Menu
Idea

anti-Catholicism

96
Filter by:

Filter by published date

How America’s Rich Legacy of Fear and Hatred Fuels the Conspiracy Theories of Today

Panic about Catholics, Freemasons, and, later, Jews, is deeply woven into American history, and forms the basis of our fertile culture of conspiracy theorizing.
by Arthur Goldwag via Talking Points Memo on June 21, 2024
A large KKK Rally with burning crosses in the background.

100 Years Ago, the KKK Planted Bombs at a US University – Part of Their Crusade Against Catholics

Most of the Klan’s victims were African American, but many other groups have been targeted during the hate group’s century and a half of history.
by William Trollinger via The Conversation on December 15, 2023
Illustration, The Burning of the Convent in 1834.

The Banality of Conspiracy Theories

Moral panics repeat, again and again.
by Colin Dickey via The Atlantic on July 1, 2023
Drawing of a theater performer looking off to the side.

How Love Conquered a Convent: Catholicism and Gender Disorder on the 1830s Stage

'Pet of the Petticoats' extends the reach of Anglo-Atlantic anti-Catholicism to the stage, illustrating the ways its tropes and anxieties moved across genres.
by Sara Lampert via Commonplace on September 7, 2022
Lithograph of an armed mob attacking another group in the street.

The Philadelphia Bible Riots

The debate regarding which Bible kids should read in school was about whether Catholic immigrants should have the full rights of American citizenship.
by John Bicknell via Law & Liberty on October 13, 2021

Escaped Nuns

Why some antebellum reformers thought convents were incompatible with "true womanhood."
by Pete Cajka, Cassandra L. Yacovazzi via Religion in American History on June 17, 2019

Lewis Levin Wasn't Cool

The first Jewish member of Congress was a virulent nativist and anti-immigration troll who ended his life in an insane asylum.
by Zachary M. Schrag via Tablet on October 22, 2018

Nativism, Violence, and the Origins of the Paranoid Style

How a lurid 19th-century memoir of sexual abuse produced one of the ugliest features of American politics.
by Mike Mariani via Slate on March 22, 2017
Political cartoon depicting children recoiling from Catholic bishops crawling onto the beach with their robes and hats making them look like crocodiles.

When America Hated Catholics

In the late 19th century, statesmen feared that Catholics were something less than civilized (and less than white).
by Joshua Zeitz via Politico Magazine on September 23, 2015
KKK members parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., on August 8, 1925.

When the KKK Came to D.C.

Revisiting a 1925 march through the eyes of Black newspapers.
by Vann R. Newkirk II via The Atlantic on March 23, 2025
Painting of the archangel Michael, holding shield, defeating Satan and other angels.

Extremist Pop Culture and the American Evangelical Right

Jack Chick and the origins of the 1980s “Satanic Panic."
by Sean Goodman via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on December 16, 2024
Campaign signs.
partner

The Long History of the 'October Surprise'

Last minute disclosures or revelations can play an outsized role in the last weeks before an election.
by Robert B. Mitchell via Made By History on October 24, 2024
Black Legion members in wearing capes and hoods.

You Know About the KKK, but What About the Black Legion?

The Black Legion was a white supremacist fascist group headquartered in Lima, Ohio. Its worst deeds are lost to memory, but they shouldn’t be.
by Dana Frank via Jacobin on October 18, 2024
JD Vance, along with characters from the Scorsese movie "Gangs of New York," shown over a background of a map of New York City

JD Vance is Just Another Know Nothing Nativist

MAGA has been a largely white movement of non-urban people who seem to think that people unlike them are scary and that there is only safety in homogeneity.
by Rebecca Solnit via Literary Hub on August 23, 2024
A painting of Prince Albert Edward's visit to George Washington's tomb.
partner

On the Road to Ruin with Their Characteristic Speed

Waiting for the start of the American Civil War in Canada and the Caribbean.
by Alan Taylor via HNN on May 28, 2024
Illustration of bishops titled "The Mitred Minuet"

