Blame Mexico

[McCamy Taylor]

This is a follow up of a journal I wrote two years ago called “When Does It Become Fascism?”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2371537

Back in 2007, the anti-immigrants were on the ropes. Most folks could not be bothered hating Mexicans, when the economy seemed to be booming. However, there is nothing like an economic downturn to raise the stock of hate groups. Here is a (by no means exhaustive) update on the state of the fascist movement in the United States which carries as its banner “Illegal Aliens Out”.

And yes, I know that some folks will say that the Democratic Party should not be seen as siding with immigrants right now, for fear that this might cost us some white working class votes. Too bad. Sometimes, you have to take a stand, even if it isn't the politically safe one. In this case, while it may seem safer to just leave the subject alone, the alternative is actually quite risky for our democratic way of government, because anti-immigration is powerful tool for those who seek to promote fascism---especially during a time of recession.

I. Playing With a Loaded Gun

Those who nod their heads in agreement or look the other way when confronted with anti-immigrant rhetoric are playing with a loaded gun.

We all know who is responsible for the banking crisis. The bankers, who partied like it was 1927 after their man in DC, Sen. Phil Gramm rolled back Depression era bank regulations. And we all know who drove up the federal deficit. That was George W. Bush who pushed for upper class tax cuts while waging his $600 billion war in Iraq and his $200 billion war in Afghanistan. The previous administration and its allies in Congress engineered our present recession. Why? That is easy. Recession is good for fascism---just look at how Adolph Hitler exploited his nation’s economic woes to take power. Mussolini would not have become Il Duce if his country’s economy had been sound.

The KKK became a powerful force in this country after WWI, by attacking immigrants. When the United States experienced a recession in 1920, anti-immigrants seized upon this economic downturn to begin working on legislation to restrict immigration. Seeing an opportunity

In the 1920s William Simmons created a new Klan, seizing on Americans' fears of immigrants, Communism, and anything "un-American."

Snip

Simmons marketed the Klan not only as a white supremacy group, but also a "100% American" organization. He expanded the original Klan's anti-African American position to include Roman Catholics, Jews, and immigrants of all backgrounds.

Parochial schools were often singled out by the KKK, because the students were being taken out of mainstream American public schools and instructed to "take orders from a foreign leader," who was, of course, the Pope.

http://americanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/racism_in_the_1920s

We have seen how anti-immigrant rhetoric can be used by the forces of fascism and hate in order to sell their un-American ideology as “100% American”. According to wikipedia, by the mid 1920s, 15% of the nation’s eligible citizens (i.e. white non-Catholic males) had joined, in states all across the country, not just the south. Anti-immigration allowed fascism to go mainstream.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan


We have good reason to know the political uses of hate speech directed against immigrants. So why do so many seemingly sane people just nod their heads when the same kind of dangerous words are tossed around today? Do they think that because the loaded gun is old, it no longer has the ability to put a bullet in our brains?


II. History is un-American

There is a reason why history is taught by coaches in U.S. public schools.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government. Thomas Jefferson

If you want to know the rules that fascist play by, just read some of Jefferson’s quotes and then reverse them. The third president said that education allowed people to rule themselves. So, if you want to get people to give up self rule and hand it over to a few right wing demagogues, you keep them ignorant about their own government and history. Ignorance breeds fear, which allows voters to be manipulated like puppets on a string.

I am going to do something very un-American and review the recent history of the anti-immigrant movement in this country.

Those who can remember beyond yesterday, will recall that during the Bush Jr. presidency, a group of Republican political strategists declared that they were going to make immigration one of the signature issues of their party. Like abortion. They were actually quoted in mainstream media journals saying things like “This will be our new issue.” Hardly a grass roots movement. They sounded like a bunch of auto industry executives declaring that Americans would now start buying SUVs, because that is what Detroit was going to make.

