National Holidays and the Agenda Behind Them

        National Holidays and the Agenda Behind Them

                                Written by Dmorista

I am writing this after seeing, once again, the Corporate Controlled Media's hoopla, propaganda, and disinformation campaign that now envelops the newest national “sacred date” of September 11, universally referred to as “9-11”. It is now 19 years since the September 11, 2001 events, that were sold to the U.S. populace as a vicious attack on the U.S. by Muslim extremists. Yet, there is a wide difference between the role that important dates play, given that they have a significant role in the collective national memory but that do not have an officially designated recognition status, as compared to official National Holidays.  The first category includes famous and important dates like September 11^th , November 22^nd, August 6^th/9^th, December 7^th, or May 1^st  dates that denote very important events in our history and culture.  This situation contrasts strongly with the role played by official National Holidays like July 4^th, Labor Day, Memorial Day, November 11^th, or January 1^st. There are three types of National Holidays and “Informal Days of Remembrance”; those that address some historic national socioeconomic development¹; those that commemorate and/or glorify war; and those that are primarily days when families get together for indoor meals or cookouts, or other fellowship. Over time national dates especially those that have achieved National Holiday status, that once had political and/or socioeconomic meaning, move into the fellowship and cookout category; a process the ruling class knows will occur and does what they can to facilitate, and the change in the way these days are commemorated ends up “defanging” that particular observance, and depoliticizes those dates.  A date once solemn and/or politically charged becomes another consumer event.

September 11^th has now moved into the Mythical Space in U.S. popular culture, currently or previously occupied by only a few other dates including some of those mentioned above. By the nature of human experience, the observance and remembrance of major dates in popular culture, is most vivid for about the first 20 years, by which time the emerging cohort of young adults do not remember the event personally. The biggest mass commemorations occur at 40 years and 50 years after the event, and any significant popular awareness fades away fairly quickly after that. To survive beyond a couple of generations a date that has popular meaning must be sanctioned by some sort of official recognition. Such a process involves both socioeconomic and political struggles. The ruling class is not confused in this regard. This process of declaring a legal National Holiday generally occurs after 20 – 30 years of informal popular commemorations of the day, and often the passage of many local and state laws recognizing the date. The establishment of official National Holidays is hardly a supple and immediate method of controlling the perceptions of the U.S. populace; but National Holidays have largely served the agenda of ruling class quite well over the years. There are a total of 11 National Holidays, of which only one is a religious holiday, Christmas Day. (“Federal Holidays: Evolution and Current Practices”, May 9, 2014, Jacob R. Straus, Congressional Research Service).  There are numerous other religious holidays sacred to various faiths that are not National Holidays.  At this time there is one prominent informal "National Observance day", September 11^th, and several less well-known important dates that denote significant historical events e.g. December 7th and November 22nd.  Both December 7th and November 22nd were manipulated, by the Corporate Controlled Media of their days, in a similar manner to what is happening with September 11th now. There follows below a brief review of these dates, that notes which ones became enshrined as official National Holidays; and even more tellingly which ones were not so rewarded with official recognition. Also, I will note that when Congress recognizes a date as a National Holiday, that action is only for Federal Employees nationwide and for Washington D.C.; the 50 states must pass their own legislation (that activity has frequently preceded Federal action, but also has seen major delays and resistance to some holidays by some states). The U.S., like most countries, has no tradition of officially recognizing important historical dates that mark major military defeats, or disastrous, unpleasant, or horrific events. South Africa and Germany have probably come the closest to finding a way to contend with these sorts of national memories.

