Same Old Lies, Higher Stakes
How 2024 Mirrors Centuries of Fear-Mongering
In ‘The Forgotten Files,’ I’ve exposed how lies and false narratives have been used to protect the powerful and oppress the vulnerable. As the 2024 election looms, these same tactics have come roaring back—uglier, more dangerous, and more desperate than ever.
Whether it’s controlling women’s bodies, framing racism as ‘law and order,’ or demonizing immigrants, the GOP playbook is just a rerun of the same old fear and division.
Drawn from past Forgotten Files entries, this post highlights how today’s critical election issues are rooted in these distorted historical narratives. The ghosts of these falsehoods haunt us at the ballot box. Let’s bury them for good.
Women’s Rights and Reproductive Justice
The Republican Party’s favorite hobby: dictating what women can and can’t do with their own bodies. From their obsession with abortion bans to their endless fight to block gender equality, they’re working overtime to make The Handmaid’s Tale a reality.
But here’s the kicker: this isn’t new. They’re recycling their 19th-century script. Remember the Comstock Act and its obsession with censoring women’s reproductive choices?
Same playbook, different century. Spoiler: it didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.
Satire of Anthony Comstock as a monk thwarting displays of excessive flesh, whether that of mannequins, horses, or dogs. Yet “the village nuisance” ends up in his own hell.
Comstock’s puritanical mission feels hauntingly familiar today.
In Comstock Resurrected, I explored how this Victorian moral panic echoes in today’s fight over reproductive rights. Old myths about controlling bodies—whether through shame or legislation—never truly die.
This 1901 stereograph pokes fun at the confident “New Woman” - dressed for freedom, sporting a cigarette and about to ride off on her bicycle. Meanwhile, her “feminized husband” gets stuck with the laundry.
Gaslighting the Suffragettes explores how opponents of women’s suffrage painted women’s independence as a threat to the male-dominated societal order:
Men were suited for the public sphere of politics, business, and war, while women were suited for the private sphere of home, family, and religion. Women's suffrage would endanger the welfare and happiness of women.
This anti-suffrage cartoon illustrates just how far society went to silence women—literally. As explored in A Century of Suppression, these violent depictions were rooted in a deep male fear of women’s empowerment.
Today, the fight to control women’s bodies and voices continues through abortion bans and restrictions on reproductive healthcare. Same tactics—guilt, fear and ridicule—in a modernized disguise.
This election isn’t just about preserving the rights we’ve earned—it’s about pushing forward. Think we’re going to sit back and let the GOP drag us back to an era where women had no control over their own lives? Think again.
The Enduring Politics of Racial Oppression
Let’s talk about the GOP’s obsession with ‘election integrity’—a deceptive way of saying fewer people should vote.
From voter suppression targeting communities of color to flat-out defending white supremacist rhetoric, the message is clear: keep power in the ‘right’ hands—by which they mean white hands.
These tactics are ancient—right out of the Jim Crow songbook.
This 1866 political poster shows how white supremacy has been used to stoke fear and resentment among voters. Depicting freed Black Americans as lazy and dangerous, it rallied white voters against racial equality by playing on economic fears.
In White Supremacy on the Ballot, I traced how these racist narratives are repackaged for modern audiences. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This 1898 cartoon from The News & Observer stoked fear of “Negro Rule” and helped trigger The Wilmington Massacre. It depicts Black political power as a monstrous vampire preying on North Carolina.
That year, a white mob in Wilmington, North Carolina, overthrew a legitimately elected biracial government, fueling violence with racist propaganda that painted Black leaders as a threat to white society.
How to Incite a White Riot explored how this type of racist fear-mongering was used to justify a violent coup against a legally elected government.
Violent coup. Sound familiar?
The echoes of this tactic are still alive today, as Republicans use race-based voter suppression to maintain control. The 2024 election gives us the same choice: fight back against voter suppression and racial division, or let history repeat itself.
This 1957 page from A Manual for Southerners taught children that segregation was divinely mandated. It framed racism as moral, designed to make hate sound respectable.
GOD MADE FOUR RACES
GOD PUT EACH RACE BY ITSELF
WHITE MEN BUILT AMERICA
In Respectable Hate, I explored how racism is often cloaked in language that strived to seem rational—even virtuous. These dangerous ideas continue to creep into today’s political rhetoric.
In 2024, the stakes couldn’t be higher—are we going to expand democracy or let white supremacy keep its seat at the table? Your vote will decide whether we continue to fight for racial justice or allow history to repeat itself.
American Superiority and the Roots of Anti-Immigrant Politics
The nativist’s old favorite: ‘They’re coming to take your jobs, your safety, your way of life!’ Sound familiar? It should—it’s been their greatest hit for over a century. It’s been their go-to strategy for over a century.
Back in the 20th century, Republicans were pushing the idea that certain immigrant groups were dangerous and ‘un-American.’
The echoes of this message are still alive in 2024, with Republicans demonizing immigrants and using fear to divide us.
Back in 1904, they even put Indigenous people on display at the World’s Fair to prove just how ‘inferior’ other cultures were. These displays were carefully crafted to push the lie of American superiority.
Fast forward to 2024, and it’s the same tired story—demonizing immigrants, waving the flag of ‘American supremacy,’ and selling fear like it’s their top product.
This photo from the 1904 World’s Fair shows a white teacher guiding a Philippine Igorot boy through a performance—in a display of power and inequality.
In The Human Zoo of 1904, I explored how the fair reinforced white supremacy and American imperialism. The disturbing echoes of these dehumanizing displays still influence how immigrants are viewed today.
This 1892 anti-Semitic cartoon-a precursor of the ‘Great Replacement Theory’-depicted Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in Russia and being met with hostility in New York. It fueled fears that immigrants would displace “old stock” Americans.
At the right, Russian Jewish immigrants flee the whip of persecution to New York as the waters of the Atlantic part to accommodate them.
In the center is a stereotypical Jewish businessman. Behind him is "Broadway in 1892," with Jewish names on every building.
At the left, elegantly dressed emigrants heads west toward the setting sun in an endless stream - Schuyler, Stuyvesant, etc - over the caption "Our First Families Driven Out."
Their New Jerusalem, explores into how such depictions reinforced xenophobia and shaped the exclusionary politics we still see today, echoing in the GOP’s fear-based immigration rhetoric.
In the cartoon, The Anti-Chinese Wall, a group of recent immigrants join a black man to build a barrier to keep out Chinese laborers, driven by fear of job competition.
In The Politics of Panic, I explored how exclusionary politics have long been fueled by economic fear, distracting from the real issues. Today’s fear-mongering is no different—same wall, same scapegoating, different targets.
But what makes America great isn’t exclusion and fear—it’s our diversity. This election is about choosing between embracing division or celebrating the immigrants who make this country stronger.
This election is about more than policies—it’s about the soul of America. Republicans are clinging to fear, division, and regression, determined to drag us backward on women’s rights, racial justice, and immigrant equality.
Democrats are fighting for a future where dignity and respect belong to everyone—no exceptions.
Explore my posts above, get informed, and make sure your vote in 2024 is a vote for progress—not the past. We’re not going back. We’re moving forward, and we need everyone on board.
The one from 1957 really hits home for me. totally illogical — if god wanted each race separate, then the white man should never have come to America in the first place. Or taken slaves from Africa.
But logic has nothing to do with it. Just reinforced prejudice to hold onto our nation’s original sin.
Nice collation, thanks.