern statesrevived their criminal anarchy and criminal syndicalism laws in an attempt to stifle the Civil Rightsmovement and crush governmental dissent. Activists were charge with violently trying to overthrowthe state government. See Charles E. Cobb Jr., “Part Three: State and Local Terror,” in ThisLight of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement, ed. Leslie G. Kelen (Jackson, MS,2011), 127.98. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (NewBrunswick, NJ, 1955), 112.99. Fine,Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley, 781–82.100. Ibid.,783101. Ibid.,784.102. Ibid.103. Kessler,The Dissent Press, 123–24.104. Fine, 785–86.
IMMIGRATION ACT OF 1903The Global War on Anarchism : 321Although Roosevelt had called for a number of actions against anarchism in 1901,including an international treaty, legislators failed to limit debate or reach a consensusregarding domestic legislation to punish criminal anarchy. When Congressadjourned in March 1903, only the Immigration Act of 1903 had been enacted,which included provisions to exclude and deport anarchists. 105The restrictive legislation of 1903 emerged in a period of change and flux forU.S. immigration policy. Prior to the late nineteenth century, states had regulatedimmigration, but with the Immigration Act of 1875, the federal governmentassumed authoritative powers. In 1891, Congress established the Office ofSuperintendent of Immigration, the first federal immigration and naturalizationadministration, placing it in the Treasury Department. By 1903, theOfficeofSuperintendent of Immigration, now known as the Bureau of Immigration, washoused in the newly created Department of Commerce and Labor. 106Rates of immigration to the United States boomed at the turn of the twentiethcentury with industrialization and urbanization further changing American society.107 The social and economic upheaval of the time, coupled with mass migrationfrom eastern and southern Europe, fueled a new wave of American nativism andfears of the enemy within. A vigilant nationalism based on scientific racismemerged that called for immigrants to become “100 percent” American and todemonstrate complete loyalty to American institutions. 108The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, therefore, witnessed thecreation of a regulatory regime and deportation system that actively used immigrationpolicy to nation-build. 109 The Immigration Act of 1882, colloquially calledthe Chinese Exclusion Act, initiated a pattern of employing federal immigrationlaw to shape American society by empowering Congress to exclude and deportcertain classes or groups deemed undesirable. 110 Subsequent legislation developedfrom this exclusionary framework.In his message to the fifty-seventh Congress, Roosevelt called on Congress toexpand immigration restrictions to ban and deport aliens and foreign residents for105. Preston,Aliens and Dissenters, 31.106. USCIS History Office, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, http://www.uscis.gov/about-us/our-history; in the years that followed, the bureau changed names numerous times,and in 1940 moved into the Department of Justice where it stayed until 2003. Currently, theDepartment of Homeland Security oversees issues related to immigration and naturalization.107. Preston,3; Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919(New York, 2008, 1987), xxix–xxx.108. Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History: Documents and Essays, ed. JonGjerde (Boston, 1998), 307–308; Higham, Strangers in the Land, 11.109. Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America(Cambridge, MA, 2006), 1–3; Zolberg argues that states attempted to regulate entry prior tofederal regulation in the late nineteenth century; See also Bill Ong Hing, Defining America throughImmigration Policy (Philadelphia, PA, 2004); Daniel Kanstroom, Deportation Nation: Outsiders inAmerican History (Cambridge, MA, 2007).110. Hutchinson, Legislative History of American Immigration Policy, 1798-1965, 66, 85.
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