A Reflection on Immigrants, ‘Blood and Soil’ Alterity and Freedom

Note to readers:

This Tidings continues what has become something of an exploration in recent numbers of this column of what might be dubbed the social fundaments of democratic self-governance and the threats to those posed by heterogeneity or pluralism. Those dangers may be innate to human behavior or constructed by those desirous of power or perhaps both, but their portent is always degrading for individual freedom. To state the obvious, perhaps, those hazards, as is now occurring in the United States, inevitably have policy implications. In the U.S. today, in the example of immigration I treat below, those are clearly visible in human rights, prospects for national and regional economic growth, at all levels of education and more specifically and immediately, in the vitality and productivity of our nation’s rural and agricultural economy.¹ In short, while addressing these concerns is vital to the preservation of freedom, they also portend very significant policy consequences for the conditions in which citizens, all citizens, and not merely those demonized, live their lives. These are matters that will continue to concern us deeply at the Institute. MOS Jr.

        On the evening of May 1, 1517, Thomas More, then an Undersheriff in London, but already renowned for his learning and eloquence, was tasked to quell the prospect of unrest on St. Martin’s le Grand just north of St Paul’s in that city. As matters had evolved, a mob had gathered in what was an immigrant-heavy neighborhood to “take it back” from those who did not “deserve” to reside there. Here is how Joanne Paul described the origins of the incident in her recent biography of More’s storied life:

‘The aliens and strangers,’ a preacher named Dr. Thomas Bell had exclaimed a fortnight before, ‘eat the bread from the poor fatherless children and take the living from all the artificers.’ By this means, ‘poverty is so much increased that every man bewaileth the misery.’ … Meditating on a verse from Psalm 115, ‘the earth he has given to the children of men,” Bell explained that this meant God had gifted the land on which they stood exclusively to English men, and so they ‘ought to cherish and defend themselves, and to hurt and grieve aliens for the common weal.’ The preacher’s incendiary words were part of a concerted campaign, largely orchestrated by a haberdasher and wool-broker named John Lincoln, to whip up resentment against foreigners on the part of London citizens.²

        More was largely successful in initially quieting the mob, but those sequestered in their residences as the ragtag group threatened were so frightened that they threw water and other items out of their windows onto those assembled, whose members thereafter attacked them anyway. Ultimately, there was little immediate damage, and no one was seriously hurt, but the incident unnerved a young Henry VIII, who, overreaching, quickly issued a national edict declaring the event an act of treason against the Crown, and had dozens arrested, tried, hung and drawn and quartered, and displayed on lampposts in London as their corpses rotted as a warning to any others who might engage in similar unrest in the future.  Notably, riots of this sort, whether spawned by economic conditions or for other reasons, were not uncommon in London at the time and in this, as in those other cases, were not aimed at the King’s authority or legitimacy. What was especially noteworthy instead about this incident, however, was not Henry’s tragic reaction, but Bell and Lincoln’s deliberate effort to foment public ire and discontent at immigrants and their invocation of an “othering” “Blood and Soil” argument to do so.

        I was struck with a sense of déjà vu when I read of this historical incident recently. Thomas Bell launched his scapegoating tirade some 600 years ago, but it might just as well have been pulled from today’s headlines. Consider how the Buddhist majority has murderously attacked a Muslim minority in Myanmar based on similar arguments. Or how Narendra Modi has garnered and retained power in India since 2014 with arguments celebrating supposed innate Hindi superiority while attacking adherents of India’s mosaic of other religions. And, of course, there is the case of the United States in which President Donald Trump has adopted a right-wing nationalist frame that contends that Black and Brown immigrants and refugees are responsible for economic and demographic displacement and constitute an existential harm to White populations in the United States.³ Today, roughly 35 percent or so of Americans continue to support that stance in national polling.