The most obvious and egregious example of an important date in American history, that has never received any sort of official recognition, certainly at least at the Federal level, is May 1^st also known as May Day. This day is called “Interational Workers' Day” in much of the World, and is currently observed as a national holiday in 55 countries, and is informally observed in many more. It was celebrated for the first time in the world, as a holiday for working people, in the U.S. in 1886. Events that took place starting just two days later tied May Day to the murderous repression of the Hay Market Square events in Chicago on May 4^th, of 1886.² The ruling class in the U.S. instead reluctantly accepted “Labor Day” as the observance less radical and threatening to their socioeconomic and political interests. The first Labor Day parade took place in New York on September 5, 1882. It became a National Holiday in 1894, by which time 23 states had already declared the day a State Holiday. Labor Day was established as a National Holiday, shortly after the murderous suppression of union organizing in the summer of 1894, during the Pullman Strike, when Federal Troops and injunctions were used against the strikers. 13 Pullman strikers were killed and 57 wounded in that particular wave of governmental/private force repression. Some of the language in the legislation that established the Labor Day holiday is telling: “So long as the laboring man can feel that he holds an honorable as well as a useful place in the body politic, so long will he be a loyal and faithful citizen.” {emphasis added} (See, “Federal Holidays: Evolution and Current Practices”, note 17 for this quote, May 9, 2014, Jacob R. Straus, Congressional Research Service: “What Is Labor Day? A History of the Workers’ Holiday”, Sept. 1, 2018, Karen Zraick, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/us/what-is-labor-day.html  “Labor Day History”, n.d., anon, Union Plus,  https://www.unionplus.org/page/labor-day-history and “7 Surprising Labor Day Facts”, Aug 26, 2019, Katie Robinson, Town and Country, https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a10318921/history-of-labor-day/.

In a quasi-comic development May 1^st is the official date for two obscure U.S. Holidays or Official Federal Observances. These are “Loyalty Day” and “Law Day”. Loyalty Day, which is and was deadly serious in its political intentions began as “Americanization Day” in 1921; during the wave of right-wing directed political repression that followed WW 1, known as the “First Red Scare”. The day's events, that remained unofficial for over 30 years, were specifically aimed at neutralizing the influence of the left-wing of American Labor. Early on this was particularly aimed at immigrants, many of whom manifested working class consciousness of May Day as a day of labor recognition and celebration. The date was known as “International Working Mens' Day”, to many of the Eastern and Southern European immigrants of that time. Americanization Day was changed to “Loyalty Day” (as the great waves of immigration from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries were absorbed and acculturated). This was done by a process that began in 1949, and that culminated in official recognition by Congress in 1955, and finally was “made an official reoccurring holiday” by Congress in 1958. It “has been recognized with an official proclamation every year by every president since its inception as a legal holiday in 1958”, this included Donald Trump. Loyalty Day reached its peak of participation when: “Observances began on April 28, 1950, and climaxed on May 1 when more than five million people across the nation held rallies. In New York City, more than 100,000 people rallied for America.” This was during the period of the “Second Red Scare”. (“Loyalty Day”, n.d., anon, Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_Day  “Loyalty Day in the United States”, n.d., anon, TimeandDate,  https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/loyalty-day “The Anti-Communist History Behind 'Loyalty Day' ”, May 1, 2017, anon, interview with Nicole Hemmer, The Take Away, NPR, https://www.wnyc.org/story/anti-communist-history-behind-loyalty-day).

President Dwight Eisenhower declared May 1, 1958 as “Law Day USA”. This was also done in direct response to the public knowledge and recognition of May Day. The action attempted to influence not just Americans, who were certainly already less aware of May Day than had been the case just a couple of decades earlier, in the period from the 1890s through the 1930s; but also the inhabitants of the many foreign lands where May Day was celebrated as a working class and union holiday. A letter to the Washington Examiner in 2018 stated that: “... Tuesday is May Day, the most important date on the communist calendar. ... In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued a proclamation establishing Law Day to co-opt what had become a triumphant communist celebration. ... Eisenhower wanted to establish an American holiday that 'distinguishes our governmental system from the type of government that rules by might alone.' ”. Law Day never really caught on to the extent that Loyalty Day / Americanization Day did in its first 30+ years. {For the actual quotes above see, “May Day? Celebrate Law Day instead”, May 01, 2018, Kennerly Davis, Opinion Page, Washington Examiner, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/may-day-celebrate-law-day-instead In addition, “Is Law Day a Public Holiday?”, n.d., anon, TimeandDate, at https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/law-day  and “Law Day (United States)”, n.d., anon, Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Day_(United_States)

