When the Extreme becomes Mainstream

There are probably no two people in the media who are more associated with the immigration issue than CNN's Lou Dobbs and NBC's Pat Buchanan. Both have revitalized their careers by becoming self-proclaimed experts, and have probably logged more media face-time discussing the issue than any two people in American. Recently, they met on Dobbs' show to discuss their common concerns:

Video Link

Yet if one were to compare some of the rhetoric used in the segment:

DOBBS: And congratulations on the new book, a best seller doing great.

Let me turn to the very first thing. The first chapter, declaring that the American century is over. I would like to share this with our viewers. "America is indeed coming apart, decomposing, and that the likelihood of our survival as one nation through mid century is improbable and impossible if America continues on her current course. For we are on a path to national suicide." My God, I don't think you could be more pessimistic.

BUCHANAN: Well that is where we are headed, Lou. As I write in the last chapter, we can still have a second American century. But look what is happening. You've got 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in the country, 38 million immigrants. The melting pot that turned our grandfathers and great grandfathers into Americans is cracked, broken and rejected as an instrument of cultural genocide. You have that going on in the country at the same time that the dollar is going down, the manufacturing base is being exported, you're overextended abroad with a smaller army than we had in 1939. All of these things are hitting at once and I don't get the awareness of the gravity of the crises comes at us.

…

DOBBS: We're back with Pat Buchanan, author of the important new book, which I highly recommend, "Day of Reckoning." Let's deal with an issue on the minds of Americans. That is the issue of illegal immigration. What has to be done?

BUCHANAN: Well first thing, you've got to secure the border. If we don't do it, it won't exist anymore in ten years. You've got to crack down on businesses that hire illegals. You've got to cut off the magnets by ending social welfare benefits as they voted to do Arizona. You've got to end this absurd practice that if someone comes to the United States and has a baby the next day it is automatically a citizen for life and entitled to a whole lifetime of benefits. I think you need a time-out on legal immigration of about 250,000 a year. This is the sea into which illegals move. We need another time out to get the melting pot up and running again.

DOBBS: What about the 12 to 20 million illegals in this country?

BUCHANAN: Start the deportations with gang members, felons, scofflaws and you start with felons and people who are drunk drivers and others. Then you start the process by cracking down on business, removing the magnets, they'll go home. What draws them here is free education, welfare, good jobs, good paying jobs much better than in Mexico. Basically business and the welfare, the social safety net draws them here.
CNN

With these quotes from hate groups complied back in the spring of 2001 by the Southern Poverty Law Center:

"America's culture, customs and language are under assault from foreigners who come to live here and, instead of learning the American way of life, choose to impose their own alien cultures, languages, and institutions upon us... . [E]thnic cleansing ... may seem a harsh term to apply here in America, but it accurately describes the expulsion of Americans from their communities by illegal aliens."
— AMERICAN IMMIGRATION CONTROL FOUNDATION

"[S]ince that time [about 1950], Western culture faces a growing and potentially fatal crisis: the widespread folly of believing that Hmong and Haitians can carry that culture forward as meaningfully as Europeans."
— AMERICAN RENAISSANCE

"These men [ranchers who capture illegal border-crossers at gunpoint] are the true heroes of our troubled times! Every illegal alien they halt is one less that will go on our welfare rolls, overcrowd our schools, bring in more drugs to poison our kids, or rob, rape and murder another innocent American citizen."
— CALIFORNIA COALITION FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM

"[T]he meaning of this massive increase in non-white and non-Western populations groups within U.S. borders is that the United States is not only ceasing to be a majority white nation but also is ceasing to be a nation that is culturally part of Western civilization."
— COUNCIL OF CONSERVATIVE CITIZENS

"America becomes darker — racially darker — every year, and that is the direct result of our government's immigration policy. ... We White people, we descendants of the European immigrants who built America, will be a minority in our own country. ... [M]alicious aliens [European Jews] came into our land and ... spread spiritual poison among our people, so that our spirits became corrupted and our minds became confused."
— NATIONAL ALLIANCE

