40,000 protestors stormed the Capitol in 1932 (before social media existed)
/By Rubashov
Some have suggested that what happened at the Capitol last week was an unparalleled act of “insurrection” not seen since the American Civil War. This view passes over a lot of history.
For the moment, let’s place to one side the Black Lives Matter riots of last year, which the insurance industry reports caused “the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history.” And that’s just for the damage resulting from the riots between May 26 and June 8, 2020.
Wikipedia, which refers to the BLM riots as “the George Floyd protests” reports them to be on-going to this day. Wikipedia doesn’t discuss the links between words and violence that we hear so much about today, insisting that…
While the majority of protests have been peaceful,[20] demonstrations in some cities escalated into riots, looting,[21][22] and street skirmishes with police and counter-protesters… At least 200 cities in the U.S. had imposed curfews by early June, while more than 30 states and Washington, D.C. activated over 96,000 National Guard, State Guard, 82nd Airborne, and 3rd Infantry Regiment service members.[26][27][28][29] The deployment constitutes the largest military operation other than war in U.S. history.[30] By the end of June, at least 14,000 people had been arrested.” [3][31][32]
Wikipedia continues:
“…arson, vandalism, and looting between May 26 and June 8 were tabulated to have caused $1–2 billion in insured damages nationally—the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history.” [5][35]
According to Wikipedia, as of June 8, 2020, there were at least 19 violent deaths associated with the riots. A fuller accounting of the loss of life associated with the BLM riots will no doubt be available at some point in the future.
To our knowledge, the Twitter and Facebook accounts of the Black Lives Matter movement have not been suspended. We are not suggested that they should be, only stating a fact. Just as it is a fact that political bodies – like the New Jersey Legislature – adopted resolutions in support of and in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement itself.
Interestingly, no less a figure than Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell noted the "historically high unemployment" prevalent in the period leading up to the BLM riots. While this was not the Establishment line, and certainly not the message promoted by the establishment media, at least somebody remembered the historic link between economic distress and revolutions.
Now back to what happened in 1932…
When the American Army that had fought in the trenches of World War I came home, they were promised a pension or “bonus”. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 awarded these veterans “bonuses” in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945. Each certificate issued to a qualified veteran had a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment with compound interest.
But then the economic Crash of 1929 happened, and by 1932, many veterans were without employment, literally starving, watching their families starve before their eyes.
UNIVERSAL EMPATHY WARNING: Most of these starving veterans and their starving families, most having light-colored skin, would today be considered “privileged”. This means they carry the original sin of “whiteness” and are not worthy of our empathy. (Editor’s Note)
By 1932, there were calls from various veterans’ groups demanding an early cash redemption of their service certificates. At first Congress ignored them. But on June 15, 1932, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Wright Patman Bonus Bill (by a vote of 211-176) to move forward the date for veterans to receive their cash bonus. To push the Senate into doing what they believed to be “the right thing,” 43,000 demonstrators (mainly veterans and their families) massed at the U.S. Capitol on June 17 as the U.S. Senate voted on the Bonus Bill. The bill was defeated by a vote of 62–18. So, the demonstrators decided to take over the Capitol grounds, set-up a shack city and tents, and not leave until they got their way. At this point, the media – which had been referring to the demonstrators as the “Bonus Army” or “Bonus Marchers” – began to call them “Communists”, “revolutionaries”, “criminals”, and a “weed growing on the lawn of our Capitol”.
On July 28, 1932, the United States Attorney General ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Police met with resistance, shot at the protestors, and two veterans died (both were subsequently buried at Arlington National Cemetery). President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army in. General Douglas MacArthur commanded the contingent of infantry and cavalry, supported by tanks. Future Generals Dwight Eisenhower and George S. Patton were present and played roles in the drama. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.
In 1991, it emerged that the federal government’s response was informed, in part, by an Army intelligence report which claimed that the demonstrators intended to occupy the Capitol permanently, as a signal for Communist uprisings in all major cities. The report, by the Army (please note) pointed an accusatory finger at the United States Marine Corps, suggesting that “at least part of the Marine Corps garrison in Washington would side with the revolutionaries”. And it did turn out that Marine Corps units, a mere eight blocks from the Capitol, were kept in their barracks.
In 1936, Congress overrode a veto by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and paid the veterans their bonus nine years early. Three years later, World War II broke out, America entered the war at the end of 1941, and the second world war ended in 1945 – the year when the bonuses were originally to have been paid.
Shockingly, to modern minds anyway, all of this happened at a time when there was no Facebook or Twitter or social media of any kind. Computers weren’t around yet – or television – and two-thirds of Americans didn’t own a telephone.
So, what was responsible for inciting the insurrection that was the Bonus March on The Capitol? Our world, so obsessed with blaming words, needs an answer.
Of course… it’s the economy, stupid.
Economic distress gives rise to real-world conditions of social unrest. It always has. It is a traditional excuse for war. The rise of candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, both outsiders in their political party of choice, are symptoms of this distress. Demonstrations by groups hijacked by agitators – like the BLM riots and the recent riot at the Capitol – are symptoms. Neither address the problem directly, in the way that the Bonus March did. When we see mass demonstrations demanding a return to employment, so that people can pay their health insurance premiums (or, demanding the passage of health care for all), then we will have gone beyond symptoms.
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Chris Hedges saw this coming. In 2018, Hedges said: “They (the corporate/political establishment) know what’s coming. And I’ve covered uprisings all over the world, you know when the tinder is there. You never know what’s going to trigger it. You never know when it’s going to come. You never know how it’s going to express itself. But you know it’s there, and it’s definitely here.”
And Hedges offers us this reminder… “Totalitarian societies by their nature are hyper-masculine cultures and seek to banish empathy. They not only ignore the vulnerable and the weak, but they ridicule them and persecute them. They celebrate supposed values of force… empathy is seen as weakness.”
“In a free-market society, all of those companies like Goldman Sachs would have gone into bankruptcy, but we don’t live in a so-called free market, we live in a kind-of bizarre species of corporate socialism. So, in the end process of decayed states you have forces in essence cannibalizing the state itself, which is where we are.”
Chris Hedges
N.B. We welcome a conversation on this and all topics raised on this website. Jersey Conservative is entirely open to your ideas and opinions. To submit a column for publication, please contact Marianna at Marianna@JerseyConservative.org.