The negation of May Day, and the substitution of Labor Day for it, were both parts of an overall attempt to reduce and/or obliterate any influence by the radical elements of the labor movement. The labor movement still had enough residual power that for 24 years, from 1948 - 1972, seven Democratic Presidential campaigns began with a Labor Day speech in Detroit, at the union parade. (“Does Labor Day Mark the Beginning of the Real Presidential Race?”, Sep 6, 2020, Ed Kilgore, MSN, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/does-labor-day-mark-the-beginning-of-the-real-presidential-race/ar-BB18L09D The post-WW 2 assault on the unions, and the reorganization of U.S. capitalism was well underway by 1976 and Jimmy Carter, whatever his virtues as a former President, was the first Neo-Liberal whose anti-labor policies presaged much of what Ronald Reagan would greatly expand upon.³ In the end Labor Day has, like Memorial Day and the 4^th of July, become a depoliticized holiday, that is primarily a weekend for cookouts and family get-togethers.

The two National Holidays that “celebrate” war are Memorial Day and Veteran's Day. The older of the two, Memorial Day, began as “Decoration Day”. That was a day when war widows, and other women who had relatives killed in the Civil War, decorated graves of the war dead. There were numerous early variants, that occurred on various different days, but by the late 1860s May 30^th had become the dominant date for the observance. Decoration Day was recognized as a National Holiday, with pay, in 1888. In 1971 the actual day it was celebrated was changed, to the last Monday in May, as part of the three day weekend legislation. (“Memorial Day”, n.d. Anon, Wikipedia,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day “8 Things You May Not Know About Memorial Day”, May 24, 2013, Updated May 15, 2020, Barbara Maranzani, History.com, https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-memorial-day  “When Did Memorial Day Become A National Holiday?”, May 29, 2016, Alexandra Antonopoulos, Bustle, at https://www.bustle.com/articles/163745-when-did-memorial-day-become-a-national-holiday-it-has-a-lengthy-history  “Federal Holidays: Evolution and Current Practices”, May 9, 2014, Jacob R. Straus, Congressional Research Service). The other official National Holiday that glorifies war is November 11^th. Originally known as “Armistice Day”, it marked the day that hostilities ceased at the end of World War 1, it has been transformed into the anodyne national holiday Veteran's Day. Congress made Armistice Day a National Holiday in 1938, it was already a State Holiday in all 48 states by then. In 1954 the name was changed to Veteran's Day as there had been two more major wars in the intervening years (“Federal Holidays: Evolution and Current Practices”, May 9, 2014, Jacob R. Straus, Congressional Research Service). In many places aging veterans of our various colonial wars go to the local schools to tell something of their stories to student assemblies. War resisters and skeptics are in most cases pointedly unwelcome at these events.

In stark contrast, December 7^th, “Pearl Harbor Day”, never became an official national holiday; of course no society “celebrates” the dates of its major military defeats. Now, as it has faded from living memory, only a small minority of the populace, and virtually none of those under 40 years of age, even know what the date denotes. Congress could have enacted a National Day of Remembrance and Reflection, or something like that, for Pearl Harbor Day. However, by the time, after the typical 20 – 30 years of informal popular recollection and reminiscence, when such an action might have been taken, anti-war sentiment was growing rapidly in the U.S., due to the S.E. Asian Wars. The Ruling Class desperately wanted to avoid any, widely disseminated deeper or more penetrating, analysis of what happened at Pearl Harbor, as well as of the general details of WW 2. The propaganda and disinformation operations of the ruling class would have been impeded by such a legislative action and memorial commemoration, despite the fact that at that time Pearl Harbor stood as a unique event in American History.