"Unless stopped now, massive illegal immigration from the Third World will surely make America more like the Third World than the nation of our forefathers. ... Forced integration and unrestrained immigration destroy schools, neighborhoods, cities and ultimately nations."
— NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF WHITE PEOPLE

"[T]he very underpinnings of America are being gnawed away by hordes of aliens who are transforming America into a land where we, the descendants of the men and women who founded America, will walk as strangers... . Unless we act now ... we will be helpless to halt the accelerating dispossession of our folk."
— NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR EUROPEAN AMERICAN RIGHTS

"America is not just a geographical entity. It is a nation with certain values. I'd go beyond the proposal of a zero immigration moratorium and say we should begin deportation. Deportation now!"
— THE SOCIAL CONTRACT PRESS

"The Mexican culture is based on deceit. Chicanos and Mexicanos lie as a means of survival. Fabricating false IDs is just another extension of that culture ... [which] condones everything from the most lowly misdemeanor to murder in the highest levels of government."
— VOICES OF CITIZENS TOGETHER

"[Even] beyond immigration, legal or illegal, the very numbers of non-Whites already here, and their high birth rate, are enough to plunge North America into a banana republic status within two decades or less. ... [After America is split up into racial mini-states, if] an area like Florida wanted to accept the dregs of the Caribbean, let them, with the understanding that the second this mud flood oozed into the sovereign state of Georgia, it would be 'lock and load' time."
— WHITE ARYAN RESISTANCE

compliled spring, 2001 by SPLC

It becomes obvious that ideas that were once relegated to the vilest fringes of the extreme far-right have become mainstream. Note just how many of the sentiments expressed in these statements by hate groups can now be heard almost daily coming from both the media and politicians. Republican politicians, the right-wing noised machine, and now the main stream media, have managed to shift the whole national debate, and possibly the nation itself, to a point where this kind of eliminationist rhetoric is now the accepted norm.

This shift can be seen quite clearly in this segment from the O'Rielly Factor, where Sen. John McCain, discussing comprehensive immigration reform legislation, allows O'Rielly to lecture him unchallenged about the supposed "liberal plan" to "change the complexion" of America by breaking down "the white, Christian, male power structure".

Video Link

Back in March, 2006 The Nation examined this shift to the far right through the eyes of former grand wizard of the KKK, David Duke.
.

Relaxing in the Hyatt lobby, (David) Duke reminisced about his glory days. "I was the first candidate who ran against affirmative action. And I predated Clinton on welfare reform," Duke told me. He rehashed his controversial term as a Louisiana state representative and his losing 1990 Republican gubernatorial candidacy, in which he captured more than 60 percent of the white vote. He happily recalled his 1977 Klan Border Watch, when he and seven other Klansmen drove a few sedans in circles along the California-Mexico border, waving a shotgun in the moonlight while dozens of reporters in tow tried not to crash their cars into one another.

Back in those good old times, in 1982, explaining the Klan's anti-immigrant advocacy, Duke said, "Every new immigrant adds to our crime problems, our welfare rolls and unemployment of American citizens.... We are being invaded in the southwest as if a foreign army were coming over the border.... They're going to take more and more hard-earned money from the productive middle class in the form of taxes and social programs." And Duke called for the deportation of all undocumented immigrants and harsh penalties for businesses that employ them. "I'd make the Mexican-American border almost like a Maginot line," he said, referring to the militarized barrier France constructed between itself, Italy and Germany after World War I.

