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MY PERSPECTIVE - The organizers of the most recent No Kings/50501 rallies – two former staffers for Democratic Congressmen who now lead Indivisible, an appendage of the Democratic Party -- claimed victory against the Trump administration. They had an impressive turnout, 7,000,000 people at over 2000 events. The actual results are harder to measure, unless your criteria is winning elections.
But, for this victory, Democrats in Congress and in the White House must run against the own record when they present themselves as the anti-Trump political party. A closer look at most elected Democrats – as opposed to Democratic voters -- reveals that this posturing only sways those who don’t know much about history. This is because since World War I, the Democratic Party, like the current Trump administration, has stood for war and domestic repression. It takes one to know one.
For those who need a history refresher, here it is, beginning with Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1921. He brought the United States into World War I and was responsible for:
- The military draft.
- Espionage Act of 1917. It criminalized the spread of information which undercut the war effort.
- Sedition Act of 1918. It imposed harsh penalties on speech critical of the US government, the flag, the Constitution, and the military. The target of these laws were socialists, pacifists, and other anti-war activists. ICE is an echo of this repressive period.
- Enormous domestic propaganda was orchestrated through the Committee of Public Information. Their efforts included portrayals of German soldiers as vicious animals, as shown below.
- In November 1919, Wilson's attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, targeted anarchists, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) members, and other antiwar groups in the Palmer Raids. Thousands were arrested, incarcerated, or deported and charged with incitement to violence, espionage, and sedition.
World War I anti-German propaganda poster
Democratic Party officials have prosecuted or supported many major foreign wars since World War II. Minor military interventions are not listed below, but the Wikipedia has a full list.
- President Truman: China 1945-1948. Korean War 1950-1953.
- President Kennedy: Cuba 1961.
- Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Vietnam War, 1964-1973 (includes Cambodia and Laos).
- President Johnson. Dominican Republic, 1965. Congo, 1964 and 1967.
- Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. Somalia, 1995-date. Afghanistan, 2001-2021.
- Presidents Bush, Obama: Iraq War One,1990-91, and Iraq War Two, 2003-2011.
- Presidents Clinton, Bush: Yugoslavia, 1993-2004
- Presidents Biden and Trump: Ukraine, 2021-date
Domestic political repression also deserves mention since it continued far past WWI in most Democratic administrations.
- President Franklin Rosevelt incarcerated 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps, beginning in 1942 though Executive Order 9066.
- President Harry Truman made the Red Scare, later associated with Senator Joe McCarthy, an essential administration policy beginning in 1946. For example, he issued Executive Order 9835, also called the Loyalty Order in 1947. It scrutinized over 3,000,000 Federal Government employees for “subversive’ views, and terminated 300 of them.
- President Lyndon Johnson is remembered as a strong supporter of civil rights, but his record on civil liberties is much different, especially his use of the CIA to spy on the anti-Vietnam war movement.
- In public President Barack Obama railed against government surveillance, but in private his administration supported massive gathering of phone records.
Conclusion: In 2025 domestic repression and spying by previous Democratic administrations has been conveniently swept under the carpet by the Democratic Party’s organizers of the No Kings/50501 rallies. Nevertheless, the records are still there and easy to find, even though the No Kings demonstrations only focused on the President Donald Trump’s record of domestic political repression.
After Tuesday's electoral victories for the Democrats - especially democratic socialist Zoran Mamdani in NYC -- the question is not whether the Democratic Party’s leaders will accede to the will of the voters and move to the left. Instead it is how they will subvert the hopes of the electorate and bend the newly elected to the right, that is to the anti-working class interests of the party’s leaders and funders.
(Victor Rothman is a California-based policy analyst who is a regular contributor to CityWatchLA.com.)
