“美国优先”的前生今世

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　　“这里不欢迎你！”“回家去！”

　　No, not the reproaches of immigration officers as they set about deporting¹ incoming Iranian PhDs or Iraqi grandmas as per the instructions of Donald Trump²’s travel ban, but a beer commercial with attitude. Super Bowl Sunday, at once the holy grail of sports and mass advertising³, is upon us. With a television audience of over 100m Americans as its target, and with a reckless disregard for the voting preference of countless⁴ Budweiser drinkers, the mega-brewer Anheuser-Busch has produced a slick one minute immigrant odyssey⁵: the story of its founder⁶ Adolphus Busch coming to St Louis in the 1850s.

　　不，这不是移民官员们在执行唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)的旅行禁令，遣返抵达美国机场的伊朗博士或伊拉克祖母时发出的责骂，而是一部带有态度的啤酒广告片。最近一个周日举行的美国职业橄榄球总决赛超级碗(Super Bowl)是集重要赛事和精彩广告于一体的视听盛宴。面向逾1亿美国电视观众，并且大胆地忽视无数喝百威啤酒的人的投票偏好，啤酒巨头安海斯-布希公司(Anheuser-Busch)制作了一部描述艰难移民经历的精彩广告片：时长一分钟，讲述其创始人阿道弗斯?布希(Adolphus Busch)在19世纪50年代来到圣路易斯的故事。

　　“美国优先”的前生今世.jpg

　　Lest it be accused of liberal sentimentality, the ad comes with a title worthy⁷ of a Bruce Willis action movie: “Born the Hard Way.” Production values are high, and even the plot of the micro-movie grips. Our hero suffers a grim voyage and routine abuse before meeting his destiny, a handshake with one Herr Anheuser. The commercial has to have been made long before the immigration ban and its spectacular blowback in street and airport demonstrations⁸. But the ad is now seen by both sides to the debate as a deliberate effort to define America as, above all, a nation of immigrants — the title of President Kennedy’s book.

　　生怕被指带有自由主义情调，这则广告有一个可以配得上布鲁斯?威利斯(Bruce Willis)动作片的名称：“天生艰难”(Born the Hard Way)。这部微电影的制作价值很高，而且情节也扣人心弦。片中的英雄历经艰难险阻才找到命中有缘的合伙人：一位安海斯先生。这部广告片肯定是早在移民禁令——及其引发的大规模街头和机场抗议——之前就完成制作的。但它现在被移民辩论双方都视为一种刻意努力，目的是把美国界定为首先是一个“移民国家”——这也是肯尼迪(Kennedy)总统著作的名称。

　　The ad touches a nerve. During the 1850s, German immigrants, along with the Irish, ran into a storm of violent nativist hostility⁹ whipped up by demagogues of the American party, who gloried in the nickname of Know Nothings. Sound familiar? In Louisville, Kentucky, 20 were killed in a blaze of riot and destruction, some of the victims burnt alive in their houses. There were similar anti-immigrant pogroms in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Cincinnati, all fuelled by Protestant paranoia¹⁰ about a Catholic plot to destroy American culture (most of the Germans were from Catholic parts of the country). The inventor of the telegraph Samuel Morse published a collection of Catholic-baiting harangues¹¹ as Foreign Conspiracy¹² Against the Liberties of the United States. For Shariaphobia read Pope-hatred; the rage of the nativists was identical.

　　这部广告片触动了人们的神经。在19世纪50年代，德国移民以及爱尔兰移民遭遇了暴力的本土主义者的敌意风暴，这场风暴是由美国人党(American party)的煽动者们掀起的，该党以“一无所知”(Know Nothing)的绰号为荣。听起来有些耳熟？在肯塔基州的路易斯维尔，20人在一场突然爆发的骚乱和破坏中死亡，其中一些受害者在自己家中被活活烧死。费城、巴尔的摩和辛辛那提也发生了类似的反移民集体迫害事件，它们全都受到新教徒无端恐惧（认为天主教徒密谋破坏美国文化，因为多数德国移民来自德国的天主教地区）的推波助澜。发明电报的塞缪尔?莫尔斯(Samuel Morse)发表了一套对天主教“亮剑”的文集，即《反美国之自由的境外阴谋》(Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States)。不妨把当今的伊斯兰教法恐惧症替换成对教皇的憎恶，那时和当今的本土主义者愤怒是一样的。

