Nativist Groups would have you believe that the U.S. Border is teeming with Mexicans waiting to cross over to the United States. Not so, says the highly respected Gallup Organization. The poll indicates that the overwhelming majority of Mexicans have no desire to emigrate, much less emigrate permanently to the U.S. The recently conducted Gallup poll found that when asked, "Ideally, given the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in this country?" only 21% of Mexicans responded affirmatively. Of this percentage only 46% indicated that they would like to emigrate to the United States. (The majority indicated a preference for Spain.) Given the cross-border familial ties between Mexico and the U.S., this is a remarkably small amount of Mexicans indicating a desire to emigrate to their northern neighbor.
What the poll really underlies is the complexity of the immigration issue. Contrary to the rants of Lou Dobbs and his ilk, the issues attendant to emigration and immigration between the United States and Mexico are considerably more nuanced than their simplistic sloganeering would have one believe. Almost every aspect of the immigration issue, from assimilation to the factors driving immigration, are riven by a set of complex factors that defy irreducibility to simple-minded solutions such as the much vaunted border fence. Until we move past the simpleton rhetoric of cable-news screamers, we will continue to fail to comprehend the complexities of this issue.
She had gone through labor with a sheriff’s officer standing guard in her hospital room, where one of her feet was cuffed to the bed most of the time...The phone in her room was turned off, and she was not permitted to speak with her husband when he came to retrieve their newborn son from the hospital
Human Rights Organizations have condemned the tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including the raids by ICE, the discriminatory enforcement by local officials and the conditions of detainment amongst other human rights violations. One especially ugly aspect of ICE’s war on immigrants is a program called 287g which promotes local enforcement of immigration by law enforcement officials who are neither trained nor equipped to enforce Federal laws. Worse, many of these local officials often exhibit anti-Latino bias which leads to profiling and harassment of the Hispanic community. One such egregious example of local enforcement run amok, but not in any way isolated, was reported in the New York Times.
It started when Juana Villegas, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was nine months pregnant, was pulled over by a police officer in a Nashville suburb for a routine traffic violation.
By the time Mrs. Villegas was released from the county jail six days later, she had gone through labor with a sheriff’s officer standing guard in her hospital room, where one of her feet was cuffed to the bed most of the time. County officers barred her from seeing or speaking with her husband.
After she was discharged from the hospital, Mrs. Villegas was separated from her nursing infant for two days and barred from taking a breast pump into the jail, her lawyer and a doctor familiar with the case said. Her breasts became infected, and the newborn boy developed jaundice, they said.
Mrs. Villegas’s arrest has focused new attention on a cooperation agreement signed in April 2007 between federal immigration authorities and Davidson County, which shares a consolidated government with Nashville, that gave immigration enforcement powers to county officers. It is one of 57 agreements, known formally as 287G, that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has signed in the last two years with county and local police departments across the country under a rapidly expanding program.
Lawyers and immigrant advocates say Mrs. Villegas’s case shows how local police can exceed their authority when they seek to act on immigration laws they are not fully trained to enforce.
“Had it not been for the 287G program, she would not have been taken down to jail,” said A. Gregory Ramos, a lawyer who is a former president of the Nashville Bar Association. “It was sold as something to make the community safer by taking dangerous criminals off the streets. But it has been operated so broadly that we are getting pregnant women arrested for simple driving offenses, and we’re not getting rid of the robbers and gang members.”
She was stopped on July 3 in her husband’s pickup truck by a police officer from Berry Hill, a Nashville suburb, initially for “careless driving.” After Mrs. Villegas told the officer she did not have a license, he did not issue a ticket but arrested her instead. Elliott Ozment, Mrs. Villegas’s lawyer, said driving without a license is a misdemeanor in Tennessee that police officers generally handle with a citation, not an arrest.
So when Mrs. Villegas went into labor on the night of July 5, she was handcuffed and accompanied by a deputy as she was taken by ambulance to Nashville General Hospital at Meharry. Cuffs chaining her foot to the hospital bed were opened when she reached the final stages of labor, Mrs. Villegas said.
The phone in her room was turned off, and she was not permitted to speak with her husband when he came to retrieve their newborn son from the hospital on July 7 as she returned to jail, she said.
As Mrs. Villegas left the hospital, a nurse offered her a breast pump but a sheriff’s deputy said she could not take it into the jail, Mrs. Villegas said.
Such treatment of non-criminal immigrants is unfortunately all too common under ICE’s war of attrition against undocumented immigrants. I can hear the nativists trolls scream “but she was here illegally!” Whether she was here illegally or not, such treatment is not only undeserved but its wide-scale application demeans our society and the values for which this Republic stands. We continue to fritter away any moral basis for criticizing the human rights violations of other countries. We have reduced our values to the lowest common denominator, the racists who rant on about “illegals” who “have no rights.” Who is next?
Politics makes strange bedfellows, a cliche perhaps, but it certainly fits in the case of Jason Riley’s latest book "Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders" (Gotham), which makes the case for an expansive immigration policy. Jason Riley is a conservative African-American and a member of the very conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board. Pro-immigrant views are not exactly the stuff we have come to associate with the right-wing but Riley’s book is a breath of fresh air nonetheless. Here is an excerpt from the May 15, 2008 Op-Ed piece that Riley penned for the Wall Street Journal, which gives a peek into his book.
The public, we were told, was fed up with illegal immigrants, especially those coming from Latin America. These foreign nationals were stealing jobs, depressing wages, filling our jails and prisons, refusing to learn English, and not assimilating like past immigrant groups. The conventional wisdom was that any presidential candidate who stood a chance of being elected would have to take a hard-line stance on illegal aliens.
Yet somehow the issue seems to have faded, if not disappeared entirely. The presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, isn't a fire-breathing "seal the border" restrictionist. Rather, he's the candidate most closely associated with a comprehensive immigration reform proposal that would have given most undocumented immigrants a shot at becoming legal residents if they met certain requirements. As for the Democrats, when's the last time you saw the term "illegal immigrant" appear in a story about Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama?
So what happened?
Well, I have a theory, and it is that Americans are basically pro-immigrant but ambivalent about it. This ambivalence is reflected in polls, which of course provide different results based on how questions are asked. For example, last year a CBS News poll asked, "Should illegal immigrants be prosecuted and deported or shouldn't they?" And 69% of respondents favored deportation. When the same interviewers asked the same respondents what should happen to illegal immigrants who have lived and worked in the U.S. for at least two years, and then offered a specific alternative to deportation, only 33% favored deportation; 62% said they should be given a chance to keep their jobs and eventually apply for legal status.
When a separate Gallup poll asked a similar question but offered four alternatives, just 13% favored deportation, and 78% said illegal immigrants should be allowed to keep their jobs and apply for citizenship.
In other words, for all the loud talk we've heard in recent months, via cable news, talk radio and the blogosphere, the American public seems not to have lost confidence in the melting pot. And rightly so, because there's plenty of evidence that assimilation is proceeding apace. True, it doesn't always seem that way, but we all know that perceptions can sometimes be illusions.
