Postcards and the Fear of Losing Power

I came across a collection of postcards from the early 1900s. The images and language on them were shocking. Anti-immigrant. Anti-Black. Openly hateful. They were mass-produced and mailed casually, the way we share memes today.

What hit me wasn’t the hate itself. It was the pattern underneath it. The rhetoric on those century-old postcards is almost identical to the rhetoric circulating now. Different targets, sometimes. Different technology. But the same fear: someone is coming to take what’s yours.

Fear of losing power is one of the oldest stories in human history. It shows up whenever demographics shift, whenever economies change, whenever people who were excluded start gaining access. The response is predictable. Demonize the newcomer. Frame inclusion as invasion. Turn belonging into a zero-sum game.

I’m not saying everyone who feels anxious about change is hateful. Anxiety about the future is human. But there’s a difference between feeling uncertain and being weaponized by people who profit from your fear.

The postcards showed me how little the playbook has changed. The names and faces rotate. The underlying fear stays the same: if they gain, I lose. And that fear-based frame has been used to justify exclusion, violence, and policy for as long as power has existed.

On this adventure, I keep finding that the most important work isn’t fighting the rhetoric. It’s understanding the fear underneath it. Because until we name the fear, we keep getting played by it. Generation after generation.

Read the full piece on Substack

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org