Crosscut Now
Jul. 12, 2022 - The Spanish Flu ushered in a ‘Mean Decade’
7/12/2022 | 1m 15sVideo has Closed Captions
The rise of reactionaries in the wake of the 1918 flu pandemic.
Emergent movements, including a resurgence of the KKK, led to more anti-immigration policy, eugenics laws, religious fundamentalism and conservative leadership.
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Crosscut Now is a local public television program presented by Cascade PBS
Crosscut Now
Jul. 12, 2022 - The Spanish Flu ushered in a ‘Mean Decade’
7/12/2022 | 1m 15sVideo has Closed Captions
Emergent movements, including a resurgence of the KKK, led to more anti-immigration policy, eugenics laws, religious fundamentalism and conservative leadership.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(bright music) - I'm Starla Sampaco, in the Crosscut KCTS 9 newsroom.
(intriguing music) Historians have compared the COVID-19 pandemic and its massive effects on society to that of the 1918 Spanish flu, and found remarkable similarities.
Crosscut columnist, Knute Berger, writes that the end of the pandemic in the early 1920s ushered in a rough reactionary period in America.
It was called "the mean decade".
People were frustrated by war, inflation and pandemic restrictions.
Washington state experienced a period of intolerance and political extremism, including a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.
New anti-immigration laws targeting Asians were passed to keep America white.
"History is rhyming hard," Berger warns, "hoping that our 2020s don't mirror the meanness of the 1920s."
I'm Starla Sampaco, find nonprofit Northwest news every day on crosscut.com.
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Crosscut Now is a local public television program presented by Cascade PBS