Immigration is new affirmative action
By: Peter A. Brown
November 16, 2007 06:39 AM EST
Immigration is becoming for the 2008 election what affirmative action/racial preferences was 15 years ago — the kind of emotional wedge issue that offers Republicans a way to split rank-and-file Democrats from their leaders.

“Emotional wedge issue”. “Split rank-and-file”. You know, if Americans watched less TV and read more, they would probably kick half the politicians in Washington out on their asses. Thank God all those coaches taught them that social studies is boring.


“Blame Mexico” was a resounding failure at the polls in 2008. However, that was before the Bush engineered recession. Divide and conquer games against workers are more successful if the workers are afraid of losing their jobs. As unemployment has risen, the anti-immigrant movement has become increasingly bold.

III. Lou Dobbs Plays Divide and Conquer

“In the realm of pandering black elites, there is no more notorious public figure than Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee,” wrote Elizabeth Wright in the online newsletter Issues & Views. “According to Jackson-Lee, those blacks who forcefully oppose mass immigration are simply naive and are being ‘baited’ into taking such negative positions.”

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_blacks_and_immigration.html



The above quote is priceless. Especially if you compare it to the Politico analysis, which describes the immigration debate as an “emotional wedge issue” designed to “split rank-and-file.” When Congresswomen Lee says that folks are being “baited”, she is simply repeating what the GOP has admitted itself. For this, she is labeled a “pandering black elite.” I wonder what they would call her if she said that the sky is blue.

Before I explore this issue any further, I am going to express a little bit of skepticism. I doubt that the GOP’s efforts to divide and conquer different minority groups has been anywhere near as successful as they would like to claim. The mainstream media will report on Blacks who are virulently anti-Hispanic, because this is like “man bites dog.” It defies our expectations and attracts public attention. Plus, it allows the press to hold two minority groups up in a negative light at the same time, and one of the jobs of American journalism is contributing to stereotypes that are used to oppress low wage earners.

I tend to view the supposedly grass roots movement which I am about to describe as being a sham, like the anti-feminist organization of Phylis Schlafly in the 1970s.

In January of this year, as the recession was worsening, Mr. Anti-Immigration himself, Lou Dobbs performed a divide and conquer maneuver on his show. He quoted some statistics:

Well today's jobs report reveals startling differences in unemployment rates for whites, for Hispanics and blacks. The overall unemployment rate for whites in December was actually 6.5 percent, lower than the national average of 7.2 percent.

The unemployment rate for white youth between the ages of 16 and 19, more than 17 percent. But for Hispanics, the overall unemployment rate last month was almost 9.5 percent. And for Hispanic youth, more than 22 percent. But among blacks, the national unemployment rate was almost 12 percent, 11.7 and more than 28 percent for African-American youth.

He went on to elaborate on those statistics:

DOBBS: We're back with our panel: Ed Rollins, Michael Goodwin, Robert Zimmerman, Carol Swain. I just want to, if we may, take a look at some of the minority unemployment numbers that are not being reported. They're being reported here because it's extraordinarily important. For the Hispanics, for the 7.2 percent national rate, Hispanics, the overall unemployment rate, is just about 9.5 percent. It's significantly more, Hispanic youth, more than 22 percent among Blacks. The national unemployment rate, 11.7 percent and more than 28 percent for African-American youth.

These numbers, as we look back 25 years ago, they represent just about the same for Whites and significant improvements, we should all be pleased to report, significant improvement over 25 years ago. Professor Swain, what is your reaction?

SWAIN: Well, again, if you look at the Black unemployment rate, it's still, in my opinion, almost five points higher than the White unemployment rate and it should be a concern about so much disparity.

DOBBS: And three points higher than Hispanics, without question. It is troubling that this would persist. The war on poverty was started in this country 1965, 43 years ago. And for us to even have to discuss this in these terms is deeply troubling.