The media offers up a steady diet of data about current immigration from Mexico, and much of it consists of "averages" regarding English-language skills, income, home-ownership rates, education and so forth. But while digesting these figures, it's important to keep in mind that Latino immigration is ongoing. These averages are snapshots of a moving stream and therefore of little use in measuring assimilation. To properly gauge assimilation, we need to find out how immigrants in the U.S. are faring over time. Only longitudinal studies that track individuals can provide that information.
Just looking at averages can give you a very distorted view of who's learning English or dropping out of school or climbing out of poverty. How so? Because overall statistics that average in large numbers of newcomers can obscure the progress made by pre-existing immigrants.
Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California, calls it the "Peter Pan Fallacy." "Many of us assume, unwittingly, that immigrants are like Peter Pan," says Mr. Myers, "forever frozen in their status as newcomers, never aging, never advancing economically, and never assimilating." In this naïve view, he says, "the mounting numbers of foreign-born residents imply that our nation is becoming dominated by growing numbers of people who perpetually resemble newcomers."
The reality, however, is that the longitudinal studies show real socio-economic progress by Latinos. Progress is slower in some areas, such as the education level of adult immigrants, and faster in others, such as income and homeownership rates. But there is no doubt that both assimilation and upward mobility are occurring over time.
With respect to linguistic assimilation, which is one of the more important measures because it amounts to a job skill that can increase earnings, the historical pattern is as follows: The first generation learns enough English to get by but prefers the mother tongue. The children of immigrants born here grow up in homes where they understand the mother tongue to some extent and may speak it, but they prefer English. When those children become adults, they establish homes where English is the dominant language.
There's every indication that Latinos are following this pattern. According to 2005 Census data, just one-third of Latino immigrants in the country for less than a decade speak English well. But that proportion climbs to 75% for those here 30 years or more. There may be more bilingualism today among their children, but there's no evidence that Spanish is the dominant language in the second generation. The 2000 Census found that 91% of the children of immigrants, and 97% of the grandchildren, spoke English well.
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A new report by Seattle University finds widespread abuse of detainees at the Tacoma, Washington Detention Center. The 65-page report, "Voices From Detention,"examined the treatment of detainees at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. According to the Seattle Times:
Six immigrants being flown by federal authorities to Alabama last summer were denied the use of bathrooms for seven hours and forced to sit in their own excrement, according to a new report by the Seattle University School of Law.
In the report, detainees told researchers about one man — a mentally ill Cambodian — who they say was punched by U.S. marshals and later struggled to breathe after a hood was put on his head during the cross-country flight.
The report's findings, released during a news conference Tuesday by the law school's human-rights clinic in collaboration with the immigrant-rights group OneAmerica, is intended to draw attention to conditions at the privately run Tacoma facility.
The findings come as immigrant detention has become the fastest-growing form of incarceration in the U.S., the study's authors noted.
Gwynne Skinner, a visiting professor from Willamette University College of Law in Oregon who oversaw the study, said the alleged conditions violate international human rights.
The associations between criminal extremist enterprises and so-called mainstream anti-immigrant advocacy organizations has been a source of concern for groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and, of course, to the victims of such hate groups. On eristic ragemail we have written about these connections and have provided links to information on such groups. In this regard, there is an extremely informative article in Searchlight Magazine (which bills itself as anti-fascist and anti-racist) by David Williams. Although, the article covers the 2006 meeting of the racist webzine, American Renaissance, its description of the well-established relationships between groups such as FAIR and neo-Nazi organizations if extremely incisive. The article is entitled, “BNP leader embraced by top US Nazis.” American Renaissance held a similar gathering this year but it was not as well-attended, perhaps a reflection of waning influence. In any event here are some excerpts from Williams’ excellent article.
For the past 12 years Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, which is published by his New Century Foundation from Oakton, Virginia, has sponsored a series of biennial conferences the first of which took place in 1994 in Atlanta, Georgia with a hundred people. American Renaissance is a pseudo-scientific racist magazine, which uses IQ tests and eugenics to promote the “clear conception of the United States as a nation ruled by and for whites”. Taylor’s dogged determination to “concentrate on what unites” and to “expand the consciousness of race” drew a large crowd, approximately 300, a record number of racists though they preferred the term “white preservationists,” who sat and listened to speeches centred on the theme of “The Global Crisis: Perspectives from Europe, Africa, and Australia”. In keeping with its global perspective this year’s conference had a truly international flavour with speakers including Nick Griffin and Derek Turner from England, Professor Andrew Fraser (Australia), Professor Philippe Rushton (Canada), Dr Dan Roodt (South Africa), Dr Guillaume Faye (France) and Sam Dickson (America).
But it was not only the keynote speakers who were of interest. The list of those attending this year’s conference read like a veritable “who’s who” of American white supremacy. Particularly prominent among the attendees were the contingent from Stormfront.org, the world’s largest white supremacist website – slogan “white pride, world wide” – run by the former Alabama Klansman Don Black, who in 1981 tried to invade the island of Dominica and set up a white supremacist state. The venture failed and Black was jailed for three years.
John Brimelow (twin brother of Peter Brimelow, author of the influential anti-immigration tract Alien Nation) who runs the popular VDARE.com website attended and was observed cloistered in the atrium consorting with Black and his cohorts. A controversial figure for some within the American Renaissance milieu, David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (who was succeeded by Black), was there as were the far-right radio talk show host Hal Turner, Mark Weber, director of the California-based Holocaust denial outfit the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), Kevin Strom of National Vanguard and David Pringle, both former members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. There was also a large contingent of Canadians led by Paul Fromm of the Canada First Immigration Reform Committee. Fromm is a friend of the Holocaust deniers Lady Michelle Renouf and Ernst Zündel who, much to Fromm’s annoyance, is currently on trial in Germany.
The after dinner speech was delivered by Rushton, Professor of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and currently the president of the Pioneer Fund, founded in 1937 for the “racial betterment” of the white race by funding spurious racial science projects dedicated to proving its genetic superiority. The Pioneer Fund has made a series of large financial grants to Taylor’s own New Century Foundation, the company behind American Renaissance. Rushton’s speech, replete with slides, on “New Research on Socio-biology” was dedicated to proving that IQ tests showed blacks to be genetically inferior to whites, though his imputation that on “average” Asians might have a higher IQ than whites left more than one diner at our table with a bitter taste in the mouth after an otherwise pleasant meal.
The conference threw into stark relief the increasing synergy between British and American racists. Those who had tired of the speeches or merely wished to stretch their legs could peruse the stalls at the back of the hall, many of which were giving away mountains of free literature. One of the first we encountered was the Occidental Quarterly stall run by James Russell, a member of its editorial board. Also on Occidental Quarterly’s board are Derek Turner and the controversial Leeds university don Frank Ellis. Coincidentally the stall next to Russell was that of Washington Summit Publishers (WSP) run by yet another Occidental Quarterly editorial board member, Louis Andrews of Augusta, Georgia. It is Andrews who manages the American distribution of Right Now!. WSP publishes Race Differences in Intelligence by Richard Lynn, emeritus professor at the University of Ulster, who like Taylor is a recipient of Pioneer Fund grants. WSP also reprints “classic” Aryan and eugenic tracts including a homily to the antisemitic philosopher Count de Gobineau as a pioneer of genetics.