　　On the matter of immigration — at once fundamental and divisive — the US has always suffered from a split personality. Some of its earliest eulogists like Hector St John de Crèvecoeur in the 1780s maintained that what made America exceptional was its allegiance to an idea — democratic liberty and equality — rather than to the ethnicity, religion and languages that generated tribal¹³ loyalty¹⁴ in the Old World. In heterogeneity¹⁵ lay its strength and moral authority. But nativist paranoia was never far away. A “Great Greaser Extermination¹⁶ Meeting” was called by California gold field miners against Mexicans and other Latin Americans presuming to get their share of the pans. In Los Angeles in 1871 at least 17 Chinese were tortured and hanged in a mass lynching whipped up by xenophobic agitators¹⁷. Eleven years later a Chinese Exclusion¹⁸ Act precluded¹⁹ Chinese immigrants from ever qualifying for American citizenship²⁰, a race-driven ban that would last, shockingly, until 1943.

　　在既根本又导致立场分化的移民问题上，美国一向表现出分裂人格。18世纪80年代的赫克托?圣约翰?克雷夫科尔(Hector St John Crèvecoeur)等一些最早的歌颂者认为，让美国卓越的是对民主自由和平等观点的忠诚，而不是在旧世界生成部落忠诚感的种族、宗教和语言。美国的力量和道德权威源于其异质性。但是本土主义者的偏执从来没有远离。当年加州掘金者曾经召集针对墨西哥人和其他拉美人的“外国佬大灭绝会议”，想必是因为后者要分得自己的一杯羹。在1871年的洛杉矶，至少17名华人在一场由仇外的鼓动者发起的大规模私刑中受到严刑拷打，最后被吊死。11年后颁布的《排华法案》(Chinese Exclusion Act)使中国移民终身无法获得美国公民身份，令人震惊的是，这个种族禁令竟然一直持续至1943年。

　　These two historical impulses of welcome and rejection²¹ beat on into modern times. The rise of the cosmopolitan²² metropolis²³, swollen²⁴ by immigrants, produced the Populist party of the 1890s, led by Thomas E Watson, champion of the agrarian²⁵ poor. After a brief and doomed²⁶ attempt to unite black and white against the cities, Watson turned viciously racist²⁷ and anti-Semitic. The prejudice was anointed from on high as well as shouted from below. In 1911 when 11 Italians were lynched in New Orleans, the response of the brahmin politician Henry Cabot Lodge²⁸ was to demand restrictions²⁹ on their immigration. In 1896 the president of MIT, Francis A Walker, took it on himself “to arouse public opinion to the necessity of a further exclusion of elements?.?.?.?injurious to our national character”. Dystopian nightmares were conjured³⁰ up of “police driving from the garbage dumps?.?.?.?miserable³¹ beings who try to burrow³² in those unutterable depths of filth³³ and slime”.

　　欢迎和拒绝——这两种历史冲动延续到了现代。因移民而膨胀起来的世界主义大都市在19世纪80年代兴起，催生了农业区穷人捍卫者托马斯?E?沃森(Thomas E Watson)领导的民粹主义政党。在短暂而徒劳地团结白人和黑人反对城市之后，沃森摇身转变为种族主义者和反犹太主义者。偏见既源于高层的忽悠，也来自下层的呼声。1911年，在11名意大利人在新奥尔良被私刑处死后，信奉婆罗门教的政客亨利?卡波特?洛奇(Henry Cabot Lodge)的回应是要求限制他们移民。1896年，麻省理工学院(MIT)院长弗兰西斯?A?沃克(Francis A Walker)给自己一个任务，要“唤醒公众舆论，使其认识到有必要进一步排除……对我国的国家特色有害的因素”。反乌托邦的梦魇被想象出来，比如：“警察驱车碾过垃圾堆……试图在那些深不可测的污泥里苟延残喘的可怜虫”。

　　But the counter-sentiment of America’s open doors responded. Intended by its French creators to be a symbol of transatlantic republican solidarity³⁴, the Statue of Liberty originally had nothing to do with hospitality. Emma Lazarus’s great poem “The New Colossus”, though written in 1883, was only engraved³⁵ on its plaque³⁶ 20 years later, long after her death, and in recognition that the tide of opinion was going the other way.

