Is Elon Musk’s “America Party” Worth Taking Seriously?
For this week’s Fault Lines column, Jon Allsop is filling in for Jay Caspian Kang.There have been several political groupings called the American Party, or something similar, in U.S. history. Perhaps most famously, this was the official name of the Know Nothings, the once secret society (members were told to deny knowledge of it, hence “know nothing”) that developed a virulently anti-immigrant platform and became, according to Smithsonian Magazinethe country’s “first major third party.” In the early nineteen-hundreds, an American Party in Utah sprang up in opposition to the Mormon church; the following decade, one was formed in New York State by supporters of William Sulzer, a former governor who had tangled with Tammany Hall and been impeached and convicted—to this day the lone New York governor to hold that distinction, though perhaps owing only...