Other stalls included those run by Joe Sobran, who was fired from his job as senior editor of the National Review in 1993 on account of his antisemitism, and Social Contract Press whose journal Social Contract is edited by Dr Wayne Lutton who sits alongside Taylor, Andrews, Russell and Derek Turner on the editorial board of Occidental Quarterly. Social Contract Press also publishes The Camp of Saints by Jean Raspail, an apocalyptic vision of immigration peddled in this country by Right Now!
The “Jewish Question” was, noted one attendee, “always present in the thinking of those I met, either at the forefront of our conversation or just below the surface”. Indeed Griffin “made reference to it several times” during the course of dinner with several American activists on Friday night. However, it came very publicly to the fore on Saturday afternoon and has generally dominated discussion of the conference on white nationalist websites since then… After thanking him for a speech which had “stirred our genes” [David] Duke, whose charisma appears to have been surgically enhanced of late, asked Faye if there weren’t a more insidious threat to the West than Islam? “Tell us what it is” came a call from the back of the room. “I’m not going to say,” said a coy Duke to rising laughter.
Martin Hart, a squat right-wing Jewish astrophysicist who has attended all the American Renaissance conferences since 1996, took umbrage to this, not least because he had only just reassured Hershel Elias, a new initiate to the American Renaissance circuit from Philadelphia, that although the conference was “infiltrated by Nazis and Holocaust deniers” this should not detract from his enjoyment of the gathering. “You fucking Nazi, you’ve disgraced this meeting,” Hart shouted at Duke before storming out of the hall followed by boos and catcalls. As one can tell from a glance at the Stormfront forums Hart appears to have woefully misjudged the audience!
Sarcasm aside the dispute between Duke and Hart highlights the uneasy alliance between the socially conservative “race realists” such as Taylor and Baum, who believe antisemitism detracts from the real task of opposing immigration, and the hardline antisemites gathered around Stormfront for whom antisemitism is the issue. Indeed Stormfront, although generally supportive, regards American Renaissance as a “soft core” organisation, useful because its broader appeal on race and immigration issues enables it to function as “an entry level portal for those still learning the racial basics” and for that reason “it has value”. The verbal fracas and its fallout reveal just how unstable are the foundations upon which Taylor is trying to build his coalition.
On Friday, July 11, 2008, Eristic Ragemail published a transcript of a conversation between Ragemail and Peter Brimelow. Today, Peter Brimelow and his buddy, Cronulla submitted a response (Click on response to see Brimelo’s response) which is posted herein. Read what Peter Brimelow has to say in defense of his controversial views.
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As we recently posted, following the ICE raid at the meat-packing plant in Postville, Iowa, immigrant workers were herded into kangaroo style hearings where they were railroaded into pleading guilty to criminal offenses. A courageous interpreter, Erik Camayd-Freixas, came forward and exposed the lack of any semblance of due process in these summary proceedings. From Dr. Camayd-Freixas account:
On Monday, May 12, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., in an operation involving some 900 agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed a raid of agriprocessors Inc, the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant located in the town of Postville, Iowa. The raid –officials boasted– was “the largest single-site operation of its kind in American history.” At that same hour, 26 federally certified interpreters from all over the country were en route to the small neighboring city of Waterloo, Iowa, having no idea what their mission was about. The investigation had started more than a year earlier. Raid preparations had begun in December. The Clerk’s Office of the U.S. District Court had contracted the interpreters a month ahead, but was not at liberty to tell us the whole truth, lest the impending raid be compromised. The operation was led by ICE, which belongs to the executive branch, whereas the U.S. District Court, belonging to the judicial branch, had to formulate its own official reason for participating. Accordingly, the Court had to move for two weeks to a remote location as part of a “Continuity of Operation exercise” in case they were ever disrupted by an emergency, which in Iowa is likely to be a tornado or flood. That is what we were told, but, frankly, I was not prepared for a disaster of such a different kind, one which was entirely man-made.
Echoing what I think was the general feeling, one of my fellow interpreters would later xclaim: “When I saw what it was really about, my heart sank…” Then began the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see, because cameras were not allowed past the perimeter of the compound (only a few journalists came to court the following days, notepad in hand). Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10. They appeared to be uniformly no more than 5 ft. tall, mostly lliterate Guatemalan peasants with Mayan last names, some being relatives (various Tajtaj, Xicay, Sajché, Sologüí…), some in tears; others with faces of worry, fear, and mbarrassment. They all spoke Spanish, a few rather laboriously. It dawned on me that, aside from their Guatemalan or Mexican nationality, which was imposed on their people after Independence, they too were Native Americans, in shackles. They stood out in stark racial contrast with the rest of us as they started their slow penguin march across the makeshift court. Sad spectacle” I heard a colleague say, reading my mind. They had all waived their right to be indicted by a grand jury and accepted instead an information or simple charging document by the U.S. Attorney, hoping to be quickly deported since they had families to support back home. But it was not to be. They were criminally charged with “aggravated identity theft” and “Social Security fraud” —charges they did not understand… and, frankly, neither could I. Everyone wondered how it would all play out.
“The saddest procession I have every witnessed,” strong words from an interpreter who regularly translates for the so-called Department of Justice and has seen his share of tragedies. From the New York Times editorial of July 13, 2008:
Anyone who has doubts that this country is abusing and terrorizing undocumented immigrant workers should read an essay by Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor and Spanish-language court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of a huge immigration workplace raid at a meatpacking plant in Iowa.
The essay chillingly describes what Dr. Camayd-Freixas saw and heard as he translated for some of the nearly 400 undocumented workers who were seized by federal agents at the Agriprocessors kosher plant in Postville in May.
Under the old way of doing things, the workers, nearly all Guatemalans, would have been simply and swiftly deported. But in a twist of Dickensian cruelty, more than 260 were charged as serious criminals for using false Social Security numbers or residency papers, and most were sentenced to five months in prison.
What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.
Dr. Camayd-Freixas’s essay describes “the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see” — because cameras were forbidden.
“Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.”
He wrote that they had waived their rights in hopes of being quickly deported, “since they had families to support back home.” He said that they did not understand the charges they faced, adding, “and, frankly, neither could I.”
No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people’s identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored. Deporting unauthorized workers is one thing; sending desperate breadwinners to prison, and their families deeper into poverty, is another.
Court interpreters are normally impartial participants and keep their opinions to themselves. But Dr. Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, said he was so offended by the cruelty of the prosecutions that he felt compelled to break his silence. “A line was crossed at Postville,” he wrote.
And so another sad chapter is written in this administration’s contemptuous view towards the rule of law and the rights of human beings. Shame! Shame! Shame! Contemptible bastards: ICE, Justice and the U.S. Attorney.
