Nativism surged in prosperity decades, defeating economic explanations

Evidence

My difficulty was that a major nativist resurgence from about 1906 onward seemed far less dependent on the economic causes that stood out in the nineties. Nativists now demanded that all foreigners be completely transformed into Americans forthwith and—inconsistently—that the blood of inferior races must stop pouring into American veins. Together, these demands shaped the mood of “too percent Americanism” that permeated World War I and the immediately following years. Yet, with brief exceptions, this was a time of abounding prosperity. … Even some help from psychological theories of aggression and displacement left my economic interpretation inadequate. Material conditions caused nativist behavior in the first half of the book; ideas caused nativist behavior in the second half. I could not explain why the arrow of causation ran one way in one period and another way in the next. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 2027

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Higham names the exact causal incoherence dogging manufactured-threat theories: the same phenomenon is economically driven in one era and ideologically driven in another, with no account of why the causal arrow flips.
• QUESTION: Core to reader’s research: does an external-enemy threat regime persist precisely when prosperity removes economic grounds — i.e., manufactured threats fill an anxiety gap rather than a scarcity gap?
• XREF: connects to: Prosperity reversed anti-immigrant sentiment fastest where nativism was newest — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 631; The removal of economic threat deflated nativism regardless of rising immigration — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 618; Nativism can collapse even as the immigrant influx it fears soars — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 644 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The removal of economic threat deflated nativism regardless of rising immigration #corroborates (0.85) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 618
• Institutional confidence loss, not ethnic competition, drives nativism to the national agenda #corroborates (0.85)
• Prosperity reversed anti-immigrant sentiment fastest where nativism was newest #qualifies (0.80) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 631
• Nativism can collapse even as the immigrant influx it fears soars #corroborates (0.80) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 644
• Industrialists abandoned nativism once immigrant labor seemed docile #exemplifies (0.75) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1389