Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (26580)	4/22/2002 9:31:13 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>The last truly big resurgence of the far right in European politics was associated with a very severe economic downturn.<< Too true. Not just Europe, also Japan, the US, Latin America. In the USA, it was more reactionary populism, like the KKK, Silver Shirts. But the downturn then was far worse than now -- 82% unemployment in the building trades in Germany the winter before Hitler became chancellor. Still, you don't need a downturn as bad as that for racism and nationalism to become resurgent. The US experienced a very sharp, but short, depression circa 1920-1923 - and Congress in 1921 passed a nationality act which excluded immigration to no more than 3% of any nationality then residing in the US, based on the census of 1910. Amended in 1924 to exclude more than 2% of any nationality based on the census of 1890. Immigration, which peaked at 1.2 million in 1914, declined to 97,000 in 1931 -- and there were net losses in immigration for most of the 1930s -- about a quarter of a million immigrants went home (or elsewhere) between 1931-1936. To mix my metaphors, when the economic pie shrinks, the people in the middle of the ladder slide down and start fighting for jobs with the people on the bottom.