What I find most incredible and disturbing about the responses from Peter Brimelow’s groupies is the utter lack of shock at the extreme nature of the statements that come out of Brimelow’s mouth.I say, “come out of Brimelow’s mouth,” since every single element of my parody is taken from actual statements made by Brimelow, right down to his statement about defending the white race and “get used to it.”Make no bones about it, Peter Brimelow is a dyed in the wool racist, xenophobe and all-around fascist.I could throw in a few more “isms” but the catch-all “fascist” (despite its loss in currency through over-use) most accurately defines Brimelow’s ideology better than any other number of categories of hate.
This Brimelow guy means to undermine our republic.For someone who rails on about aliens who fail to assimilate, I am profoundly disturbed that this British wanker apparently snookered INS into letting him pass his citizenship test despite his avowed fascist tendencies.
Brimelow has no respect for American Democracy.He needs to be deported!Accordingly, I am henceforth starting the “Deport Peter Brimelow Society” with the aim of stripping this fascist of his naturalized citizenship and sending his limey ass back across the Atlantic where he can bugger his fascist buddies at the British National Party.
(For your information, Brimelow, my people were here before the American Civil War was fought.In fact, on my mother’s side they were in the Western territories before the Revolution against King George.So kiss my ass, you slimy racist.)
So I was getting really ticked off at all the nativist crap published on the VDare website when I decided to take matters into my own hands. I reached for the phone. The site’s editor is Peter Brimelow, a British expat who is obsessed with Hispanic immigrants and the threat they pose to his son, Alexander and his daughter, Sue. I decided to have it out with Brimelow, once and for all, man to man --- mano a mano. I dialed up his number and the bloke picked up.
“Brimelow?” I said. “Peter Brimelow? Is that you?”
“The very same. ‘Ow can I ‘elp yer, mate?” he replied, in a distinct British accent.
“Peter, I have to tell you, as a Latino, I’m getting really pissed off at all of the anti-Latino hate speech you’ve been spewing out onto the Web. I mean, what gives with you, man? You didn’t even grow up in this country, much less in L.A. or El Paso, so you can’t be carrying a grudge ‘cause some of my peeps kicked your ass or something. So what is it with you?”
“And ‘oo mightchoo be then, mate?”
“Razzo, Razzo Castro. And don’t call me ‘mate’, all right? I have a blog called Eristic Ragemail. It’s all about elite racist peckerwoods such as yourself, who disseminate bogus statistics on immigration.”
“Right! Ragemail, eh? Can’t say I’ve ‘ad the pleasure of reading it, Razzo. An’ what’s that you said about ‘peckerwoods’? Was that meant to be derogat’ry?”
“You should check the Ragemail site out sometime, Brimelow. After all, you’re featured prominently on the site, right next to the section on Hitler.”
“Whazzat? Bloody ‘itler, eh? Where you get off wif dat, exackly? I only lays out the facts. What people does wiv ‘em is their own business. Follow me?”
“Facts!? You call the garbage you spew out, ‘facts?’ Man, you are deluded. Seriously. I mean come on Pete – I can call you Pete, can’t I? – you know damn well that, immigrants don’t make up 25% of the US federal prison population. As for public assistance, immigrants aren’t even eligible for that –not that anybody is any more. And do you seriously believe your claim that aliens are responsible for suburban sprawl? Last time I was in the suburbs I didn’t see too many low riders out there, joo-know-whad-I-meeng?
And what’s with the racist crap about immigrants bringing in leprosy. Come on man, you are a smart guy, why do you put out such… horseshit?”
“Look, Razzo. (Say, what kind of name is that anyway: ‘Razzo.’) I appreciate you takin’ the time to call me, but I’m not goin’ a sit ‘ere and debate wif you if you’s goin’ a be ‘ostile.”
“Ok. But, just so you know, all this stuff is really meant to scare white people . . . I mean, seriously . . . Leprosy? That’s so yesterday. Why not something with a little more traction, like Ebola or Marburg? I mean, if you’re going to invent exotic diseases carried by aliens why don’t you at least pick something a little trendier; something that wasn’t originally brought here by the slaves dragooned by your illustrious forefathers?”
“Ok, ok. Maybe the leprosy fing was a stretch, but it spun so well for my man, Lou Dobbs, I figured hell, why not just keep it spinnin’, like. Why go to the trouble of reinventin’ the wheel, so to speak? Ha ha ha. I do like the Ebola/Marburg angle, though. ‘ow you spell that: Marburg? Never mind; I’ll Google it. I needs some material fer me nex’ column.”
“See, there you go again, making stuff up to tarnish Latinos. You really have to take a hard look in the mirror, my man. And I don’t mean so you can coif that impeccable white mane of yours. I mean you need to look in the mirror so you can really see yourself for what you are and say: Is this really the legacy I want to leave? A legacy of hatred?”
“Razzo, I ain’t either fomentin’ ‘atred. In fact, I resents the implication, as it were.”
“Bullshit, Pete! You most certainly are fomenting hatred. I mean when your pal, Steve Sailer, writes that Black women and Asian men are doomed to evolutionary extinction because they are too ugly… what the hell do you call that?”
“Yeah, Steve did kind of go a little bit overboard wiv dat one. ‘e should’ve cited ‘is sources, ‘e should.”
“Or when you endorsed the Minutemen vigilantes? Didn’t you know the Minutemen are like Ku Klux Klan?
Like? Hell, they are the KKK!”
“On the other ‘and, you ‘as to admit that they do enjoy a certain amount of – ‘ow you call it? – popular support. An’ you ‘as to pick your dogs wherever you finds ‘em.”
“But . . . why do you have to lie so much? I mean you just constantly make stuff up, like saying that whites are at zero population growth and that US population is going to double due to ‘dark immigrants.’ Where do you get that shit?”
“Look, you misunderstood what I said, mate. What I meant to say was that when you considers the whatsit? . . . um . . . the net aggregate . . . yeah . . . that’s it: the net aggregate . . . – which is not just the new immigrants, but all the immigrants what’s come in since 1970 – yeah, when you considers the net aggregate, then my statement is in fact, accurate, as it were.”
“So you mean, like me and my kids and their kids’ kids?”
“Exactly!”
“Well, by that standard ALL population growth is going to come from people born after 1970, no matter their race or ethnicity. After all, the child-bearing years belong to the young . . .like your child bride.”
“’Ey now! No need to get personal! What you got against child brides, any’ow?”
“Hey, I’m not faulting you for marrying someone half your age. I mean if you really are concerned about the decline of the Aryan race, you need to keep breeding, even if you have to keep on doing it into your senescence. In fact, according to your logic you, as scion of the noble white race, should acquire several child brides. In fact, I know just the group for you . . .”
“My wife ‘as got nuffin’ to do wiv dis. Besides, I already ‘as kids by me first wife.”
“We all know that you have kids, Pete. How could we not? You bring up your little girl Sue and your ‘blonde, blue-eyed’ boy, Alexander James Frank Brimelow, at every speaking opportunity. Hell, we even know their birthdates, since you relate these dates to the ‘brown apocalypse’ that your children will supposedly experience in their lifetimes.”
“Well, I do fink that if we continues to favor the darker races with quotas and affirmative action, poor little Alexander James will one day be punished just for being white. ‘E’ll be a victim of reverse racism, in fact. You can’t deny that.”
