Since the US presidential election on November 3 2020, Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the result and deny president-elect Joe Biden his victory have grown ever more desperate. Most recently a recording of a phone call to the secretary of the state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, on January 2, has revealed that Trump pressured Raffensperger to “find” more than 11,000 votes to tip the state’s result his way.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday issued a proclamation extending the suspension of issuance of work visas and green cards.

Trump imposed the measures in April and June to protect job opportunities for American workers amid a rise in unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The proclamation came hours before the president’s executive order on the immigration restrictions was set to expire.

The order will now expire at the end of March, extending into the first term in office of President-elect Joe Biden, who has vowed to reverse Trump’s immigration policies.

The proclamation said allowing immigrant workers into the country would “pose a risk of displacing and disadvantaging US workers during the economic recovery following the COVID-19 outbreak”.

Trump wrote in the proclamation: “The effects of COVID-19 on the United States labour market and on the health of American communities is a matter of ongoing national concern.

“And the considerations present in Proclamations 10014 and 10052 have not been eliminated.”

The president first imposed the restrictions on the issuance of green cards for immigrants in April, and expanded it in June to limit several other work visas.

They include new H-1B tech worker visas, H-2B seasonal worker visas, certain J work and education exchange visitor visas and L executive transfer visas.

The proclamation said the recent surge in COVID-19 cases had surpassed previous highs in June.

This, in addition to the implementation of pandemic-related restrictions, has placed further strain on US businesses, it said.

The proclamation added: “The effect of recently approved vaccines and other treatments has not yet been fully realised for the U.S. labor market.

“While the November overall unemployment rate in the United States of 6.7 per cent reflects a marked decline from its April high, there were still 9,834,000 fewer seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs in November than in February of 2020.”

The order applies only to foreigners who are currently outside the US and do not yet have permission to enter.

Those who already have permanent residency are not affected, and there are exceptions for certain people, including spouses and children of US citizens.

Russell Cobb, University of Alberta

The governor orders the National Guard to string barbed wire around the capitol building and take up defensive positions with machine guns.

The Ku Klux Klan, after a campaign of terror against the governor’s supporters, calls for his ouster. The governor promises to pardon anyone who shoots a klansman.

The KKK taunts the governor in the press, and headlines tell citizens to prepare for war.

No, this is not some The Plot Against America-style alternative history on Netflix. It is the scene-setting for an actual coup d’etat in the American heartland in the 1920s.

Nearly a century later, the media are reporting that Donald Trump’s continuing and ongoing threats to a peaceful transition of power are unprecedented in American history. The Washington Post editorial board remarked that when Americans see defeated political factions take up arms or send opponents to jail, a common response is, “this can happen in Zimbabwe … or Russia, or Cambodia, but not here. Not in the United States.”

But Americans don’t have to look overseas for antecedents of political coups. They can look at the Oklahoma State Capitol in 1923. What took place there fits the dictionary definition of a coup d’etat:

“A sudden, decisive exercise of force in politics.”

And it is almost entirely forgotten, with historical documentation filed away in an undigitized archive at the University of Oklahoma. For this detailed historical account, much of it based on 1920s news coverage, C. Blue Clark, a historian and legal scholar, uncovered the Klan’s role in what had been remembered as a simple case of corruption.

He wrote in the preface to his 1976 dissertation:

“Enter a room filled with people and inquire about the Klan and the result is similar to turning on a light at night in a kitchen and watching cockroaches scatter.”

Echoes of 2020 unrest

The Klan’s overthrow of a governor is worth recalling, in part, because the 1922 Oklahoma election echoed many divisions of 2020.

The Democrat, Jack C. Walton, had his own version of the centrist versus progressive split in the party. Like President-elect Joe Biden, Walton stitched together a coalition of leftists, centrists and people of colour. The Socialist Party had been surprisingly strong in Oklahoma during the 1910s, but had never achieved real power. The remnants of that party backed Walton.

During the campaign, Walton denounced the lynching of an African American man named Jake Brooks in Oklahoma City, while the Republican quietly accepted the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan.

Moderate white voters in the cities of Tulsa and Oklahoma City were slow to perceive the insidious influence of the KKK in the political mainstream. But the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 had proven the organization was not the “benevolent society” of its propaganda.