At the time, Duke was widely dismissed as little more than a turbo-charged version of the paranoid style--"the Klan's answer to Robert Redford," as reporter Patty Sims described him in 1978. But today his anti-immigration rhetoric sounds not so remote from one of top-rated CNN host Lou Dobbs's fulminations during his daily "Broken Borders" segment. Duke's Klan Border Watch, meanwhile, served as the forerunner and inspiration of the Dobbs-touted Minutemen groups that have proliferated from the Mexico border to Herndon, Virginia, the city that hosted the American Renaissance conference, where disgruntled locals hold regular protests outside a day-labor center. Under pressure from Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo, chair of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, and with sponsorship from House Judiciary Committee chair James Sensenbrenner (tough-talking heir to the Kotex fortune), the Republican-dominated House has approved a bill that makes it a felony to be in the United States illegally, mandates punishment for providing aid or shelter to undocumented immigrants and allocates millions for the construction of an iron wall between the United States and Mexico. Duke may have fallen short on the national stage, but his old notions have gained a new life through new political figures.

The Nation, 3/23/2006

In the 20 months since The Nation first published this article things have only gotten worse. As every Republican presidential candidate falls over themselves trying to race further and further to the right, David Duke must be grinning ear to ear.

Read More...

Summary only...

Huckabee's New Strategy - Embrace Hatred

Today, two important events demonstrated just how far to the right the Republican Presidential candidates are shifting on the immigration issue. The first was the endorsement of Iowa front runner, Mike Huckabee, by Minutemen founder, Jim Gilchrist –not so much for the fact that Gilchrist is once again trying to thrust his agenda center stage – but rather Huckabee's willingness to embrace it.

On stage at an event in Council Bluffs with Gilchrist ,Huckabee characterized the anti- immigrant vigilante as "a person who just got fed up with what he saw as a breakdown of his own government.…Since October of 2004 he's been one of the leading voices in this country trying to bring sanity to an issue that's spiraled.." adding:

"Frankly, Jim I've got to tell you there were times in the early days of the Minutemen I thought what are these guys doing, what are they about," Huckabee said. "I confess I owe you an apology." He said of Gilchrist, "nobody can question his commitment to his country."

Washington Post

The second event was an announcement by the leading civil rights watchdog group, The Southern Poverty Law Center, that the parent organization of the Washington think tank that's been credited with formulating Huckabee's new tough nine-point plan on immigration has been officially placed on their list of Hate Groups operating in the US.

In a statement issued today, the SPLC asserted that due to its ties to know white supremacists and promotion of racist ideas, the nation's leading anti-immigrant organization, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), would be placed on the Hate Group list. It joins other radical groups like the Neo-Nazi, National Alliance, and the KKK, who also share the same classification.

The country's leading anti-immigration organization — whose leaders have testified repeatedly before Congress and are frequently quoted in the media — has ties to known racists and a long track record of bigotry, according to a new report released today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR):

• is the creation of a man who operates a racist publishing company and has compared immigrants to "bacteria;"



• has employed members of white supremacist groups in key positions;



• has promoted racist conspiracy theories; and



• has accepted more than $1 million from the Pioneer Fund, a racist foundation devoted to eugenics and to proving a connection between race and IQ.

The SPLC today added FAIR to its list of hate groups operating in the United States.

"FAIR's position on immigration is rooted more in its anti-Latino and anti-Catholic beliefs than in policy concerns," said Mark Potok, the director of the SPLC's project that monitors hate group activity. "Remarkably, it has still managed to infiltrate the mainstream and shape the immigration debate in this country."

FAIR helped defeat federal immigration reform earlier this year and has played a key role in fueling the fierce, anti-immigrant backlash in the United States. It was founded in 1979 by John Tanton, a man who has compared immigrants to bacteria and warned that high birthrates will allow Latinos to take over America. Still a member of FAIR's board, Tanton also operates The Social Contract Press, listed as a hate group for many years by the SPLC because of its anti-Latino and white supremacist writings.
SPLC

FAIR's ties to Huckabee come through its public policy wing; The Center for Immigration Studies, which the former Arkansas Governor has widely credited for the formulation of his new "get tough" immigration policy. In fact he pretty much just lifted the whole thing from a proposal by CIS executive director Mark Krikorian.

The nine-point immigration plan released Friday by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came with a footnote:

"Note: This plan is partially modeled on a proposal by Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies." That proposal by the conservative anti-illegal immigration activist was published in the National Review in May 2005.

Not only is Huckabee's plan strikingly similar to the magazine piece – in some cases, it contains exact quotations copied over from the article

CNN

Its been well documented that FAIR, CIS and a network of other leading anti-immigrant groups are all in fact not only connected, but were all founded and under the leadership of one man; John Tanton, who for over 25 years has been the driving force behind the ant-immigrant movement. The groups share funding, leadership, and in some cases offices.

in 1985, FAIR would spin off yet another major Tanton organization — the Center for Immigration Studies, which presented itself as an impartial think tank and later even sought to distance itself from the organization that had birthed it.

Today, the Center regularly dispatches experts to testify on Capitol Hill, and last year it was awarded a six-figure research contract by the U.S. Census Bureau.

SPLC

SPLC on Federation for American Immigration Reform

The fact that Huckabee has chosen to align himself with CIS, Krikorian, and FAIR is not surprising. FAIR, through its networks of organizations, has become a leading political force in anti-immigrant politics. During the last debate over immigration reform legislation, FAIR affiliate, Numbers USA, was credited with a campaign that generated over a million faxes in opposition to the bill. Obviously with the adoption of Kirkorian's immigration policies Huckabee is hoping to put the full weight of the Tanton network behind his campaign.

This "new" Mike Huckabee is a far cry from the preacher turned politician who a few years ago called anti-immigrant legislation "Un-Christian"

Gov. Mike Huckabee Thursday denounced a bill by Sen. Jim Holt that would deny state benefits to illegal immigrants as un-Christian, un-American, irresponsible and anti-life.

… Even if benefits to people who are in the U.S illegally could be stopped, "I don't understand how a practicing Christian can turn his back on a child from this or any other state," Huckabee said.

… The bill is modeled after a similar law in Arizona and supported by the newly formed group Protect Arkansas NOW. The group's chairman is Joe McCutchen

… Huckabee said he took exception to characterization of immigrants in the bill and by its supporters as exploiters of social programs. "They pay sales taxes on their groceries," Huckabee said. "They pay fuel taxes. If they're using a fake Social Security number, they're paying Social Security taxes and will never receive any benefit. It would be closer to the truth to say they're subsidizing Joe McCutchen and Jim Holt more than the other way around.

Arkansas News Bureau, 1/28/05

But then again, the old Mike Huckabee could never have gotten through the Republican primary process …not in the current toxic climate where hate groups, racist vigilantes, and politicians willingly join forces to pander and promote hatred and fear.

Read More...

Summary only...

History marches on; Nativism marches in place

From Ampersand at Alas a Blog comes this great cartoon chronicling our long history of welcoming "your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

Click to enlarge

Read More...

Summary only...

New Report Looks at Growth of Nativism in Congress

A new report from Building Democracy Initiative examines the growing role of nativism in national politics. Chronicling the rise of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, the BDI report, Nativism in the House: A Report on the House Immigration Reform Caucus examines not only the growing influence of nativist and xenophobic philosophies in national politics, but the concerted effort of the far-right to bring their extreme ideological agenda to the forefront .

The "report tells us much regarding the shape that "immigration politics" and public policy is likely to take in the foreseeable future. The Caucus's extreme ideological agenda, long-standing ties to anti-immigrant groups, and cohesion in a fractured House of Representatives makes it a noxious ingredient in the melting pot of America. It has drawn even well-intentioned immigration reform proposals down into an abyss of nativism and xenophobia."

Nativism in the House: A Report on the House Immigration Reform Caucus

In the ebb and flow of nativist politics, the House Immigration Reform Caucus has been one of the most powerful and significant forces on Capitol Hill. With 110 congressmen and women as of this report, its members constitute fully one quarter of the House of Representatives. Members have introduced some of the most punitive legislation proposed during the last two House sessions. Their past chairman, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), is now running for president and participating in national debates. Their current chairman, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), is a former lobbyist for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Some of its members have helped legitimize vigilante organizations such as the Minutemen. While voters tend to view their representatives as individuals or by party affiliation, the members of the House Caucus have acted as a bloc. Collectively, they have stood athwart the legislative process, preventing the emergence of meaningful and humane policy choices. And they have gone all the while virtually unnoticed.

In this report, the Center for New Community's Building Democracy Initiative examines the House Immigration Reform Caucus.

The Anti-Immigrant Movement Sets the Stage

From the emergence of a new nativist movement in the late 1970s, groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) have sought influence inside Washington D.C….

…Today, a dozen anti-immigrant organizations maintain national profiles. These groups have combined annual budgets of over twelve million dollars, and an active donor base of between six hundred thousand and seven hundred fifty thousand. As these national groups have expanded their influence, the number of state and local organizations has jumped up. Between January of 2005 and January of 2007, such groups have increased in number by 600 percent.

Formation of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus and Rep. Tom Tancredo

…Tom Tancredo founded the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus (hereinafter the Caucus or HIRC) in May 1999, soon after he began his first term as a Republican congressman from Colorado's Sixth District. During its first years, the Caucus had few members and served largely as a platform for Tancredo's views on immigration….

On August 1, 2001—five weeks before the events of 9-11—Tancredo introduced H.R. 2712, a bill intended to begin a moratorium on legal immigration, according to the Library of Congress' THOMAS website. Much of the recent public discussion on immigration policy has been voiced about "illegal" immigration. The particulars of this bill, however, demonstrate that opposition to legal entry remains an integral part of so-called immigration reform. This initial proposal would have cut the number of visas issued for family-sponsored immigrants to zero. And it would have cut the visas for "priority workers" to zero. The bill was referred to committee, however, and went nowhere. Undeterred, Tancredo introduced H.R. 3222 on November 1, 2001 with the intention of sharply reducing the number of H1-B visas issued to high-tech professionals. That bill also was referred and died in a subcommittee.

It is useful to remember that questions related to immigration have always been intertwined with questions of national identity. As Rep. Tancredo told one interviewer, "…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…" His is a sentiment which has been oft repeated by members of the HIRC….

The year 2005 was a watershed year for the anti-immigrant movement. In April, the Minuteman organization was launched with an armed civilian "border watch" in Arizona. Although President Bush described the Minutemen as "vigilantes," the HIRC defended and praised the group in a "Field Report" entitled "Results and Implications of the Minuteman Project." In a separate statement, Caucus member Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said, "The Minuteman Project is a shining example of how community initiative and involvement can help make America a safer, better place to live." The sentiment was echoed by the eight other congressmen cited in the press release.

Also in 2005, Tancredo personally introduced a resolution proposing that the Constitution be amended to establish English as the "official language," another resolution "recognizing the importance of Western civilization," legislation to enhance border enforcement and curtail H1-B visas, as well as several amendments aimed at changing federal enforcement policies. He introduced eleven different measures in all, none of which succeeded. But Tancredo had raised the flag of the anti-immigrant movement within Congress. By August, the Caucus registry had grown to 82 members of the House.

By December of that year, the House passed H.R. 4437, known popularly as the "Sensenbrenner Bill." James Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin's 5th District, was first elected to congress in 1978, and was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee at the time. He was not then, and is not now, a member of Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus. Nevertheless, H.R. 4437 was widely regarded by both immigrant rights activists and moderates as an unnecessarily harsh bill that was unlikely to pass in the Senate. It would have turned undocumented immigrants into felons (current law considers this violation a misdemeanor) and thus make them ineligible for citizenship in the future. It would have also criminalized anyone who gave them assistance of any kind, including providing them with simple social welfare or routine medical services. The bill also called for the construction of 700 miles of fencing on the southern border.

The debate in Congress became so vicious that even conservatives were forced to comment on its racism. "Some anti-immigrant Republicans are guilty of demagoguery and racism," one Republican governor, Mike Huckabee from Arkansas, told the press.

Read the complete report; Nativism in the House: A Report on the House Immigration Reform Caucus

Read More...

Summary only...