No Bishops, No Kings: Religious Iconography and Popular Memory of the American Revolution

Popular religious iconography and art in the decades preceding the Revolution offer a fuller narrative arc of the development of revolutionary ideas within American society.
by J. L. Tomlin via Age of Revolutions on December 6, 2021
Viking statues with a map background

Viking Map of North America Identified as 20th-Century Forgery

New technical analysis dates Yale's Vinland Map to the 1920s or later, not the 1440s as previously suggested.
by Matthew Gabriele, David M. Perry via Smithsonian on September 27, 2021
Oil cloth cape, worn to protect a firefighter’s upper body from embers and water. Likely from the Shiffler Fire Hose Company No. 32, of Philadelphia, founded in 1846.

There Was an Ashli Babbitt in the 19th Century. His Story Is a Warning.

To understand the right’s plans for Babbitt, look to George Shiffler.
by Zachary M. Schrag via Slate on September 1, 2021
partner

Tucker Carlson’s Cries About Immigrants Have a Disturbing 19th-Century Parallel

The “great replacement theory” is nothing new.
by Zachary M. Schrag via Made By History on May 17, 2021
This 1856 political cartoon depicts the responses of the three candidates to the results of the election. Winning Democrat James Buchanan sits reading the returns of the election while newspaper editors approach from the left. Behind them the defeated Republican candidate John C. Fremont rides off into the West. To the right the second defeated candidate, Millard Fillmore, laments his fall into the “caverns of Know-Nothingism.”

Here’s What Happens to a Conspiracy-Driven Party

The modern GOP isn't the first party to embrace huge conspiracies. But the lessons should be sobering.
by Zachary Karabell via Politico Magazine on January 30, 2021
Painting of “Polling Day” in Pennsylvania in the Colonies, date unknown.

“They Chase Specters”

The irrational, the political, and fear of elections in colonial Pennsylvania.
by J. L. Tomlin via Age of Revolutions on December 3, 2020

In Defense of Kitsch

The denigration of kitsch betrays a latent anti-Catholicism, one born from centuries of class and ethnic divisions.
by Ed Simon via JSTOR Daily on July 29, 2020

Managing Our Darkest Hatreds And Fears: Witchcraft From The Middle Ages To Brett Kavanaugh

America has a history of dealing with witches - and it has culminated in a modern movement of politically active ones.
by Diane Purkiss via Athenaeum Review on October 14, 2019

The St. Louis Roots of 'Make America Great Again'

The American Legion was a forerunner to today's American nationalist organizations.
by Steven P. Miller, Warren Rosenblum via St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 8, 2019
'Hanging of the San Patricios following the Battle of Chapultepec' by Samuel E. Chamberlain

During the Mexican-American War Irish-Americans Fought for Mexico in the 'Saint Patrick's Battalion'

Anti-Catholic sentiment in the States gave men like John Riley little reason to continue to pay allegiance to the stars and stripes.
by Francine Uenuma via Smithsonian on March 15, 2019
Hooded people kneel before a cross at a Ku Klux Klan rally.

When the Klan Came to Town

History reminds us that firm and sometimes violent opposition to racists is a time-honored American tradition.
by Michael McCanne via Boston Review on October 23, 2018
Map of Oregon

Oregon’s Racist Past

Until the mid-20th century, Oregon was perhaps the most racist place outside the southern states, possibly even of all the states.
by Linda Gordon via Longreads on July 12, 2018

Voices in Time: The KKK Makes Its Case in Mass Media

The author of "The Second Coming of the KKK" shows an early twentieth-century attempt to go mainstream.
by Linda Gordon via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 12, 2018
KKK march in Washington in 1925.

The Second Klan

Linda Gordon’s new book captures how white supremacy has long been part of our political mainstream.
by Kevin M. Kruse via The Nation on December 13, 2017
partner

Worse than Roy Moore?

The congressman who Alabamians later complained "made them the laughing stock of the Union."
by Greg Bailey via HNN on November 28, 2017
View More
30 of
96

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History