Franklin and the Anti-German Smear

In discussions of race, culture, and ethnicity in America, the Founding Fathers will frequently be brought up as Americans admire the FF and people use their legacy disingenuously. Let's look at Franklin 1/ https://www.dialoginternational.com/dialog_international/2008/02/ben-franklin-on.html

This is an old post but the arguments to this day are the same. Franklin hated Germans, Franklin didn't consider the Germans white, race is a social construct blah blah blah. I am not a nationalist in favor of the Founding Father mythos, but I hate liars and they're lying 2/

Lie number 1: "Benjamin Franklin warned about German immigrants overrunning America". First of all, Franklin's comments on Germans are wholly contained to the Pennsylvania colony, where they were almost 1/3 of the population of the colony by the Revolution. 3/

This lie is often congruent with the lie about German almost being a national language, which is used to argue in favor of both having no national language in the USA AND catering to minority languages. The only basis for this is asking for some laws being translated to German 4/

Lie 2: "Franklin warned that Germans were too stupid to learn English, and therefore represented a political threat to America"

Even reading the quote you can tell that they're dumb since they're conflating "they're not sending their best" and "we don't understand them" 5/

The source of this quotation is a 1753 letter that Franklin wrote to Peter Collinson, a London botanist. First let's look at the first problem with this:

It's not even proven he wrote it. He probably did though so let's just assume he did for the sake of argument 6/

Secondly, let's put ALL of Franklin's quotes on the Germans from this letter in their full context. We have:

* Germans are industrious and frugal no matter what
* There doesn't seem to be anything in nature that makes the English different from the Germans

7/

* There needs to be understanding to prevent disorder
* Nations don't often send their best emigrants
* We can't understand their German, so prejudice presists
* Some mild ethnic chauvinism
* They came here in great numbers and aren't assimilating anymore in Pennsylvania

8/

* Because they came in large numbers we require interpreters now
* If this continues we will not preserve this colony as our own
* The French are exploiting this
* He is not against them coming, but they need to be spread out and assimilated
* Germans are great

9/

Lie #3: "The other objection that Ben Franklin had to German immigrants was their "swarthy complexion", which was an affront to the "purely white people" who originally settled America:"

This one is particularly egregious because we're constantly told Franklin is a satirist

10/

The source of this quotation is from Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, a 1751 work where Franklin made economic arguments against slavery, talked about the growth of the colonies and their potential, supported mercantilism, and how nations are ruined.

11/

What diminishes a nation according to Franklin? 1. Being conquered and increasing foreigners 2. Loss of territory 3. Loss of trade 4. Loss of food 5. Bad government and insecure property, "becoming foreigners" 6. Introduction of slaves which make people indolent and decadent. 12/

According to Franklin, foreigners do not inherently increase the population productively, and even if they are frugal and industrious will "eat the natives out". There is also no job vacancies requiring an immigrant, just an inability to wait or train

13/

Franklin thought the colonies should be populated by English being they were now English land. Prior to the revolution he was very pro-British Empire. He saw no argument why it needed to be an immigrant nation open to other nations.

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He later omitted this section, though the damage was done as his comments helped lead to his 1764 defeat in the PA Assembly. He viewed this bias as universal: "But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my Country, for such kind of partiality is natural to Mankind.

15/

It should also be noted what he also said *before* the comments about them not being white. The shock of his banter must just cause them to gloss over what he said in the previous paragraph about not being able to assimilate them if there are too many:

16/

Franklin was a proponent of the British Empire, which was then led by King George II, a Hanoverian German born in German lands whose first language was French. English was his third language. Do you think Franklin wasn't aware of this?

17/

Furthermore the same people who will point to Franklin's bawdiness and sense of humor will, in the service of their anti-white agenda, then pretend that the man who wrote "Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress" was suddenly deadly serious in this specific instance 18/

All one needs to do is go through Franklin's writings that make mention of other Europeans peoples to find that he called them white on numerous occasions. While calling the French swarthy in this passage he calls them and Dutch white in "A Narrative of the Late Massacres" 19/

It's so abundantly obvious when you actually sit down and read a large body of the Founding Fathers actual words in their full context what they meant. They get away with it sometimes with Franklin because of his irreverence and humor, but they are still lying to you. 20/20