“Jesssuuuuuuuuuuuus, I just had an epiphany! That’s really what’s bugging you, isn’t it? You left the comfort of Jolly Old England, Jolly White Old England, hoping to find more of your own kind in the land across the sea. But instead, to your horror and dismay, what you found was a country practically overrunning with darkies. And now you’re afraid that one of your kids might even marry one of them? Is that it? Oh the horror! The horror! Pete, you must wake up drenched in sweat at the nightmare of being forced to one day dandle some chocolate-brown grandchild on your knee, in your own home. Oh my god; think of it! Your own grandchild!”
“Stop it! Stop it Razzo, you wanker. Clearly you are part of the problem, you mudwave surfer. Fuckin’ piece of third world trash!”
“Whoa, Peter! Get a grip on yourself, man. It’s just a fact that you’ll have to accept: the possibility that your own personal DNA might one day become contaminated with alien stock. How does Sue Madison Sanchez sound? Has a nice muddy-brown ring to it, doesn’t it? Think of it: Your little snow-white Suzie married to a swarthy Mexican cholo. It just wigs you out, doesn’t it?”
“Look Razzo, if that is your name . . . I admits that I doesn’t much like the thought of my daughter marrying an illegal anything. But my concerns is purely for the integrity of our great white ‘ardworkin’ Protestant culture is all. That is what is at issue ‘ere, and that is what is threatened by illegal immigration.”
“You mean, the purity of the white race, right?”
“Razzo, I fink this conversation ‘as gone far enough. Goodbye.” [CLICK]
“But Pete! Wait! I wanted you to explain why immigrants are to blame for the Northern Virginia suburbs.”
[Dialtone]
After this was posted Cronulla posted a defense of Peter Brimelow. Mr. Brimelow subsequently felt the need to clear the record. Herein his response.
Peter Brimelow responds:
Cronulla, you old plonker, thanks for writing in on my behalf mate. I really think you laid to rest the load of clobbers peddled by that third-world wanker Razzo. The only racist, in my conversation with Razzo, was the duffer on the other end of the phone. You can’t know how cheesed off I got when I saw that third world toff transcribed our phone conversation. Hell, I was honking gallons into the loo after reading his insults. So, I’ll finish correcting the record that you so ably started. Thanks again mate.
It is a fact that America is getting darker and we need to act to stop that. As you know the opening to the Constitution, the preamble, actually says the purpose of the constitution is to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, not posterity in general, our posterity. The posterity of the people who were living in the U.S. at the time. And that was a nation which was entirely white and it was also very heavily, overwhelmingly Protestant: 98 percent Protestant. So our founders envisioned an entirely white nation that was close to 100% Protestant. I don’t know why people get all scatty when I state this. This is a fact. The constitution did not envision securing the blessings of liberty to Blacks, Catholics or Hispanics, let alone immigrants.
Razzo wants to tarnish VDare because we publish white nationalists like Steve Sailer and Pat Buchanan. We publish on VDARE.com a few writers, for example Jared Taylor, whom I would regard as “white nationalist,” in the sense that they aim to defend the interests of American whites. They are not white supremacists as the PC police would have you believe. But they unashamedly work for their people…Get used to it! As immigration policy drives whites into a minority, this type of interest-group "white nationalism" will inexorably increase, and we will be there defending our people. So get used to it! We of the white race, will not go down without a fight.
Steve Sailer, another white nationalist, is also one of our contributors, and as you, Cronilla say, his comments on Asian men and Black women losing out in the evolutionary race, have been misinterpreted by the same duffers who accuse us of being white supremacists. What Steve actually wrote in his essay, "Is Love Colorblind," was as follows:
The general pattern to be explained is: blacks are more in demand as husbands than as wives, and vice-versa for Asians. The question is, what accounts for it?
The force driving these skewed husband - wife proportions appears to be differences in perceived sexual attractiveness. On average, black men tend to appear slightly more and Asian men slightly less masculine than white men, while Asian women are typically seen as slightly more and black women as slightly less feminine than white women.
So, what makes blacks more masculine-seeming and Asians more feminine-seeming? 1) Asian men tend to be shorter than white and black men. Does this matter in the mating game? One of America's leading hands-on researchers into this question, 7'1", 280-pound basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain, reports that in his ample experience being tall and strong never hurt. Biological anthropologists confirm this, finding that taller tends to be better in the eyes of most women in just about all cultures. Furthermore, it can be rather cold comfort to a 5'7" Asian who is competing for dates with white and black guys averaging 5'11" to hear, ``Your sons will grow up on average a couple of inches taller than you, assuming, of course, that you ever meet a girl and have any kids.'' In contrast, consider a 5'1" Asian coed. Although she'd be happy with a 5'7" boyfriend if she were in an all-Asian school, at UCLA she finds lots of boys temptingly much taller than that, but few are Asian.
2) Since women do not go bald and can generally grow longer hair than men, most cultures associate longer hair with femininity. Although blacks' hair doesn't grow as long as whites' or Asians' hair, that's not a problem for black women in all-black societies. After integration, though, hair often becomes an intense concern for black women competing with longer-haired women of other races.
3) Muscularity may most sharply differentiate the races in terms of sexual attractiveness. Women like men who are stronger than they; men like women who are rounder and softer. The frustrations of Asian men are a warning sign. When, in the names of freedom and feminism, young women listen less to the hard-earned wisdom of older women about how to pick Mr. Right, they listen even more to their hormones. This allows cruder measures of a man's worth -- like the size of his muscles -- to return to prominence.
As you can see, Steve was just pointing out the scientific basis for the sexual preference that discriminates against black women and Asian men. It’s a fact that women like their men big and men like their women soft. I don’t know why that Razzo wanker has to twist this into some kind of racist argument. It’s the same way that the PC police twisted my arguments in the essay “America’s Immigration Policy—Hitler’s Revenge?”
And as you, Cronulla, rightly point out, who is the racist when it comes to my children. As some of you who have read my book, Alien Nation, will remember, the most denounced passage was my reference to my little boy, Alexander, who had then just been born. There is reference in this book to his blue eyes and blond hair. Alexander James Frank Brimelow is an American, although I was still a British subject and his mother a Canadian when he shot into the New York delivery room, yelling indignantly, one summer dawn in 1991. I was merely pointing out the unintended consequences of the 14th Amendment. This is because of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, states in part:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
We need to repeal the 14th Amendment which was passed after the Civil War in an attempt to stop Southern states denying their newly freed slaves the full rights of citizens. What with all these illegals having anchor babies, it’s just literally changing the colour of our nation. And just because I mentioned that my son is blond and blue-eyed, all these people accuse me of racism. They want to see racism, go talk to the multi-culturalists.
The drive toward multiculturalism now exists in every English-speaking country. It exists because there are people who don’t like the majority white culture in these countries and want to undermine it. And in the U.S. it particularly exists because of the African-American population which, in many ways, is almost like a fetal nation. I mean blacks are developing in quite different ways culturally to the rest of the population and it’s a very deep-seated problem for the Americans. There is a sense in which current immigration policy is Adolf Hitler’s posthumous revenge on America. You see, African-Americans are the model for the Hispanics that are invading our country and fomenting multi-culturalism. We need to control the development of the African-American population just as we need to exclude the Hispanic growth.