　　但是，与之对立的美国开放情怀作出了回应。自由女神像(Statue of Liberty)最初由法国人制作，旨在作为大西洋两岸共和人士团结的象征，与好客没有什么关系。爱玛?拉扎露丝(Emma Lazarus)尽管在1883年就已写下了《新的巨像》(The New Colossus)这首伟大的诗歌，但在20年后它才被刻在自由女神的底座上（当时拉扎露丝已经去世很久），此举相当于承认舆论在转向。

　　The “America first” slogan adopted by President Trump was coined by Woodrow Wilson to protect his position of neutrality in the first world war — shortly before abandoning it. It was later hijacked³⁷ by William Randolph Hearst to mean exclusion, race purity and isolation³⁸. He gushed³⁹ over Hitler and handed the slogan on to Charles Lindbergh’s campaign. The clamp on immigration, already tight in the 1920s, was fastened tighter still as millions of Jews were abandoned to persecution⁴⁰ and then extermination.

　　特朗普总统喊出的“美国优先”口号是由伍德罗?威尔逊(Woodrow Wilson)创造的，用来捍卫他在一战期间所持的中立立场——此后不久他就抛弃了这一立场。后来威廉?兰道夫?赫斯特(William Randolph Hearst)劫持了这个口号，来表示排外、种族纯洁和孤立立场。他对希特勒(Hitler)赞不绝口，并将这个口号交给查尔斯?林德伯格(Charles Lindbergh)的中立宣传活动。已经在20世纪20年代收紧的移民政策被进一步收紧，而与此同时数百万犹太人遭到抛弃，任由他们遭到迫害和后来的大屠杀。

　　So the moral stench of anti-immigrant xenophobia is nothing new in American history. What is new is that it now lodges⁴¹ in the White House. This is a radical⁴² departure from presidential norms, Republican as well as Democratic. Kennedy’s Nation of Immigrants, the cause his brother Robert (who completed and published the book in 1964) claimed was dearest to JFK’s heart, was the push which brought Lyndon Johnson to abandon geographically-based quotas⁴³ in his immigration act of 1965. Ronald Reagan declared his aim to secure control of American borders but not before he had given an amnesty to 3m illegal immigrants. George W Bush tried time and again to persuade his party towards a humane⁴⁴ immigration policy and, six days after 9/11, made a point of going to the Islamic Center in Washington to denounce precisely⁴⁵ the conflation of Islam and terrorism that now animates⁴⁶ the incumbent⁴⁷.

　　因此，在美国历史上，反移民仇外心理的道德恶臭不是什么新鲜事。新鲜的是它现在入住了白宫。这是对总统规范（无论是共和党还是民主党）的根本背离。肯尼迪的《移民国家》(Nation of Immigrants)——在1964年完成并出版该书的他的兄弟罗伯特称，这是他最钟情的事业——推动林登?约翰森(Lyndon Johnson)在1965年的移民法案中抛弃了基于地理位置的配额制度。罗纳德?里根(Ronald Reagan)曾宣布控制美国边境的目标，但那是在他大赦300万非法移民之后。乔治?W?布什(George W Bush)再三试图说服自己的政党出台一项人道主义移民政策，并且在2001年9/11恐怖袭击事件爆发6天后，特意前往华盛顿的伊斯兰中心，谴责把伊斯兰与恐怖主义混为一谈——而现任总统振振有词地把这两者混为一谈。

　　The world is separating into two irreconcilable⁴⁸ halves: those who want to live only alongside those who look, pray and speak like them, and those millions in the great ethnically⁴⁹ jumbled⁵⁰ cities who want to share the neighbourhood.

　　世界正分裂为不可调和的两部分：那些只希望和与他们外貌、祈祷和说话方式一样的人为邻的人，还有那些在种族大杂烩的都市里希望共享社区的数以百万计的人。

　　This may be the year of the rampart builders. But the future will see them crumble⁵¹. It felt like that, anyway, when I flew into JFK last Saturday evening. Passing from walls lined with state troopers I emerged from the terminal into a swaying singing crowd of demonstrators. Among them was a young woman wearing a broad smile and a sign reading, simply, “Make America Greet Again”.

　　今年可能是建造城墙的一年，但它们将会在未来倒塌。不管怎样，当我在最近的一个周六晚飞抵肯尼迪机场的时候就是这么感觉的。穿过州警组成的人墙，我从航站楼出来看到一群挥舞着标语、喊着口号的抗议者。他们当中有一个带着灿烂笑容的年轻妇女，她的标语上写着“让美国再次欢迎”(Make America Greet Again)。

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