        The question in each of these examples and others that could be named is why individuals are willing to hate a priori and thereby to diminish their own and other’s rights and freedoms via the policies their stance evokes and, just as often, their economic well-being as they do so. While there likely is no single satisfactory explanation to explain this phenomenon, the question is extremely important to the sustenance of democracy and freedom. In Thomas More’s London, as now in the examples I have cited, the question is not the factual accuracy of the broad conspiracy and other often wild claims on offer (as Bell’s were in fact), but on why they appeal to so many so strongly to cause them to jeopardize their own and others freedom and rights and economic standing to embrace them. While each country’s case is contextually unique, the U.S. may be instructive and so I treat it here. I cannot do all the arguments analysts have offered to “explain” why such a hatred of refugees and immigrants has come to such salience, so I offer those I do to promote reflection. I do not pretend I have presented each fully or considered its permutations completely. At all events, I offer three illustrative contentions (these could be combined, of course, in various ways) seeking to illuminate why some U.S. citizens have scapegoated immigrants, refugees and even many other Americans on no evidence (on the last listed, for example, President Trump routinely refers to Democratic Party partisans as communists and most recently as traitors without evidence) for their perceived social and economic woes. I offer these explanations in no order of presumed importance.

        First, many of those othering immigrants are woefully mis-or underinformed. In this view, the modern day American equivalent of the St. Paul’s blood and soil rioters of More’s London are simply uninformed or very poorly informed and whipped into continuing hatred and scapegoating of immigrants by social media posts and other information channels designed by those who operate them foremost to mobilize those targeted to support individuals and positions emotionally without thought or regard, even to their own self-interest. In this view, those ignorant of facts can be swayed much more readily to accept otherwise absurd conspiratorial claims in the name of their animus and hate about how “others” are to blame for the ills they may perceive themselves to be experiencing and persuaded to support policies that may even work to undermine their interests as they revel in that anger.

        Second, many citizens supporting anti-immigrant arguments are racists. Those making this argument point to the often open racism of Trump administration policies and statements and suggest that anti-immigrant scapegoating ultimately is born of racial animus and a companion fear that equality for all in society would result in a diminution of social standing for those who see themselves aggrieved. Those making this argument can point to the nation’s tortured history concerning civil rights and the Trump administration’s overt embrace of racist tropes for prima facie support for their contention.

        Third, and much more subtly, some scholars have argued that rapid economic and social change have upended both social mores and the fabric of entire communities.⁴ These authors contend that these forces have together left many Americans feeling adrift and deeply uncertain even as many of them have seen their cities and towns suffer step economic decline. Bewildered by the profundity and pace of those changes, they are also ashamed and angered to find themselves so at sea and therefore willing to lash out at proffered scapegoats of various sorts, including the “elite” educated, refugees and immigrants and Black and Brown citizens alike.

        One may (and should) debate the reasonableness and character of each of these arguments or combinations of them and others, but what I find most important about them was also apparent in 1517 and that is that some individuals were willing to hate and stigmatize a priori. To what extent such choices are all or only partially within an individual’s control can also be questioned. Here, I am more interested in raising a concern I take to be central to all democratic possibility; namely, how can societies work to ensure that their citizens do not fall prey to this evidently very human tendency? What education, legal, political, social and economic institutions and processes can help to ensure it does not gain periodic social ascendancy (the worst case historical example to date of Bell’s 16^th century “blood and soil” chauvinism and racism was Nazism but the Shoah does not stand alone). Since the results, unfathomable brutalities and cruelties, of the regnance of such “othering” are well-known, and the fact that humans, wherever they may reside, have shown themselves repeatedly more than capable of falling prey to its call is also well known, what can proponents of freedom do to work to prevent its cyclical historical reappearance with all the costs to human freedom and dignity that such entails?

        The staff, faculty and students of the Institute will continue to ponder this concern and to chart its implications for policy and for civil and human rights as critical to pursuit of  our remit.             

Notes  

¹ Golash-Boza, Tanya. Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor, and Global Capitalism. New York: New York University Press, 2015.  

² Paul, Joanne. Thomas More: A Life. New York: Praeger Books, 2025, 170.

³ Mudde, Cas. Popular Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2007, Rydgren Jens. “The Sociology of the Radical Right,” Annual Review of Sociology, 33, 241-262.

⁴ Hochschild, Arlie. Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right. New York: The New Press, 2024.