Know-Nothings

1. A party opposed to the holding of public office by immigrants or Roman Catholics. The Know-Nothings, also known as “nativists,” insisted that only true, “native” Americans should serve in the government. The party was quite successful in the 1850s but split over the slavery question. Its official name was the American party. It picked up the “Know-Nothing” tag because its members, maintaining secrecy about the party's activities, customarily answered questions with, “I know nothing.”

Today, the term know-nothing is usually applied to bigots.

Example Sentences

Though Greenpeace was scrappy and underfunded, the crew of the Rainbow Warrior wasn’t a bunch of hippie know-nothings.

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Economics, law, environmental science, nutrition, sociology, psychology: no field's safe from having experts spat upon by MAGA, which prefers the opinions of white male know-nothings.

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Later chapters in this old story include the Know-Nothings, all manner of panic over the Irish, the Yellow Peril and of course “replacement theory.”

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The attack on the credibility of science and scientists has arisen because validated scientific findings about global warming and the origins of COVID-19 cause economic and political discomfort to Big Business and know-nothings who believe that undermining science will advance their political careers.

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If you believe this, no wonder you might conclude that, ominously, a society of know-nothings and those with a newfound disdain for thought will produce only a few who can be counted as wise — despite society’s pressing need for wise humans to guide, counsel and direct us.

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