Finally, that wanker Razzo brings up the whole Leprosy thing. I mean, yeah you had Brits bringing Africans over in conditions that bred disease. But of more immediate significance to readers is who was blamed for the spread of leprosy in the news reports.
(“European colonialism and the slave trade probably played a key role in the spread of leprosy, research suggests.”)
“…the disease may have begun in East Africa…then spread to the other continents in part through European colonialism and later the slave trade.”
In other words, although this ancient disease was rampant throughout Europe and Asia by early medieval times, the study is being used as another occasion to denigrate the whites of Western Europe, solidly fixed in the media mind as the only practitioners of colonialism and slave trading. The source of this ahistorical slander, sadly, is the press release put out by head of the Pasteur Institute unit responsible for the study, Dr Stewart Cole:
“Europeans and North Africans then spread leprosy to West Africa… Europeans also introduced leprosy to North America.
“‘Colonialism was extremely bad for parts of the world in terms of human health,’ said Cole.”
In other words, the brief period of European rule in the Third World, which triggered a population explosion there because of the introduction of public health disciplines, law, order, technology and capital, creating an improving living standard the post- colonial regimes have been pitifully unable to maintain, was “extremely bad.” However leprosy spread in the past, the answer to stopping extension in the future is obvious: curtail 3rd World immigration.The brutal truth is that immigrants bring disease..
The problem really boils down to letting these brown hordes have a voice in our democracy. Well that's really the problem and also we didn't have the institutionalization of of factionalization, in the sense of voting right acts and voting rights which is moving towards a proportional representation system where everybody gets everybody gets represented. That is a big part of the problem: too much democracy. I say deport them all!! And toss out their kids, who were born in this country, with them. I hope this clears out any confusion.
On May 12th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided the Kosher meat-packing plant in Postville Iowa, detaining approximately 400 undocumented immigrants. Since then controversy has swirled around the raid and its aftermath. New America Media is reporting that “[n]o fewer than seven federal and state agencies are coordinating on investigations of Agriprocessors.”
According to lawyers in the case and agency representatives, there are likely to be civil charges related to immigration, wage enforcement, safety and other labor issues which usually result in fines, however, criminal charges related to immigration, child labor and sexual harassment and assault are far more serious and potentially wide reaching. Anyone with “knowledge or intent” of child laborers for instance is subject to criminal prosecution — in theory this could include management, human resources representatives and owners alike.
“ICE knows this case is huge,” said Sonia Parras Konrad, an attorney representing many of the women and children detained in the raids. “This is not about a few undocumented jumping the fence, this is about the ongoing crimes and abuses that these people endured. This will be a real showcase of what can go wrong without a real comprehensive solution to immigration.”
In contrast, The New York Times is reporting that a translator used during the raids has become a whistleblower in what appear to be railroading of immigrants who have been forced to plead guilty to criminal charges. Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, and an interpreter for the Federal Courts, has taken the unusual step of breaking the code of confidentiality among legal interpreters.
In a 14-page essay he circulated among two dozen other interpreters who worked here, Professor Camayd-Freixas wrote that the immigrant defendants whose words he translated, most of them villagers from Guatemala, did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived.
In the essay and an interview, Professor Camayd-Freixas said he was taken aback by the rapid pace of the proceedings and the pressure prosecutors brought to bear on the defendants and their lawyers by pressing criminal charges instead of deporting the workers immediately for immigration violations.
He said defense lawyers had little time or privacy to meet with their court-assigned clients in the first hectic days after the raid. Most of the Guatemalans could not read or write, he said. Most did not understand that they were in criminal court.
“The questions they asked showed they did not understand what was going on,” Professor Camayd-Freixas said in the interview. “The great majority were under the impression they were there because of being illegal in the country, not because of Social Security fraud.”
So it appears that for the immigrants caught up in the raid it is a lose-lose proposition. ICE could easily deport the workers, who are unlikely to make a return, given the hardships involved in emigrating from Central America. Instead, ICE wants to score a PR coup by convicting as many workers as possible of crimes such as Social Security fraud (albeit who this harms is questionable given that they are contributing money to the Social Security fund that they will never see). Nothing like shooting fish in a barrel.
The gateway hypothesis holds that abusable drugs occupy distinct ranks in a hierarchy as well as definite positions in a temporal sequence. Accordingly, substance use is theorized to progress through a sequence of stages, beginning with legal, socially acceptable compounds that are low in the hierarchy, followed by use of illegal 'soft' and later 'hard' drugs ranked higher and illegal, socially unacceptable hard drugs. In the same manner that certain drugs are deemed acceptable, but viewed as gateways to other drugs, such as the use of prescription pain-killers, benzodiazepines, marijuana and alcohol, for example, lead the user to experiment with harder and less socially acceptable drugs such as heroin, methoamphetamines, crack cocaine etc. so certain socio-political positions, that are deemed socially acceptable, open up the user, and ultimately the political debate to positions previously deemed socially unacceptable and verboten. Examples of socially acceptable positions are: abolish welfare, treat criminals harshly, execute criminals who commit certain offenses and deport all aliens. Examples of verboten subjects include racially-based eugenics, genocide, racism, extermination of large groups of domestic citizens, deportation of masses of U.S. citizens or the institution of concentration camps for a particular race or ethnic group. The reader can easily add other socially unacceptable subjects to this list.
Nativists have used the socially acceptable anti-immigrant paradigm to push the envelope of extremism. Nativism has always been a part of American political discourse. The earl part of the Nineteenth Century brought a wave of bigoted attitudes enacted into laws which brought about the forced sterilization of tens of thousands and laws restricting the immigration of “inferior” groups. “The [Immigration and Restriction Act of] 1924 act, following a barrage of eugenicist propaganda, reset the quotas at 2 percent of people from each nation recorded in the 1890 census (Southern and eastern Europeans arrived in relatively small numbers before then)… Cynical, but effective. “America must be kept American,” proclaimed Calvin Coolidge as he signed the bill.” ( (“The Mismeasure of Man,”Stephen Jay Gould, p. 262). So today, nativists are using the social acceptability of anti-immigrant sentiment to push for more, previously unacceptable, extreme positions. The process utilized by nativists is similar to the stages leading to genocide.
What makes subjects such as genocide verboten is the morally repugnant nature of such extreme positions. As we have seen, genocide occurs in countries such as Nazi Germany, Kampuchea, Burundi, Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Genocide does not arrive full blown out of group differences. Rarely is genocide set forth explicitly as a political platform. Genocide is a process. According to the International Commission to End Genocide there is an eightfold process to genocide.
1. CLASSIFICATION: All cultures have categories to distinguish people into “us and them” by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality: German and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi. Bipolar societies that lack mixed categories, such as Rwanda and Burundi, are the most likely to have genocide.
2. SYMBOLIZATION: We give names or other symbols to the classifications. We name people “Jews” or “Gypsies”, or distinguish them by colors or dress; and apply them to members of groups. Classification and symbolization are universally human and do not necessarily result in genocide unless they lead to the next stage, dehumanization. When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups: the yellow star for Jews under Nazi rule, the blue scarf for people from the Eastern Zone in Khmer Rouge Cambodia.