Now, there are two different texts here. One is the news story which says that unemployment is worse for Black Americans, second worst for Latino or Hispanic Americans and best for White Americans. However, since this is the Lou Dobbs show, where people turn in to hear an anti-immigrant hate message, the other text goes something like “If it wasn’t for all them damn Mexican illegal aliens, more Black folks would have jobs.”

You do not believe me? Here is the second reading.

http://arkansaswatch.blogspot.com/2009/01/illegal-alien-problem-unemployment-for.html

According to Lou Dobs's program January 9, 09, there are ten million people now unemployed in our nation. There are more black citizens unemployed than Hispanics (many of whom are illegal aliens). Isn't it time that we pass some laws to prevent illegal Hispanics from being employed in Arkansas so our own citizens can be employed.

Note that Dobbs’ statistics said nothing about “many of whom are illegal aliens”. The author of this blog was reading the second, implied text. In an article called Illegal Alien Problem - Unemployment for Blacks Higher than Hispanics by Debbie Pelley at Arkansas Watch, African-Americans are told the reason they do not have jobs is because some wet backs stole them all.

Hispanics are taking many of the jobs from African Americans, and the high overall youth unemployment rate is partly the result of illegal aliens taking many of the jobs that the youths have formerly held. (For transcript of Lou Dobss program on this issue, see this link: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0901/09/ldt.01.html

Citizens in rural areas say their youth had formerly had jobs in planting and harvesting crops that are now done by illegal aliens. Numerous restaurants employ illegal aliens where youths could work. These jobs often provide the necessary funds for college for these young people (young people whose parents can no longer afford the high cost of college). And everyone knows we have one of the lowest college graduatuation rates in the nation.

Oh my. Mexicans are conspiring to keep Blacks from getting a decent education. And here I thought that it was the fault of our school systems and local governments, which pass along kids and which would rather cut property taxes than spend enough to correct the problem.

The city journal article cited above called “The Rainbow Coalition Dissolves’ ( does not this just sound like a Lee Atwater wet dream?) also seeks to blame immigrants for high rates of unemployment among Blacks.

A recent study by Harvard economist George Borjas and colleagues from the University of Chicago and the University of California estimates that immigration accounted for a 7.4 percentage-point decline in the employment rate of unskilled black males between 1980 and 2000. Even for black males with high school diplomas, immigration shrank employment by nearly 3 percentage points. While immigration hurts black and white low-wage workers, the authors note, the effect is three times as large on blacks because immigrants are more likely to compete directly with them for jobs.

A case study of Los Angeles janitorial services cited in a Government Accounting Office report captures the enormity of the shift. It began in the late 1970s, as several small firms began hiring Mexican janitors at low pay, prompting building owners to drop contracts with the companies that employed blacks in favor of the cheaper upstarts. As the immigrant-dominated firms grabbed more business, industry wages slipped from a peak of $6.58 an hour in 1983 to $5.63 an hour in 1985. The number of black janitors in L.A. plummeted from about 2,500 in the late 1970s to only 600 by 1985. Today, the city’s janitorial industry, like apparel manufacturing and hotel services, is almost entirely immigrant.

Note that we are talking about low paying jobs. No one can support a family on a minimum wage. By focusing on who is getting the less than subsistence jobs, the author is able to ignore the real issue, namely why are there so many Americans who were born and raised in this country who have been denied equal access to education, education being the key determinant in salary.

Right wing forces in the U.S. are able to persuade journalists like Loud Dobbs to attack immigrants, because hate and fear mongering are a cheap and easy way to get an audience. Radio personality Terry Anderson has found that there is fame to be made from preaching the anti-immigrant message, too. From his website:

Well, it seems that I and other Americans have had help from our government, big business, the press and the church, just to name a few who seem dedicated to hiding the fact that invaders of all sizes, sexes, races and ages are filling our schools, hospitals, housing, jobs, stores, banks, parking lots and prisons.
These invaders who are criminal illegal aliens are working as your nanny, housekeeper, cook, gardener, painter, contractor, plumbers, bus boy, whatever.
snip
Most of these criminal illegal aliens have come here to bury our American culture of diversity with there own culture.