Also, it is worth noting that August 6^th, and to a lesser degree August 9^th, are still discussed by various media outlets in early August of every year, because those two days mark the use of the Atomic Bombs at the end of WW 2. At this point in time even the meager attention, paid to those two dates, is greater than that for Pearl Harbor Day. The level of discussion about the two August dates was greater than normal this year, because it marked 75 years since the days that the two bombs were actually used. Numerous documentaries and interviews were broadcast, some of which featured both public figures and veterans of the era, who said that Japan only surrendered because of the use of Atomic Bombs.  They opined that the Atomic Bombing avoided the heavy casualties an invasion of Japan would inevitably caused.  The veterans just knew that they feared being used and killed or wounded in that possible invasion, but the public figures certainly should know better by 2020.  Particularly, as the first scholarly work, that seriously questioned the “official story”, was published some 60 years ago in 1960. (Gar Alperowitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. The use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power, New York, Pluto Press, 1994, originally published in 1960, and appeared even earlier as Alperowitz's Ph.D. dissertation).  The facts are that Japan had been trying to surrender since at least May of 1945 and undoubtedly earlier.  By the time the Atomic Bombs were used most of Japan's cities had already been largely destroyed by fire bombing raids by the B-29s.  Hiroshima was only the 3rd largest "firestorm", and it only had the 3rd highest immediate casualty toll; the two largest were from different 1,000 plane raids on Tokyo.  The Japanese ruling class knew they had been defeated; and they wanted to save what they could of their cities, their population, and their society's physical infrastructure.  Yet the “official story”, still maintained as the official U.S. Government position, is that it was the use of the bombs that caused Japan to surrender and that was why an invasion was not needed.  Again these early August dates will never be marked by any official designation.  No society on Earth commemorates or remembers horrific war crimes as such, planned and made possible by their rulers, and carried out by their young men.  If remembered these types of events must be sanitized.

Likewise November 22^nd, the date that John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas never became an official National Holiday and it is now fading from popular memory. The most ruthless factions of the U.S. ruling class profoundly opposed JFK's proposals to lead a program of gradual global demilitarization and disarmament. Ideas that he expressed in many speeches including at the U.N. General Assembly and in his famous “Peace Speech” at the American University Commencement Ceremonies on June 10^th of 1963. Any doubts about the consequences of publicly advocating such views were certainly dispelled with the two major murders of 1968.  The first of these was the killing of Martin Luther King, after he expanded his political agenda from civil rights for African Americans to a general anti-war outlook with a serious critique of Capitalism.  The other was the murder of JFK's younger brother Robert F. Kennedy, while he was campaigning in the Democratic Party's primary season for the Presidency, RFK advocated a strong program to end the SE Asian Wars and to renew the New Deal programs and economic philosophy. JFK and his brother were both clever enough to realize that if the massive amounts of money and resources, being invested in war, were diverted to human well-being; that many socioeconomic problems could be solved without upsetting the comfortable position, of ruling classes and the rich, in all the various societies of the world. They were also in positions of power, or had realistic chances of acceding to such a position, to actually do something about those policies. Of course, the elements in the U.S. that specifically benefitted from war were leaders in the cabal that killed all three men. The ruling class owned and operated Corporate Controlled Media (CCM), {often referred to as the Main Stream Media} effectively shut out the many dissenting views about who killed JFK, MLK, and RFK, as well as other progressive leaders killed during the 1960s, and why. And they continue to use their influence to minimize such expressions in the “alternative media” as well. Even now, nearly 57 years later, a spate of “documentaries” that support the Official Stories, particularly of the JFK killing, will appear on November 22^nd on PBS, the History Channel, National Geographic Channel, C-Span, and other outlets to mark the date, as well as some occasional broadcasts during other times of the year. There was never any chance of November 22^nd being acknowledged as a National Day of Remembrance and Reflection as the questions and doubts, around what had happened and why, began to emerge nearly immediately; but were confined to a limited audience of skeptics, university people, and dissidents. The hard-nosed control of the dialogue on the Corporate Controlled Media slowed down the development of widespread doubts, but only for a few years.

Finally there are the 9-11 events, that are still relatively fresh in the national popular consciousness in the U.S., as well as in much of the rest of the world.  These will never be accorded any official recognition such as a National Day of Remembrance and Reflection. Of course, the real perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks, did not realize that the internet would blossom so soon afterward. As a result, they largely lost control over the dialogue on the internet, for several years, where the large majority of those under 35 get their information. So despite full-court presses on “legacy TV and media” the many skeptical and alternative versions of events flourished. Now, belatedly, the ruling class has clamped down on the internet placing pervasive and often heavy-handed censorship on many outlets. While C-Span, PBS, the History Channel, and the National Geograpic Channel spent much of the day of September 11th presenting various fawning takes on “the official story”, the skeptics presented numerous webinars, virtual meetings, and internet radio shows, with analysis in a far different perspective, in this Covid-19 year. The two duopoly Presidental candidates both performed pilgrimages to the Shanksville memorial Biden wearing his mask and Trump not.  Biden attended the official remembrance in New York City at “Ground Zero”, but Trump passed that one up. This is a propaganda, information and disinformation battle that is still ongoing, even if more recent outrages have taken place in the intervening years.

