Ben Debney

The Domestic Peril: the Radical Alien and the Rise of Corporate Americanism, 1912 - 1919 Ben Debney

In the years preceding the First World War, corporate propaganda in the United States weighed in against the menace of the ?radical alien,' said to be a clear and present threat to American freedoms. This propaganda blamed strikes and other manifestations of class antagonism on unassimilated immigrants, who it claimed were, at best, vulnerable to peddlers of ?un-American' unionism, and, at worst, importers of the ?alien' ideologies upon which organised labour was said to be founded. This thesis argues that, in reaction to the Lawrence Strike of 1912, composed mostly of foreign-born workers and led by the hated Industrial Workers of the World, big business manipulated half-truths through propaganda to develop the mythology of the ?radical alien,' responding to the perceived peril with the movement to ?Americanise' the immigrant. Under the guise of providing lessons in English and Civics, this movement functioned to neutralise the threat of union militancy on the part of foreign-born workers by indoctrinating them in Corporate Americanist civic orthodoxies.