http://www.theterryandersonshow.com/GUEST_COLUMNS/StupidAmerican.html

Immigrants sometimes come to our country as political refugees, but more often they come here looking for work, as evidenced by the fact that when the economy took a down turn and the jobs dried up, they headed back home. They do not “hate us for our freedoms”. They are not here as some kind of communist vanguard. They do not collect a bounty every time they persuade someone to adopt Spanish as his primary language. They just want to be able to feed their families. And the powers that be in the United States---that means the major corporations---have made our borders porous, on purpose, because they like all the cheap labor.

Sometime, I wish that I could hear one of the hate mongers attack the US business community with even half the anger they aim at Hispanic workers. But that would be communist.

Personally, I think that the anti-immigrant forces are pissing in the wind with this one. Our generation grew up with the message of Dr. King who championed the plight of migrant farm workers and supported the efforts of Cesar Chavez----

Of course, if we allow ourselves to forget history, we might be fooled by Internet propaganda. If you Google “Martin Luther King” and “immigration”, the first hit is this less than helpful question and answer site in which we are told that Dr. King did not support immigrants. A site which the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a “hate group” is the source.
http://www.blurtit.com/q772405.html

Reminds me a lot of Orwell’s 1984 and its miraculously changing history. “We have always been at war with Oceana.”

IV. The F Word

If you are a bankster, whose greed and stupidity have cost our country hundreds of billions of dollars (and many folks their homes) you probably get a big kick out of this form of anti-immigrant rant.

Ever wonder why California is in financial trouble? This guy knows the answer. And he will tell you in bright red font (which I wish I could reproduce so that you could get the full rhetorical effect):

Still nobody wants to get the big picture. Millions of criminal illegal alien Mexicans are still in California sucking off the citizens taxpayers for free medical, food stamps, housing, education, you name it… they are getting it. Now the chicken has come home to roost. Arnold the actor still hasn’t pulled his head out of his ass to see and understand the problem. Secondly, the commie Democratic liberal political machine in California just adds to the cause… and continues to tax the people to hell and high water and back. All to appease the criminal alien illegal Mexicans who have flooded by the millions into California for a spoil and a plunder and are the root cause of this financial nightmare.
One nightmare after the other today in the U.S.. But, what can one expect when you have mostly illegal aliens, Blacks, Communists and Jews in the controlling sectors of power and authority, both Federal and State? Put the fox in charge of the chicken coup, and thus, you have severe and continued unsolved problems. Simple. But to simple for the simple minded. Wait till you see what becomes of things when the Commie Marxist Obama takes over the White House.

Dr. James P. Wickstrom, D. Litt.
http://jameswickstrom.com/wordpress/?m=200902

More red ink from Wickstrom:

WHITEY is buying guns and ammunition at a record pace .... no-stop since the Marxist Communist Obama entered illegally (not a U.S. confirmed citizen) into the White House, and WHITEY is awakening to the Jews and their financial ripoff of the U.S. Treasury (U.S. taxpayers) and the giving of such, to the JEW banks, lending financial houses, and to the Jews themselves without having to disclose where and how much money went where!!

The writing is on the wall. Even the blind and dumb are starting to smell a rat (Jew). Even ordinary Joe and Jane Doe are stocking up on food, guns, and ammunition. Something they have never done in their life before, and at a record pace. No longer do the masses just see the smoke of their problems, but now they see the FIRE which is creating that terrible smoke and smell in their nation. Of course, the terrible smell is the Jews and their Black hordes who they buy off to be their axe men and criminals in the streets of the United States. You can also throw in all millions of criminal illegal alien Mexicans who are in our nation creating havoc in whatever way they can. I can tell you one thing, it is going to be one hell of a fight .... to say the least.