Notes:

1). July 4^th marks, of course, the day that the “Declaration of Independence” was promulgated in 1776. The day became National Holiday in 1870, during the first Congressional legislation that established the first 4 national holidays. Not until 1941 did the cheapskates in Congress make July 4^th a paid holiday for Federal Workers (See “Fourth of July – Independence Day”, Section 4 “Fourth of July Becomes a Federal Holiday”, Dec 16, 2009, updated Jun 29, 2020, editors, History.com, https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/july-4th “Federal Holidays: Evolution and Current Practices”, May 9, 2014, Jacob R. Straus, Congressional Research Service). Now the 4^th is far more notable for cookouts, family get togethers, and fireworks than any ideological or nationalistic significance.

2). The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, (the forerunner of the American Federation of Labor) declared May 1^st a national day of working class action, at their national convention in Chicago in 1884. The first actual May Day observance occurred two years later in 1886. Observance and the significance of that date, that drew over 300,000 people nationwide, was forever marked by events that occurred in the next few days. In Chicago alone the May Day parade began with over 40,000 working people marching, but workers left their jobs and joined as the demonstration passed by, swelling the ranks to over 100,000.  Just 2 days later, on May 3^rd, the Pinkertons and Chicago police killed 2 striking workers and wounded many more, at the McCormick Reaper factory in Chicago, site of a bitter six-month long ongoing strike. In response to the police attacks a meeting was called for May 4^th, by the local Anarchist organizations, in support of the workers at McCormick; but only drew a thin crowd of about 3,000, mostly due to bad weather. The demonstrators assembled at the now infamous “Hay Market Square”. The crowd was already leaving when somebody, never identified and very likely a police or Pinkerton agent provocateur, threw a bomb into the ranks of the police. The police opened fire, killing at least 7 or 8 demonstrators and wounding another 40. In addition, 8 police died, only one of which was later proved to be due to the bomb, in other words, the police shot and killed 7 of their own number. The police arrested 8 Anarchist leaders, and they were convicted by a Kangaroo Court of murder, though it was clear they had nothing to do with the actual act of throwing the bomb. Four of them were hung in November of 1887, one committed suicide the night before the execution date. The remaining three were pardoned by Illinois Governer Altgeld six years later, who criticized the trial as a “travesty of justice”. “Immediately after the Haymarket Massacre, big business and government conducted what some say was the very first 'Red Scare' in this country. Spun by mainstream media, anarchism became synonymous with bomb throwing and socialism became un-American.” (See, “The Brief Origins of May Day”, 1993, Eric Chase, IWW, https://archive.iww.org/history/library/misc/origins_of_mayday “The History of May Day”, from a 1932 Pamphlet, Proofed and Corrected: by Dawen Gaitis 2007,   https://www.marxists.org/subject/mayday/articles/tracht.html “The Haymarket Affair”, n.d., William J. Adelman, Illinois Labor History Society, http://www.illinoislaborhistory.org/the-haymarket-affair “The Anarchists and the Haymarket Square Incident”, Article “ Chicago: City of the Century”, n.d., anon, American Experience, PBS, at https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chicago-anarchists-and-haymarket-square-incident/ . May Day remained a popular labor holiday in the U.S. for nearly three more decades, until it was suppressed in the general repression campaigns of the WW I era and the 1920s. It is currently an official holiday in 55 countries and is observed unofficially in many others. Needless to say, in the country where the modern May Day originated, as a celebration of labor, it was never declared a National Holiday.

3). Now, of course, the U.S. Auto Industry is well over half foreign owned, and the Detroit area factories only produce about 20% of the vehicles manufactured in the U.S. The population of the City of Detroit itself has fallen to 36.1% of what it was in 1950, much of the city lies in ruins, and brown-field industrial farming is a new economic activity there.