why we fight

Perhaps it is because I hear watered down versions of it so often here in California, my favorite quote from this week’s cover story in The Nation goes as follows:

“Whites do not like crowded societies, and Americans would not have to live in crowds if our government kept out Third-World invaders.”

The quote is by Marian Kester Coombs, wife and ideological comrade to Francis Coombs, managing editor over at the Washington Times. The Nation story details a leadership fight brewing over at the Times. The paper is being fought over by hard-line conservatives loyal to Preston Moon, son of Times owner Sun Myung Moon and a band of neo-confederate racists. Coombs is the leader of the latter group, which mixes openly with white supremacists, holocaust deniers and even international far right leaders, including folks from the British National Party. It’s a straight out horror story in which the “good guys” are connected to a bizarre Korean religious cult and the “bad guys” argue that slavery was good for Black people. It’s well worth a read.

But underlying the story is the fact that the white supremacist wing of the Republican Party have zeroed in on immigration as the “most important issue facing America.” Immigration has been the issue that Coombs and his compatriots have pushing hardest in the editorials and news section of their paper, a key political organ for Conservatism as a movement.

With a major national platform like the Washington Times (Ronald Reagan’s “favorite newspaper”), these bridge-builders are helping to mainstream a slightly slicker version of Henry Wallace style populist racism. Together with the prolific Pat Buchanan and the softer bigotry of CNN’s Lou Dobbs, they have turned vigilante Minutemen into celebrities, helped embolden House Republicans to pass draconian immigration laws one step at a time, and made it safe for the Governor of California to make racist comments. Making immigration the issue is smart, especially as real concerns about economic insecurity, overpopulation and pressures on natural resources are combined with suburban NIMBYism and subtly racist feelings of cultural superiority among Anglos. Buchanan and Dobbs are able to make white supremacy seem like common sense.

This is bad for the country. The divisive politics of the neo-Confederates and race-baiters is dangerous to our society. It’s also a crucial part of the Right’s long-term strategy of dominance. Building a strong racial-nationalist discourse is direct and compelling appeal to the last parts of the white working class base that is crucial to any hope of building a progressive majority in America. It is the coffin-nail in the Democratic Coalition that we should be expanding, not having to defend.

That’s why the Democrats, and the broader left should take immigration seriously- and fight back against the emerging “consensus” that immigrant workers are to blame for our social and economic ills. We need a brave narrative, like the one taken by the labor movement and many community leaders in last Spring’s wave of demonstrations. In our narrative, immigrant workers are a part of our community, and their precarious situation is the reason that wages and working conditions are depressed, which results in poverty in their communities. Any solution centers around a path to legalization and the construction of institutions to support immigrant families in pressing for their rights. No doubt policy compromises will be made, but this is the narrative we must continue to promote. It’s the only one that can really counter the story of a white America overrun by “Third World invaders.”