Politics: The Important History of the Know Nothing Party

Just a quick note here before we get to the already written introduction that I will be switching back and forth between this blog and another blog on Thursdays for now. Expect this every other Thursday unless or until something happens that changes it. The Tuesday posts are thus done for now as a result. Now let’s get to this post. Expect more posts of this blog in the near future as I will have more these next two days after today.

I believe that it was over a century ago that an important political party existed in the US that was called the Know Nothing Party. They existed around the time of the Civil War and had a lot of potential issues that they caused. Who were they and how were they important? They are more relevant today than most former political parties of the past.

Since the main part of the party, also known publically as the American Party, was to deny its existence to outsiders, it became derogatorily known as the Know Nothing Party. They were known for being anti-immigration and xenophobic, this once secret society.

When the Whig Party collapsed or was still fading away forever, this party emerged as one of the new ones to take its place. Its brief existence was leading into the Civil War as it sort of faded away forever after Lincoln won office. They were somehow split on the slavery issue so that is when it split up and apart, with most people switching to other parties if they stayed in politics in the end at all.

The importance of this party today is quite paramount. It seems like a lot of these people are in what we see of the worst sides of the Republican Party today. Trump is more like this old party than he is whatever a Republican is supposed to be. Plus, they are a great slur for this party since it seems like they often know nothing.

What else is there to say? Well, there’s not much else. As horrible and largely ineffective this party of the past was, they are present in the politics of Trumpism and the party that refuses to denounce him and his horrible ways. If we don't remember history's failures, we won't learn from them and thus repeat them.