3. DEHUMANIZATION: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. At this stage, hate propaganda in print and on hate radios is used to vilify the victim group.
4. ORGANIZATION: Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, though sometimes informally (Hindu mobs led by local RSS militants) or by terrorist groups. Special army units or militias are often trained and armed. Plans are made for genocidal killings
5. POLARIZATION: Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction. Extremist terrorism targets moderates, intimidating and silencing the center.
6. IDENTIFICATION: Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. Members of victim groups are forced to wear identifying symbols. They are often segregated into ghettoes, forced into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved.
7. EXTERMINATION begins, and quickly becomes the mass killing legally called “genocide.” It is “extermination” to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human. When it is sponsored by the state, the armed forces often work with militias to do the killing. Sometimes the genocide results in revenge killings by groups against each other, creating the downward whirlpool-like cycle of bilateral genocide (as in Burundi).
8. DENIAL is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile.
Genocide Watch is the Coordinator of the International Campaign to End Genocide
1804 “S” St. N.W. Washington, D.C. 20009 USA. Phone:703-448-0222 Fax:703-448-6665
One may see elements of this process in the current nativist wave. The classification that nativists need exists in the readily cognizable categories of immigrants. Most nativists confound the difference between immigrants who are here legally and those that are undocumented, thus broadening the spectrum of those labeled immigrants. The immigrant classification existed before the current organization of nativist elements such as FAIR, NumbersUSA, VDare and the Minutemen.
The nativists have carried the immigrant classification into further processes of dehumantization. Nativists vigorously insist that undocumented immigrants be called, “aliens,” “illegals” or “criminals,” thus adding the element of symbolization to classification. Nativist spokesmen, websites and literature constantly insist on this symbolization of immigrants. When others use the term “undocumented workers” or simply “immigrants,” nativists mock them and insist that “these people” are “illegal” and that “illegals have no rights.” At the extreme, undocumented immigrants are referred to as insects, disease infested hordes and cockroaches. In this process, they move the debate to the level of dehumanization.
As articulated by the Society Against Genocide, dehumanization “denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases.” This is clearly evidenced in the literature put out by nativist groups and by prominent nativists such as Lou Dobbs. In the case of the most prominent nativist groups, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, (“FAIR”) all these methods of dehumanization are being utilized as revealed by an investigation by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.
A closer look at the public record reveals that many ostensibly mainstream anti-illegal immigration organizations – including those who testified before Congress or frequently appeared on news programs – promote virulent anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Some groups have fostered links with extremist groups.
The real victims in this are Hispanic-Americans and other immigrants who are being unfairly targeted, demeaned and stereotyped."
The report cites several key tactics used by anti-immigrant groups, including:
· Describing immigrants as "third world invaders," who come to America to destroy our heritage, "colonize" the country and attack our "way of life." This charge is used against Hispanics, Asians and other people of color.
· Using terminology that describes immigrants as part of "hordes" that "swarm" over the border. This dehumanizing language has become common.
· Portraying immigrants as carriers of diseases like leprosy, tuberculosis, Chagas disease (a potentially fatal parasitic disease), dengue fever, polio, malaria.
· Depicting immigrants as criminals, murderers, rapists, terrorists, and a danger to children and families.
· Propagating conspiracy theories about an alleged secret "reconquista" plot by Mexican immigrants to create a "greater Mexico" by seizing seven states in the American Southwest that once belonged to Mexico.
These examples of dehumanizing language are derived from such “mainstream” sources such as FAIR, NumbersUSA and the cable news shows (Lou Dobbs,Bill O'Reilly).
[A] single -- but not seamless -- web connects ideological white supremacists, armed border vigilantes, nativist think tanks, political action committees, and Republican Party officeholders in an anti-immigrant movement of growing significance. Formal policy deliberations may include debates on the fiscal costs of providing social services to undocumented workers, the supposed downward pressure immigrant labor exerts on the marketplace, the net costs and benefits of immigration, and the national-security problems evinced by holes in our borders. But at gatherings like these, the raw issues are race and national identity.
Differences between legal and illegal immigrants fade into a generalized belief that a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking tidal wave is about to swamp the white-skinned population of the United States. The attempt to stop undocumented workers at the borders morphs into a campaign to end immigration altogether, to save our supposedly white nation from demographic ruin. As Tancredo told interviewer John Hawkins, “[If] we don't control immigration, legal and illegal, we will eventually reach the point where it won't be what kind of a nation we are, balkanized or united; we will have to face the fact that we are no longer a nation at all … .
The dehumanizing labels are not confined to extremist elements but spew out from mainstream nativist commentators.
The most media-visible figures in this camp, such as Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo and Victor Davis Hanson may argue the case for restricting, deporting, rounding up and cutting off public services to those "illegals" stigmatized as culturally backward, unhealthy potential terrorists. But they protest that their motives for doing so are as pure as the driven snow.
In their writings and media appearances, the leaders of the anti-immigration movement claim their politics are based not on a hatred of the racial Other but on their commitment to the rule of law, the integrity of "our culture," the objective findings of social science, or better employment prospects for American workers. On page after page of In Mortal Danger, Tom Tancredo's diatribe against non-European immigrants and multiculturalism, the presidential candidate and congressman repeatedly complains that he and his colleagues have been unfairly painted as racist or had their arguments misconstrued as racist.
"Tancredo's book drips with cultural condescension toward Mexican-Americans, Muslims and African-Americans."
But alongside these complaints Tancredo's book drips with cultural condescension toward Mexican-Americans, Muslims and African-Americans. While he claims that illegality is the problem, Tancredo soon moves past this and calls for revoking the legal citizenship of what he terms Mexican-American "anchor babies." Conjuring up racist and sexist imagery, he declares that "gravid wombs should not guarantee free medical care."
As well, hate literature is disseminated that paints immigrants as invading hordes. The most prominent example of this is FAIR founder’s John Tanton, who had the Social Contract Press translate, publish and promote The Camp of the Saints, a starkly racist apocalyptic novel about a wave of Indian immigrants overrunning France. In 1996, Tanton coauthored The Immigration Invasion with Wayne Lutton, who sits on the advisory board of a publication put out by the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens. Editor of the Social Contract Press, Tanton also published the racist tracts of the avowedly racist VDare site.
More extreme language can be found on sites such as VDare.com, never mind the fringe groups such as the Minutemen. In any event, it is absolutely incontrovertible that all of these groups have used code language to dehumanize immigrants and set them apart from “normal” human beings. And, in so doing, they have advanced positions which advocate that Africans are less intelligent and morally degenerate, that Jews disproportionately control the economy and media and need to be reigned in, that darker races breed more prolifically and must be stopped and that third-world masses are undermining the country by race-mixing with the superior whites that have traditionally dominated this country.