Read more: Trump rally in Tulsa, a day after Juneteenth, awakens memories of 1921 racist massacre

When the KKK built a massive convention building called Beno Hall on Tulsa’s Main Street, the organization marketed “Beno” as short for “benevolent.” But everyone knew it meant “be no immigrants, be no Jews, be no [n-word].”

The new Oklahoma Grand Dragon was a pharmaceutical salesman from Oklahoma City named N.C. Jewett. He went on a public relations campaign to assure anxious moderates that the KKK’s aim was to help maintain law and order.

“A person could not drive on the roads outside Tulsa without being hijacked,” Jewett told the press.

The Klan promised to fix all that.

A terrorism campaign

In reality, the KKK conducted a campaign of terrorism backed by police and city officials. Lynchings were the most notorious acts, but more common — even everyday — occurrences were whippings, beatings and death threats. Police often stood by as the Klan carried out activities, and its intimidating behaviour inspired copycats, including one group who kidnapped a Black police officer and cut off his ear.

After winning a decisive election against the Republican, Gov. Walton sought to suppress the KKK, but with little luck. In Tulsa, a Jewish man suspected of dealing narcotics was kidnapped and beaten. Walton read that the man’s penis was flayed open and he was near death in hospital. The governor demanded accountability, but was met with silence from local investigators.

Walton had toyed with Klan support during his campaign, but now he was ready for total war. “There cannot be two governments in Oklahoma while I am governor,” he declared to the press. Everyone responsible for the Klan’s terror would face justice. He deployed the National Guard to find Klansmen and set up military tribunals to try them.

Jewett shot back in the KKK-sympathetic dailies:

“Jack Walton and all his cohorts will never be able to break the power of the Klan in Oklahoma.”

A military tribunal in Tulsa revealed just how deeply the Klan had infiltrated the city’s power structure. Seemingly every elected official in the city was a Klan member; one historian estimated that a majority of the elected legislators were Klansmen. Walton declared martial law in Tulsa and sent a censor to muzzle the Tulsa Tribune’s Klan-sympathetic editor, Richard Lloyd Jones.

Walton impeached

Legislators started impeachment proceedings against Walton for an abuse of power.

By sending out the troops, censoring the press and declaring martial law, the governor lost support from former backers who hated the Klan, but feared the state was descending into a dictatorship. The governor ordered the legislature to disperse and said that “the troops will be ordered to shoot to kill if that is necessary to prevent the assembly.”

Fist fights broke out among legislators as barbed wire and machine guns appeared at the capitol. Legislators took up impeachment hearings at Oklahoma City’s swanky Skirvin Hotel. Walton was ultimately impeached and removed from office.

Less than a year later, a special train car of Oklahoma Klansmen pulled into Dallas for the Texas State Fair. A banner on the car read: “Did We Impeach Walton? Hell Yes.”

This episode is misremembered as a tale of corruption in the state’s highest office. Three governors were impeached between 1910 and 1930, and if Walton is remembered at all, it is for misusing the National Guard. As with the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, the white establishment of the state wanted this episode forgotten.

No aberration

The Klan’s overthrow of Walton is a pointed reminder that white nationalists once wielded raw power in American politics. It is also not an aberration. In 1898, white nationalists in Wilmington, N.C., massacred the city’s Black population and overthrew its newly elected mayor.

We downplay seemingly ridiculous white nationalist groups like the Boogaloo Boys at our peril. And rhetoric about the exceptionalism of American democracy is neither helpful nor accurate.

There is, however, one hopeful note in this story of a forgotten coup in the American heartland.

By 1925, even the white populace of Oklahoma had seen enough. Anti-Klan movements in small towns sprung up as self-defensive leagues (Antifa in rural America!). Voters tired of a secret society choosing candidates in Beno Hall and beating up anyone who strayed from the Klan’s white fundamentalist world view. Membership declined and masked crusaders became the object of scorn in popular media.

If only our story ended there.

Russell Cobb, Associate Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Alberta

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Arie Kruglanski, University of Maryland and Robert B. Talisse, Vanderbilt University

Editor’s note: When Joe Biden becomes president on Jan. 20, 2021, he will lead a fractured nation whose political factions are separated by a chasm. In his victory speech, Biden asked Americans to “come together” and “stop treating opponents as enemies.”

Is healing possible between red America and blue America? We asked experts on political polarization whether Biden’s goal is realistic.

