William Gayley Simpson was an interesting although, in my view, somewhat tragic figure. He was certainly intelligent. He graduated from high school at 15 and was the valedictorian of his class at Lafayette College, where he graduated in 1912. He gained a divinity degree from the Union Theological Seminary in New York City and became a Presbyterian pastor by the age of twenty-four. He lost the trust of his congregation when he took a pacifist position during World War One, and then built a shack and lived an ascetic life for the better part of a decade. This gave some street credibility in Christian circles, but after being exposed to the philosophy of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he abandoned his Christian beliefs.
I spent more time studying Nietzsche than any other philosopher and I can say with some confidence that no serious thinker has ever been more poorly understood or had their work so misappropriated for sinister purposes. This is certainly what happened with Simpson. By the early 1930s, and coinciding with the adoption of Nietzschean philosophy by the Nazis, Simpson began attacking the “herd” and “slave” morality of Christianity and railing against efforts to protect the weak and ill-constituted who he felt should left to die rather than weakening the human gene pool. He wasn’t a Nazi at this point, but critics noted the similarities. But even Christian critics of his ideas noted that he presented them in a compelling and sophisticated manner.
Simpson really emerged in the 1970s when he fully embraced white nationalism and antisemitism, and became a darling of ne0-Nazis who published his book Which Way Western Man? in 1978.
The book, while recounting Simpson’s own ideological history, claims that White Christians are in danger of destruction as the result of a Jewish plot of racial integration, feminism, and multiculturalism. Simpson claimed that birth control and abortion are “the knife by which civilized White man is cutting his own throat”. The book says that Adolf Hitler was right, and calls for violence against Jewish people (who he describes as “Enemy No. 1”), including their deportation, removal of citizenship, and forcible expulsion.
Here we can see the full curdling of his intellectual journey. Though anti-Semites have embraced Nietzsche since the late-19th Century, he was a firm opponent of anti-semitism, including in his writings. Simpson ignored or rejected this.
The book unfortunately was a big hit with American racist groups and has a big influence. Now it is being used to recruit people to serve in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
It’s part of a broader ad campaign that uses anti-fascist imagery in support of fascism:
Trump officials are reaching back in history to find imagery that they hope will attract a new generation of ICE officers. Trump officials have repurposed U.S. propaganda posters from the 1930s and ’40s that Franklin D. Roosevelt created to fight fascism. America needs you, reads one poster that originally showed Uncle Sam trading his top hat for a factory-worker cap but now features him in an ICE hat. Another image shows him with rolled sleeves and an eagle on his shoulder, marching toward a signing bonus. defend your country, it says.
This is offensive, but predictable in the sense that it utilizes iconic patriotic imagery to promote what the administration claims is a patriotic cause. The Simpson reference is something else:
Some posters, though, go considerably further. On one, taken from an image promoting Roosevelt’s New Deal that shows Uncle Sam standing at a crossroads, DHS’s social-media account added the caption “Which way, American man?” It’s a reference to the title of a canonical text for neo-Nazis and white nationalists, the 1978 book by William Gayley Simpson, Which Way Western Man?, which depicts Jews, Black people, and nonwhite immigrants as an existential threat to the United States. As Uncle Sam scratches his head in the new ICE-recruitment poster, signs in one direction point to homeland, service, and opportunity. In the other direction, invasion and cultural decline.
The poster embraces Simpson’s idea that racial integration and multiculturalism are elements of cultural decline and that we need mass “deportation, removal of citizenship, and forcible expulsion” to protect ourselves. The explicit reference to Simpson’s seminal work isn’t in the poster but was added by someone controlling the Department of Homeland Security’s social media account.
Asked about this, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin said the criticism was “tiresome.” The Anti-Defamation League disagrees, saying “A U.S. government agency should not resort to using such language and imagery for any purpose, let alone recruiting people to serve.”
When you consider that the administration is waging war against academia, ostensibly in defense of Jews against anti-Semitism, this episode might cause some cognitive dissonance. Which is it? Is the administration rabidly anti-Jewish or the strongest defender of Jews we’ve ever seen?
It gets even murkier when you consider that the driving force of the mass deportation program, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, is Jewish. There’s also the fact that Trump’s favorite child, Ivanka, has converted to Judaism and is raising her children in the faith.
What’s clear is that the administration is making common cause with anti-Semites and that there’s certainly a complete alignment with the neo-Nazis with respect to “nonwhite immigrants as an existential threat to the United States.”
It’s clear that the reference to “American man” means “white man,” and that the recruitment pitch is an invitation to bleach the nation’s population. Everything about the MAGA movement is reminiscent of the fascist movements of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Even this:
President Donald Trump said Monday that he thinks Americans may like a “dictator,” though he wouldn’t describe himself as one.
“They say: ‘We don’t need him. Freedom, freedom, he’s a dictator, he’s a dictator,’” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we like a dictator.’ I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person.”
There are always some people who want a dictator. The question is what the rest of us can do to prevent one.