The foregoing positions, once deemed verboten and confined to the most extreme elements of society, now find voice in nativist publications. The latest issue of The Social Contract, a publication closely affiliated with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), is devoted entirely to the writings from the racist website VDare which features such prominent racists and anti-Semites as Steve Sailer, Jared Taylor, Kevin MacDonald, Patrick Buchanan and, of course, its editor Peter Brimelow. These writers make no effort to hide their racist positions albeit using euphemisms such as referring to themselves as “white nationalists” instead of the more accurate, “white supremacists.”
What is most disturbing about these extremist publications is their interaction with front organizations that are viewed as legitimate by the mainstream media.
Founded by Tanton in 1979, FAIR has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico's secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada. Just last February, FAIR President Dan Stein sought "advice" from the leaders of a racist Belgian political party.
None of this -- or any other material evidencing the bigotry and racism that courses through the group -- seems to have affected FAIR's media standing. In just the first 10 months of 2007, the group was quoted in mainstream media outlets nearly 500 times with virtually no mention of its more unsavory aspects. Stein was featured on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" at least 12 times in the same period, along with countless appearances on other television news shows. And, perhaps most remarkably of all, FAIR has been taken seriously by Congress, which has called upon its officials to testify on immigration more than 30 times since 2000.
And in such manner civil discourse comes to accept and give legitimacy to extremist groups. The fact that the most extreme positions, advocated by such groups, are not ultimately quoted in the mainstream media does not diminish their power. To the contrary once such extremist groups are viewed as legitimate, so are the group’s extreme views. The fact that The Social Contract devotes an entire issue to racist and extremist authors goes unmentioned in the mainstream media. Anti-immigrant cant becomes a gateway to: eugenics based theories put into practice by Nazis, advocacy of positions that blacks and Latinos need to be controlled because they are degenerate and less intelligent and anti-miscegenation (race-mixing) arguments advocating the reinstitution of segregation and apartheid never mind the logical conclusion of forced sterilization and extermination.
There are those who argue that the current nativist climate has reached most of the elements of genocide. For now, I want to emphasize how, otherwise repugnant views, have entered into the mainstream lexicon and may soon find expression in government policies. As long as John Tanton'snework of hate feeds the likes of Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and the rest of the cable-news haters and AM radio screamers, so the process of radicalization of the political debate will continue to grow.
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelous’s quote is a timely reminder, as evidenced by the excellent article by Edmundo Rocha on “Immigration Crack-Downs: A Little Bit of History Repeating.” We have previously covered the great repatriation of Latinos in the 1930s, the majority of whom were citizens of this country. Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican-American citizens were forcibly exiled to Mexico. Hence, the nativist nightmare that many Latinos and other minorities live with, is the fear that history will repeat itself. Rocha’s article covers, in broad strokes, the history of nativism and repression applied to Latinos, Japanese and other ethnic groups.
Advocates for "enforcement only" would like nothing better than to see a future in which most of the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the US be removed, either through coercive means or voluntarily. In a climate of fear and defensiveness, there is a psychological need to assign blame and fight back against the perceived enemy. It is not the first time that fear has triggered the adoption of tough immigration policies. For example, it was economic insecurity that triggered the racism that contributed to the passage of the infamous laws excluding Chinese immigrants from the US in the late 1800s.
The general invisibility of Latina/o civil rights abuses during the last century has left a large majority of Americans unaware of the forced removal of approximately one to two million persons from the United States during the Great Depression. The 1930s marked the first time in the history of international migration between the US and other countries that the federal government sponsored and supported the mass deportation of immigrants.
Unfortunately, throughout US history, when harsh measures are done in the name of national security, it is often directed at unpopular ethnic/racial minorities. It is easy to draw a parallel between the repatriation of the 1930s and the internment of the Japanese to the measures taken by the US government after September 11 because the policies that were passed after 9/11 proved to be no different. Racial profiling in this sense is a tool that Americans turn to when a perceived outsider threatens to damage the status quo.
Ample evidence has been put forward on Eristic Ragemail that the nativist agenda is considerably broader than simply “protecting our borders.” At the extremes, nativists embrace racist eugenics theories that would sweep up not just illegal immigrants but all ”inferior races”. Those who are concerned with human rights and the dignity of all human beings should look upon the current nativist wave not merely as anti-immigrant but as profoundly racist and extreme. In that regard, history dictates that we realize that to act on behalf of the voiceless is to act on behalf of humanity and perhaps forestall another grave tragedy in human history.
National Public Radio is the electronic media venue of choice for the over-educated professionals, the thinking elite and, of course, for liberals. What it lacks in reach, NPR makes up for in influence, not unlike the New Yorker Magazine, which you will find at the bedside stand of most NPR listeners. For this reason, it is especially unfortunate when NPR’s news division becomes a party to misinformation. On July 6, 2008, NPR’s weekend edition ran a story by Martin Kaste, on Hispanic voters entitled, “Through Ads, Candidates Vie for Hispanic Voters.” The gist of the story was the efforts by the presidential campaigns to woo Hispanic voters. The story quoted the usual suspect, but then the story swerved to a section on a “Hispanic group” that goes by the name of “You Don’t Speak for Me.” The article quoted as follows:
Davies, whose parents came here from Ecuador, is one of the founders of "You Don't Speak for Me," a group of Hispanics opposed to what they call "amnesty" for illegal immigrants. She says second- and third-generation Hispanics do not like being pigeonholed, even on the issue of language. For instance, she is not automatically charmed by the sound of ads spoken in Spanish. (emphasis added)
This attribution is egregious on a number of levels. First, it has nothing to do with the national election. Second, the “group of Hispanics” behind the organization, “You Don’t Speak for Me,” are not Hispanics at all. The organization, quoted by Kaste, is in fact a front group established by John Tanton'snetwork of anti-immigrant and white supremacist organizations. A simple Google search by NPR’s fact-checkers would have disclosed these affiliations. “You Don’t Speak for Me,” has been identified as a front for the Federation for American Immigration Reform and its sister organizations, such as Numbers USA, by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center:
FAIR-Cultivated Offshoots To both broaden the demographic of its movement and cultivate a grassroots following, the Washington D.C.-based Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), has created front groups that work together, often in concert with vigilante groups, to broadcast a xenophobic message. At the same time, the groups serve as a defense against charges of racism. You Don’t Speak for Me In May 2006, the Washington D.C.-based Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) “was proud to help launch” a group called You Don’t Speak for Me (YDSFM), which claims to be a “coalition of Americans of Hispanic descent who believe that this nation must enforce its immigration laws in order to protect the security and interest of all citizens.”
YDSFM has ties to the border vigilante Minuteman organization. TheMinutemenare a loose network of local chapters around the country, whose primary goal is to keep undocumented immigrants from Mexico out of the United States. The more extreme Minutemen chapters advocate patrols of the Mexican-American border by armed volunteers.
This is not the first time that NPR has quoted FAIR and its network of hate organizations as legitimate grass-roots organizations without failing to identify their racist affiliations. And NPR is not alone in this regard, the New York Times and other nationally respected publications continue to quote FAIR and NumbersUSA as authoritative or advocacy sources despite the many glaring instances of misinformation put out by such organizations. If the mainstream media is going to use extremist groups as sources, it should, at a minium, identify them as such.