Keep preparing and obtaining the main ingredients you and your loved ones need to survive. FOOD, AMMUNITION, WEAPONS TO SHOOT THE AMMUNITION, A FRESH WATER SUPPLY OR WATERING FILTERING SYSTEM .... shelter - and to be with like-minded people who want not only to survive, but to also DESTROY ALL THOSE WHO WANT TO KILL OR HARM YOU.

Civil war is already on this nations Southwestern border and pushing up into Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, as well into portions of Texas. The United States will not see CIVIL WAR happen at once across the country, but instead a gradual increase from area to area. Stay focused at all times. Be prepared at all times!
Dr. James P. Wickstrom, D. Litt.

If Wickstrom’s rhetoric sounds familiar, maybe that is because we have heard it before.

Each Jew individually, and Jewry as a whole, is without a home. Jewry undermines every people and every state that it infiltrates. It feeds as a parasite and a culture-killing worm in the host people. It grows and grows like weeds in the state, the community and the family and infests the blood of humanity everywhere.

Snip

Over the centuries, Jewry has infiltrated every nation and every people, committing with crime after crime. Today it is on top, tomorrow at the bottom, without honor or a sense of honor. It has but one thing: a greedy lust for possession and power, for fame, for suppressing and enslaving the surrounding world.

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/esser.htm


Never mind the Bush engineered recession which has caused rising unemployment which has reduced California’s already rock bottom tax base. Never mind that immigrant workers contributed to a vibrant California economy during its boom years. Mexico sent its citizens north of the border in order to commit economic war against us----and in the process, they dried up all those jobs upon which they depended. I know that this makes no sense, but when does fear mongering ever appeal to reason?

The words and actions (see this ADL report about how the right wing advocate the use of violence against immigrants http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/immigration_extremists.htm?Multi_page_sections=sHeading_3 ) of the anti-immigrants are not merely hurtful to Hispanics. They threaten our democracy, since they are part of a larger fascist agenda. For those who do not believe me, here is a useful definition from Robert O. Paxton from the book Anatomy of Fascism:

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Key characteristics
1.“At bottom is a passionate nationalism”
2.“a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions”
3.“the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external”
4.dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences”
5.“the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary”

Read the Wickstrom quotes again. It is all there. Our nation under attack from external enemies aided by domestic forces. The need for a violent reaction to keep our society from being destroyed. Language designed to create a sense of panic---

Anytime you hear this formula being used in relation to a group of human beings, you have to be vigilant, because this is how the Nazis got started. Some of the people spouting the anti-immigrant rhetoric may sugar coat their message. However, each of them feeds the larger, more dangerous movement. Those who want to have meaningful debate about immigration must denounce the anti-immigrant hate groups. Otherwise, they bear partial responsibility for the rise in hate crimes directed against immigrants which was reported in today’s Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061603518.html

V. We Have Been Warned

The Ku Klux Klan is stepping up its activities in some parts of the country, a trend that its leaders and opponents tie to anti-immigrant sentiment.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-08-kkk-immigration_x.htm

And that was back in 2007

[madamesilverspurs]

1. Tremendous information

that I profoundly wish we didn't need.

Where I live, nearly every article in the newspaper's online edition gets comments that blame "illegals" for everything under the sun. There are those of us who respond to those comments with no expectation of changing the thinking of the mindless bigots who post them; we do so for the sake of those reading the articles and comments. And these days the comments are growing increasingly vitriolic, given that we are the new home for a number of immigrants from Somalia. The nasties now spew their venom toward them as well as Hispanics.

Your information will help us to respond more effectively. Thank you.

[a la izquierda]

2. This isn't the first time.

Back prior to the Great Depression, the US did not have immigration policies toward Mexico. Essentially, people came and went as they pleased.
As soon as the economy tanked after 1929, Americans immediately turned on their Mexican neighbors, leading to the mass deportation of thousands. Swept up in the dragnet were Mexican-Americans...born in the US, some had never even been to Mexico. (I don't think you mentioned all this, but apologies if I missed it).

Excellent OP

:toast: