OK, it helps that some of these really nice reviews that are coming in are from friends of mine. But my friends are also brutally honest people who would tell me if And Hell Followed With Her sucked. Here's what they're saying instead:
But trust me on this one. And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Borderis
one of the best books you can read on one of the most crucial subjects
you can study: how the toxic mindset of white supremacist,
anti-government insurrectionist lunacy migrates again and again into the
mainstream of American political discussion. And if that's not enough
to draw you, here's a bonus: David wraps his lesson in a true crime
story Joe Conason blurbs as “reminiscent of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” I couldn't tell you if that's precisely so; I've never read Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I
can't tell you much about the crime story either: It's just that
gripping and suspenseful, and I don't want to spoil it for you.
But the book is less about the crime itself than it is about the way the
rhetoric, mission, and mismanagement of the Minutemen organizations
made such violence almost inevitable. Minutemen organizers relentlessly
insisted that they were merely about protecting the border. They fought
back against accusations of racism, claiming they conducted background
checks to screen out Nazis, white supremacists, criminals, and other
dangerous elements. Forde's story exposes that lie.
Julie Muhlstein at the Herald in Everett (Scott North's newspaper) wrote up a nice profile of the book that is more an interview with the author than a review. But you may enjoy reading it.
I've also included, atop today's post, the video of Sebastian Wielemans' film A Cycle of Fences, which is a kind of accompaniment to the excerpt of Chapter 12, "Adrenaline Rush," that ran this weekend at AlterNet. If you've read the chapter, you won't be able to help laughing grimly.
Neiwert's insights after covering right-wing extremism movements, his
gift with language, his considerable storytelling skills all combine to
make And Hell Followed With Her a near compulsive—and
frightening—read. His ability to combine the history of these various
organizations with the more immediate crime, and his analysis of the
mindset of those who spent their lives immersed in the delusions of the
right wing, make this book an important one, one with implications that
reach far beyond one woman, two deaths and one border town.
If you'd like a sample, AlterNet published the entirety of Chapter 12 at its website:
You may also want to peruse the discussion of the book that occurred Sunday at the Firedoglake Book Salon (thanks to Brian Tashman for hosting, and to Bev Wright for arranging everything).
My book about the Minutemen and Shawna Forde will
be released tomorrow at a bookstore near you (be sure to ask
your favorite store for a copy). And I'll be signing copies at a number
of stores in the Northwest early this spring. We're planning to expand
later this spring to signings in California and elsewhere, but these are
the dates we've lined up so far.
Tuesday, March 26 University Bookstore 4326 University Way NE Seattle, WA 98105 7:00 p.m.
Wednesday, March 27 Elliott Bay Books 1521 Tenth Avenue Seattle, WA 98122 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, March 28 Powell’s City of Books 1005 W. Burnside St. Portland, Oregon 7:30 p.m.
Friday, March 29 Seattle Public Library, Ballard Branch Secret Garden Books 5614 22nd Ave. N.W. Seattle, WA 98107 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, April 4 Third Place Books 17171 Bothell Way NE Lake Forest Park, WA 98155 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 6 Fact and Fiction 220 N Higgins Missoula, MT 59802 2:00 p.m.
Friday, April 12 Village Books 1200 11th Street Bellingham, WA 98225
7:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 20 Barnes & Noble
1315 N. Milwaukee St.
Boise, ID
4-7 p.m.
I'll also be making some radio appearances. I'll be on KUOW's "Weekday"
show with Steve Scher on Wednesday morning, March 27, during the 9:00
a.m. PDT hour. I'll provide a link for that on the morning of the show.
Also, I was interviewed last night on San Francisco's KGO AM by Pat Thurston, discussing the book's contents. You can listen to it here:
David Neiwert’s new book is a taut true-crime story told with a measure
of gravitas, gripping as much for the grisly particulars of a violent
murder as for the fascinating context of the anti-immigrant movement
playing out along the U. S-Mexico border.
... Neiwert shows how credulous media members — especially local television
stations and CNN’s Lou Dobbs — whipped up the hysteria with softball
interviews of Chris Simcox, Jim Gilchrist and other Minuteman leaders.
As the author astutely observes, the anti-Latino, anti-immigrant frenzy
recalls historical racism in the American west, especially anti-Asian
campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries.
... Though the incidents in this book occurred nearly four years ago, the
circumstances surrounding the murders are still highly relevant. As the
national debate on immigration heats up again, this is a must-read for
those who seek a deeper understanding of the issues and emotions behind
the rhetoric.
Some of you may have noticed that an excerpt ran this weekend in Salon:
The book represents several years' worth of work. Beyond covering the exploits of Forde -- including her trial and those of her cohorts -- the book also covers the entire story of the Minuteman movement, which I have been writing about continuously since 2005, including an earlier investigation of its fundraising activities.
You can read some of the results of my most recent investigative work on the Minutemen and Shawna Forde's role in the movement in the AlterNet article I wrote last year, which in many ways is a condensed version of much of the material in And Hell Followed.
However, as you'll see, there is a great deal more in the book, including much more detail, as well as the full story of what occurred in Arivaca that terrible night in 2009.
The book opens with a recounting of how that night ended, with a 911 call to dispatchers in Tucson. You can hear that call here:
Of course, I have many people to thank for this book. But it is above all a project of the the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute.
It's really an amazing, weird, twisted, and deeply disturbing story, one worthy of the Coen Brothers (and in fact, we are currently working on selling the film rights to the book). I hope you are as moved reading it as I was writing it.
Here's the advance praise, aka the blurbs on the cover:
There is
no more dogged or more courageous chronicler of the radical American
Right than Dave Neiwert. In this latest work, he has found a human
tragedy that is both utterly heartbreaking and utterly infuriating. He
is the polestar by which we navigate the great distance between what we
claim to be as a people, and what we truly are. A devastating, and
extremely important, book.
In a masterwork reminiscent of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, David
Neiwert tells the gripping story of a far-right underworld awash in
criminality, racism, and violence -- except that it happened here and
every word is true.
David Neiwert’s latest book is a cogent and comprehensive look at
contemporary border vigilante groups, built around that movement’s most
infamous crime — the murder of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter
by a deranged nativist leader and her followers. This important volume
reveals the stark racism and violence at the core of a movement that
claims disingenuously to be defending America against dangerous
foreigners.
More soon about my upcoming bookstore appearances in support.
As many of whatever few readers I have remaining are probably aware, I've been running John Amato's blog Crooks and Liars for most of the past four years or so. Initially I cross-posted all my C&L work over here, but it wound up just being too much extra work at a time when I was overwhelmed with it. So gradually the cross-posting went away.
However, I stepped down as C&L's managing editor this past December and have now retired to the greener pastures of being a Senior Editor there. Lately I've hardly been posting at all. I wouldn't exactly say I'm retired from blogging, but I have taken a hiatus.
But I'm hoping to get back to blogging, too. What I really would like to do is get back to blogging here as I originally conceived it -- a sketchboard for larger projects, a chance to work out some long-form writing, plus the usual nuggets from subjects that interest me.
Increasingly, a lot of that will be killer whale-related. This summer I'll be doing serious research on my next book, whose working title is Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us. It will be an abrupt departure from my previous work on right-wing extremists, but one that people who know me understand fully.
I'll also be going back and back-filling my old C&L posts, finally cross-posting them here. Just so the record will be complete.
As you can see, I spruced the place up a few weeks ago. Hope those of you who enjoyed my old original blog of ten years ago will pull up a chair and join me from time to time.
Oooh, look out, people. The United Nations is coming to destroy your freedoms and take away your way of life.
Fortunately, we have the far-right Republicans of the Arizona Legislature out there on the front lines protecting us.
The same woman -- Republican Sen. Judy Burges, R-Hateful Old People (aka Sun City West) -- who sponsored Arizona's notorious birther law is back this session with SB 1403,
a bill that would prevent Arizona from participating in any kind of
legislation that would support the eeeeevil UN "Agenda 21" plan to
destroy America through environmental laws.
“I appear before you to address a United Nations program that is
designed to change our way of life, our heritage and our liberties as
outlined and protected by our most precious Constitution,” she
announced. “I testify to you against the seductive evils contained in
the United Nations’ agenda for the 21st Century and more easily stated,
Agenda 21.”
The Sun City West Republican has often been on the front lines during
her eight years at the Capitol, battling conspiracies of both a global
and national nature. So it is no surprise that she is back again this
year with Senate Bill 1403, a proposal that appears to undo decades of
environmental protections, limit citizen access to information about
hazardous materials and in general leave people – the ones who don’t
embrace tin foil for its millinery properties — scratching their heads.
Burges’ bill, simply put, would bar state or local government from
abiding by any of the principles set forth in the United Nations Rio
Declaration on Environment and Development.
Agenda 21, as it’s called, is a non binding agreement approved in
1992 during a UN conference in Rio de Janeiro. Basically, it’s a list of
principles detailing how communities can better conserve natural
resources.
But if you’re Burgess, it’s a plot to destroy America.
“The truth contained within this United Nations program depicts
something sinister and dark,” she told her fellow lawmakers. “The plan
calls for government to take control of all land use and not leave any
decisions in the hands of private property owners. It is assumed by the
backers of Agenda 21 that people are not good stewards of the land and
the government will do a better job if it’s in control. Individual
rights are to be given away to the global community as determined by a
global governing body, not by local elected representatives … and folks,
not even your state Legislature. Furthermore, the contents of the
United Nations program reveal that people should be rounded up off their
own land and relocated to human settlements close to employment centers
and transportation hubs.”
Burges has trotted out this bill previously. As before,
this bill would effectively preempt the state from enforcing any
water-quality, air-quality, or other environmental laws. Which is just
peachy, as far as today's Republicans are concerned. Even Richard Nixon
would be rolling in his grave.
I think it is now safe to assert that the National Rifle Association
is now officially a far-right extremist organization. It began its final
descent into this realm -- where it had been teetering increasingly in
the recent years -- this week, and with this latest outburst, it's now
official.
Earlier this week, there was the incident involving that Wisconsin chapter's lobbyist
who dared utter publicly what the gun nuts have been telling each other
all along about how the "Connecticut effect" will eventually "die down"
-- at which national leaders went extra lengths to dissociate
themselves from those crazies in Wisconsin, with zero credibility.
And now they've released this video (first to members only, then leaked onto YouTube) -- with a supporting op-ed by NRA chief Wayne LaPierre -- indulging in the most nakedly racial fearmongering you can get away with these days.
It seems that, according to the NRA, you need to buy a gun -- and not just any gun, but a freaking assault-style weapon
-- so that you can defend yourself and your family from the horde of
rampaging bloodthirsty brown Mexicans about to come pouring over our
borders.
Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone
criminals. These are perils we are sure to face--not just maybe. It's
not paranoia to buy a gun. It's survival. It's responsible behavior, and
it's time we encourage law-abiding Americans to do just that.
Since the election, millions of Americans have been lining up in
front of gun stores, Cabela's and Bass Pro Shops exercising their
freedom while they still have it. They are demonstrating they have a
mass determination to buy, own and use firearms. Millions of Americans
are using market forces like never before to demonstrate their ardent
support for our firearm freedoms.
That's one of the very best ways we
can Stand And Fight.
Why have they been buying guns? Because the NRA has been telling them
since forever that the end of the world as we know it is right around
the corner. And sure enough, that black man in the White House is going
to bring it about:
Meanwhile, President Obama is leading this country to
financial ruin, borrowing over a trillion dollars a year for phony
“stimulus” spending and other payoffs for his political cronies. Nobody
knows if or when the fiscal collapse will come, but if the country is
broke, there likely won’t be enough money to pay for police protection.
And the American people know it.
The NRA is the only thing preventing a Mad Max-style apocalypse from
descending upon our society, you see. Americans' real enemy, they warn,
is our own government. And this is their response:
We will not surrender. We will not appease. We will buy
more guns than ever. We will use them for sport and lawful self-defense
more than ever. We will grow the NRA more than ever. And we will be
prouder than ever to be freedom-loving NRA patriots. And with your help,
we will ensure that the Second Amendment remains America's First
Freedom.
This is functionally insurrectionist fearmongering, urging members to
arm up so that they can defend not just against Mexicans, but their own
government.
That's the same view that was being promoted this week from that same Wisconsin NRA chapter, via a "Patriot" news site called "The Reality News":
WAUSAU, Wisconsin— At a state conference this past
weekend, the NRA helped distribute a newspaper that called for Wisconsin
secession and a new civil war.
The article, which appeared in a Wisconsin-based conservative
publication called “The Reality News”, was among the literature being
distributed at the NRA’s Wisconsin State Convention on February 9th.
