American Vigilantism: It's Always About Class Exploitation

Who seriously talks about class nowadays, except Republicans, for the purpose of inverting reality. Well, time we do. If, like me, you appreciate a little history now and then, perhaps this will be of interest, especially if you're following the war on the Mexican and Central American workers that our trade and labor policies both lure and drive north. Every magnate needs a goon squad to keep the labor in line. If there doesn't happen to be a factory backdrop handy, never mind. Mine, cotton field, citrus grove, or border, there's always a vigilante force to be had for the race- or Commie-baiting.

The characteristic rationale of vigilantism is always the defense of class exploitation in the name of law and order. The appeal is never rational, but always directed to the deepest anti-intellectual and regressive instincts: to chauvinism, to race hatred, to the spirit of violence. And finally the technique is always the same. Since no movement can beat the masses without a mass base, such a base must be created. It is recruited from the most backward layer in the social pyramid. In modern society this is the lower middle class, which is bewildered by the split between its real and its fancied interests.

Read Part I, Benjamin Stolberg's "Vigilantism, 1937," The Nation (August 14, 1937), here, and Part II, here.