Have you ever watched a video on YouTube, where you're like, "Oh, that's cute. That's funny. Okay, I see what they're...by hammer of Thor, what is that person doing?!"

Well, that's sort of what it's like to read this speech by Denis Kearney.

It starts out as a bit of a firebrand address. Close your eyes and you can almost picture someone like Bernie Sanders saying a few of these things. Then, about halfway through it gets crazy-racist.

He lays out a litany of sins against the ruling economic class, but the thing he regards as the unforgivable sin? "To add to our misery and despair, a bloated aristocracy has sent to China--the greatest and oldest despotism in the world--for a cheap working slave." (Source)

Kearney peppers the rest of the speech with heteronormative slurs "...they seem to have no sex. Boys work, girls work; it is all alike to them." The word he repeats over and over is "cheap," using it to describe every aspect of the Chinese. It's weird hearing this form of class condescension from a populist, but there you go.

That Kearney could say these things and be a powerful political force tells you what the political climate was in California.