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The
Nativists Are Restless
PHOENIX (NYT)
February 1, 2009
―
The relentlessly harsh Republican
campaign against immigrants has
always hidden a streak of racialist
extremism. Now after several
high-water years, the Republican
tide has gone out, leaving exposed
the nativism of fringe right-wingers
clinging to what they hope will be a
wedge issue.
Last week at the National Press Club
in Washington, a group seeking to
speak for the future of the
Republican Party declared its
November defeats in Congressional
races stemmed not from having been
too hard on foreigners, but too
soft.
The group, the American Cause,
released a report arguing
anti-immigration absolutism was
still the solution for the party’s
deep electoral woes, actual voting
results notwithstanding. Rather than
“pander to pro-amnesty Hispanics and
swing voters,” as President Bush and
Karl Rove once tried to do, the
report’s author, Marcus Epstein,
urged Republicans to double down on
their efforts to run on schemes to
seal the border and drive immigrants
out.
This is nonsense, of course. For
years Americans have rejected the
cruelty of enforcement-only regimes
and Hispanic-bashing, in opinion
surveys and at the polls. In House
and Senate races in 2008 and 2006,
“anti- amnesty” hard-liners
consistently lost to candidates who
proposed comprehensive reform
solutions. The wedge did not work
for single-issue xenophobes like Lou
Barletta, the mayor of Hazleton,
Pa., or the former Arizona
Congressman J. D. Hayworth.
Americans want immigration solved,
and they realize mass deportations
will not do that. When you add the
unprecedented engagement of growing
numbers of Hispanic voters in 2008,
it becomes clear the nativist path
is the path to permanent political
irrelevance. Unless you can find a
way to get rid of all Hispanics.
What was perhaps more notable than
the report itself was the team that
delivered it: Bay Buchanan, former
adviser to Representative Tom
Tancredo and sister of Pat, who
founded the American Cause and wrote
“State of Emergency: The Third World
Invasion and Conquest of America.”
She was joined by James Pinkerton,
an essayist and Fox News contributor
who, as an aide to the first
President Bush, took credit for the
racist Willie Horton ads run against
Michael Dukakis.
So far, so foul. But even more
telling was the presence of Peter
Brimelow, a former Forbes editor and
founder of Vdare.com, an extremist
anti-immigration Web site. It is
named for Virginia Dare, the first
white baby born in the English
colonies, which tells you most of
what you need to know. The site is
worth a visit. There you can read
Mr. Brimelow’s and Mr. Buchanan’s
musings about racial dilution and
the perils facing white people, and
gems like this from Mr. Epstein:
“Diversity can be good in moderation
— if what is being brought in is
desirable. Most Americans don’t mind
a little ethnic food, some Asian
math whizzes, or a few Mariachi
dancers — as long as these trends do
not overwhelm the dominant culture.”
It is easy to mock white-supremacist
views as pathetic and to assume
nativism in the age of Obama is on
the way out. The country has, of
course, made considerable progress
since the days of Know-Nothings and
the Klan. But racism has a nasty
habit of never going away, no matter
how much we may want it to, and thus
the perpetual need for vigilance.
It is all around us. Much was made
of the Republican mailing of the
parody song “Barack the Magic
Negro,” but the same notorious CD
included “The Star Spanglish
Banner,” a puerile bit of
Hispanic-baiting. It is easily found
on YouTube. Google the words “Bill
O’Reilly” and “white, Christian male
power structure” for another YouTube
taste of the Fox News host assailing
the immigration views of “the far
left” as racially traitorous.
And it takes only a cursory look at
a worsening economic climate and
grim national mood to realize that
history is always threatening to
repeat itself. Last week on Long
Island, the authorities in Suffolk
County unsealed new indictments
against a group of teenage boys
accused in a murderous attack
against an Hispanic immigrant. Since that crime
last year, many more victims have
come forward with stories of
assaults in or near the same town,
Patchogue. The police in that suburb
seem to have made a habit of
ignoring a long and escalating trail
of attacks against immigrant men,
until the hatred rose up and spilled
over one night, fatally.
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