How to thaw enmity and disdain

-Arie W. Kruglanski

The image of two monolithic cultures at loggerheads, though perhaps intuitive and appealing, is a myth that doesn’t hold up on closer scrutiny.

As a political psychologist who has investigated radicalization, polarization and populism, I believe a “two tents” metaphor would be more accurate.

If you look at 2020 election data, you’ll find both the Trump and Biden camps contained diverse points of view, interests and concerns.

Within the Trump tent were Republican stalwarts bent on fiscal conservatism but also working-class backers of progressive economic policies who supported President Donald Trump for cultural reasons and evangelical Christians passionately against abortion. Present were white “America First” adherents who were vociferously anti-immigration but hold anti-corporation sentiments typically voiced by liberals; Latinos who themselves are immigrants; and African Americans who saw pro-business policies as a route to economic advancement.

Biden’s supporters were urban and suburban dwellers who differed in many ways but shared concern about the mishandling of COVID-19. His tent contained centrist Democrats and economic socialists, Black Americans intent on addressing systemic racism and members of the LGBTQ community defending their rights.

These tents overlap, and many Americans have walked from one tent to the other. Trump won more Black and Latino votes than any Republican in 60 years. But millions of evangelicals he won in 2016 voted this year for Democrats, including Biden. There have been notable rifts among Republicans, and a significant coterie of high-profile GOP party members supported Biden.

Across the political spectrum, American voters say they want the president to be a uniter rather than a divider. In October 2020, 89% of Biden backers and 86% of Trump backers said they wanted their candidate to address the needs of all Americans. They delivered the White House to Biden, a candidate who emphasized unity over resentments, while supporting Republicans in Congress.

Such election results signal that Americans are resistant to either party’s domination, which is effectively a call for collaboration. With society shocked by COVID-19 casualties and Trump’s unconventional presidency, the pieces of the American political puzzle may fit together in novel ways.

Toning down the rhetoric, resisting extremism, avoiding vindictiveness and stressing pragmatic solutions can build up a common ground that will mend the fraying fabric of our society.

Dan Raviv, an author and media analyst, contributed to this article.

America’s political divide will be very hard to heal

-Robert Talisse

In his victory speech, Joe Biden said that partisanship “is not due to some mysterious force” but “a choice we make,” asking Americans to “give each other a chance.”

His advice for doing that: “listen.”

Other political analysts have advised listening, too, as a way to heal America’s divide.

But lack of listening isn’t the problem here. My research on polarization shows political divisions have more to do with negative feelings toward opponents than with misunderstanding their views. When those feelings are intense, as they are right now, listening can actually deepen divisions. So when opponents speak, partisans hear only distortion and hypocrisy.

As a result, Americans today see their opponents as untrustworthy, dishonest, unpatriotic, threatening and even harmful to the nation, according to recent polling by the Pew Research Center. Bitter partisanship has rendered Americans unable to treat their opponents as democratic partners.

Research shows that momentary exposure to political messages that slightly oppose our own typically intensifies animosity toward rivals. And when opponents attempt to correct us, we commonly double down and escalate. That’s why even fact-checking Trump’s tweets amplifies divisions: When Twitter marks a Trump tweet as misleading, research finds, Republicans grow more inclined to believe it, while Democrats grow less inclined.

Listening can heal only when our divides lie within democracy’s mutual ground – the basic principle that, despite their differences, citizens are political equals. Today’s bitter partisanship has eroded this mutual ground in the United States.

In order to heal, Americans must recover the democratic mutual ground. Doing so would require rehabilitating people’s views of their fellow citizens. That is, Americans would need to see other Americans as people first, independently of their partisan affiliation.

This isn’t easy. Partisan division is a feature of our everyday social environments, with Republicans and Democrats often living entirely different kinds of lives.

If we already define ourselves and others in terms of partisan loyalties, the road to healing does not run through more political dialogue. Instead, Americans would need to do things together that have nothing to do with politics, engaging in activities that in no way express our partisan loyalties – volunteering with a community organization, for example, or joining a bowling league.

Yet opportunities for this kind of nonpartisan interaction have dwindled. And how do you heal a nation through bowling, anyway? You can’t, of course. Meanwhile, all the big stuff Americans do as a nation, from voting to raising families, is tinged with partisanship.

Until we can put politics in its right place – and I can’t fathom when that will be – partisan divides will persist.

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Arie Kruglanski, Professor of Psychology, University of Maryland and Robert B. Talisse, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.