Trump Archives - KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show · Burt Cohen

American Midnight: The Early 20th Century Model for Trump?

·58 min·5 clips

Adam Hochschild reveals how 1917-1921 saw the greatest assault on civil liberties in U.S. history since the Civil War.

This episode features host Bert Cohen interviewing returning guest Adam Hochschild, an acclaimed author known for works like "King Leopold's Ghost," about his new book "American Midnight." Hochschild's book examines the period from 1917 to 1921 as a historical parallel to modern Trumpism, framing it as a severe assault on American civil liberties. The conversation explores how President Woodrow Wilson's administration, while advocating to make the world safe for democracy, oversaw a domestic "reign of terror" that crushed dissent. Hochschild details that roughly 1,000 Americans were imprisoned for a year or more solely for their speech or writing during this time. He describes the American Protective League, a vigilante group of 250,000 men officially chartered by the Department of Justice, which conducted "slacker raids" to detain young men without draft cards. The Espionage Act of 1917 became a primary tool to suppress war critics and the left, leading to the prosecution of nearly 2,000 people, with fewer than a dozen actual espionage cases. Postmaster General Albert Burleson, a reactionary segregationist, forced about 75 newspapers and magazines to close by declaring them "unmailable." The government crushed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), sentencing over 90 men in a single Chicago trial to a cumulative 807 years in prison. Socialist leader Eugene Debs received a 10-year prison sentence for opposing the war and later garnered over 900,000 presidential votes from his cell. Racial violence surged after the war, with hundreds killed in 1919, including an unconfirmed number of Black sharecroppers tossed into the Mississippi River after a union attempt in Elaine, Arkansas. Surveillance expanded dramatically, with Army Military Intelligence growing to over 1,000 agents targeting domestic dissidents, a practice pioneered by figures like Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Van Deman. A surprising insight is that techniques like waterboarding originated in the U.S. during the Philippine War before being applied domestically. Private conversations were monitored, as evidenced by the case of Charles Schoberg and his friends in Kentucky, who were imprisoned for pro-German remarks captured via a hidden microphone. The paranoia shifted from anti-German sentiment, which included book burnings and laws against speaking German, to a Red Scare fear of communist revolution after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. Even prominent figures like playwright Eugene O'Neill were briefly arrested on absurd suspicions, such as signaling German submarines with his typewriter's glare. The episode reveals that the Immigration Act of 1924, which kept Holocaust refugees out of the U.S., was a direct result of the nativist agitation from this era. Heroes who resisted included Senator "Fighting Bob" La Follette, anarchist Emma Goldman, socialist orator Kate Richards O'Hare, and birth control activist Marie Equi. The research process involved uncovering extensive surveillance reports from agents like Leo Wendell, an undercover operative who infiltrated the Wobblies in Pittsburgh. The tone is educational and conversational, with the host and guest drawing explicit historical parallels to contemporary politics. The style is narrative-driven, focusing on personal stories and specific events to illustrate broader themes. Listeners interested in the roots of modern political movements, civil liberties history, and untold American crises would find this episode compelling. Those seeking a light discussion or an apolitical historical account might prefer to skip it.

As heard by us

A blunt history lesson on how wartime panic helped normalize democratic abuse.

This episode grounds its argument in the World War I era instead of treating Trumpist politics as some sudden break. The Espionage Act and the Bisbee deportations give the point real texture, and the link between wartime panic, worker suppression, and pressure on the domestic…

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Why you'd press play

For when you want Trumpism traced through World War I-era repression, labor fear, and civic panic.

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