America First

While “America First” is now commonly known as President Trump’s foreign policy strategy emphasizing American nationalism and non-intervention, the phrase has a long history and has been used by groups and movements on the American right and far right since the early 20th century. It is an example of a phrase that has taken on a variety of meanings over time – both non-extreme (as is the case with the current use by the Trump Administration to describe U.S. foreign policy) and extreme.

The first prominent use of “America First” was as a slogan for the Second Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, where it stood as shorthand for the Klan’s racist, antisemitic, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiments. In the 1940s, “America First” was most well-known as a slogan for isolationists who wanted the U.S. to stay out of the Second World War. The America First Committee was founded in 1940. The vehemently racist and antisemitic Gerald L. K. Smith, one of the highest-profile far-right extremists from the 1930s through the 1960s, also formed an America First political party in 1943.

More recently, the slogan has been adopted or appropriated by other groups for their own ends. This most notably included white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, who named his livestream show America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes. Several white supremacist groups, including White Lives Matter, the New Jersey European Heritage Association (NJEHA), and Patriot Front, among others, have also used the slogan in the 2020s in their propaganda.