Matt Seybold: They laughed in 1907 when he said, "The Declaration of Independence was written by a British subject…there was not an American in the country on that day except the Indians out on the plains." 3/9

Mark Twain hated the Fourth of July. He was often invited to speak at Independence Day festivities. His audiences assumed that his reliably unpatriotic remarks were tongue-in-cheek jests. But he meant that shit. 1/9

They laughed heartily when he said, in Keokuk in 1886, that the best thing a speaker could do on such an occasion was sit down, which he then did. They laughed in 1899 when he suggested the holiday was "only sacred" to "the surgeon, the undertaker, & the insurance offices." 2/9

They laughed in 1907 when he said, "The Declaration of Independence was written by a British subject…there was not an American in the country on that day except the Indians out on the plains." 3/9

But in an 1908 entry of his Autobiography, which he knew would not be published until a century after his death, he reveals that his disdain was always deadly serious: "I detest that English holiday with all my heart;… 4/9

…not because it is not American, but merely because this nation goes insane, & by the help of noise & fire turns into an odious pandemonium. The nation calls it by all sorts of pet names, but if I had the naming of it I would throw poetry aside & call it Hell's Delight." 5/9

Widespread public drunkenness & fireworks were a reliably deadly combination. "We lose more fools on this day than on all the other days of the year put together," Twain wrote, "We destroy more property every Fourth of July night than the whole of the United States is worth” 6/9

Year after year long lists of casualties were published during the week that followed. Twain didn't think the "odious pandemonium" stood for anything. It was an imitation of Guy Fawkes Day, an excuse to fire pistols in the air & set things ablaze, crying patriotism. 7/9

“Patriotism I s a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn’t a foot of land in the world which doesn’t represent the ousting & re-ousting of a long line of successive ‘owners,’ who each in turn, as ‘patriots,’ with proud swelling hearts defended it… 8/9

…against the next gang of ‘robbers’ who came to steal it & DID - & became swollen-hearted patriots in THEIR turn.” The birth of a nation is an accident of history & one which never goes too long without being remedied. END

Take a curiosity from a European, Italian: Was Twain more the father of Trumpism or the mother of cancel culture? I’m kidding, of course. Not too much… obv. 🇮🇹🇪🇺

Father of anti-imperialist Antifa, more like. Literally a member of the Anti-Imperialist League. guides.loc.gov/world-of-189...

Research Guides: World of 1898: International Perspectives on the Spanish American War: Mark Twainguides.loc.gov This presentation provides resources and documents about the Spanish-American War, the period before the war, and some of the fascinating people who participated in the fighting or commented about it.

Leader of the Anti-Imperialist League.

As it were. Not a chance that he would admire a fascist.

Very interesting. A really out of the ordinary American. I like the writer, I also feel at admiring the man now. With my ideas, I think, under McCarthyism I would have ended up in jail ... I am an antifa too. And I think the absence of a fascist, italian, Nuremberg was our downfall.

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