In “What Would Davy Crockett Say?”, author Karl P. Koenigs calls for
liberating “our home country of Wisconsin.” If that doesn’t work,
Koenigs advocates “a combo Civil/Re-Revolutionary War” to “restore the
Rule of OUR Laws on our elected, non-elected and wannabe elected
Republican and Democrat Federal servants through the refreshment of the
Tree of Liberty by its natural manure.” The last part is a reference to
the Thomas Jefferson quote that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed
from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
You can visit The Reality News site [WARNING: Extremist site]
and see for yourself. The Wisconsin NRA figure responsible for the
connection, Karl Koenigs, displays the typical far-right antipathy to
democratic institutions:
ELECTIONS ARE NOT THE SOLUTION TO OUR PROBLEM; ELECTIONS ARE THE PROBLEM!
As he goes on to explain:
This is a most heinous disease that can only be cured by
the constitutional De-Centralized power of our home country of Wisconsin
restoring our “supreme Laws” on our Federal public servants within our
borders; OR otherwise by a combo Civil/Re-Revolutionary War with the
very same goal to restore the rule of OUR Laws on our elected
non-elected and wannabe elected Republican and Democrat Federal servants
through the refreshment of the Tree of Liberty by its natural manure.
(sic)
That's what you call a classic call for violent insurrection. Nathaniel Downes dug up some further writing by Koenigs, who it seems is also a member of the Oath Keepers (about whom we have written a great deal previously as a far-right "Patriot" organization) and the "Constitutional Sheriffs" (ditto), which unsurprisingly falls into classic Patriot-movement insurrectionist "small cell" organizing:
What YOU and a bunch of Patriots like you need to do is form a coalition to:
Form a base “Committee on State Sovereignty” (which is, at this point anyway and likely hopefully never, for secession).
Create a framework of communication “nodes” and a communications HQ which will be the Chairperson of the Committee.
There shall be a “node” in each State Senate and Assembly voting district in the State.
Each “node” leader shall procure 20 – 25+ callers who stand at
ready to make calls to their State Senator and Assemblyman upon a signal
from HQ to make very well timed and coordinated requests to sponsor and
pass initiatives starting with the State Sovereignty Resolution.
Produce a very constitutionally crafted State Sovereignty
Resolution with Arrest Provision. The Arrest Provision makes it
“binding”, in every sense of the term and more than just “feel good”
words that are more shallow than a politicians promise.
I would highly recommend using the Alternate State Sovereignty
Resolution we are, altered for your state, because it is as
Constitutional as you can get, no court can rationally argue against it,
as it has largely been drafted by the authors of The Declaration of
Independence and The Constitution, Messrs. Thomas Jefferson and James
Madison and has been specifically drafted for NULLIFICATION of any
unlawful Act of Congress or the Executive branch which usurps powers,
size, scope or spending that exceeds the eighteen enumerated powers
under Article I Section 8 of The Constitution in accord with the 9th and
10th Amendments. This version of State Sovereignty will specifically
facilitate the defense to any Federal court challenge of any properly
nullified Federal usurpation made by the State, specifically BECAUSE of
the wording and the language. If anybody asks me I will forward a copy
of ours to you.
The State Sovereignty Resolution shall have a provision for a
delegation of Senate and Assemblymen to travel to assemble with all the
other States; From the coalition muster a delegation of 2 – 4 persons
who will be able to lobby, mostly together as is best, the State
Senators and Assemblymen and provide valuable feedback from the
happenings at the Capitol.
The State Sovereignty Resolution shall have a provision for a
delegation of Senate and Assemblymen to travel to assemble with all the
other States; After the Sovereignty Resolution has been sponsored and
passed by at least one house, both would be better, then start working
procuring sponsorship and support for the following companion
legislative measures in support of and preparation for NULLIFICATION:
http://youtu.be/bLjQzlMDX2I
All County Sheriff Departments shall be provided a course on The
Constitution by The National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCCS) or
by Michael Badnarik to ensure that they have a comprehensive
understanding of what they have sworn an Oath to protect and defend
against all enemies both foreign and domestic..
All State and Local Law Enforcement shall be provided and shall
attend a Constitutional course by The National Center for Constitutional
Studies or Michael Badnarik to ensure that they have a comprehensive
understanding of what they have sworn an Oath to protect and defend
against all enemies both foreign and domestic..
All State National Guard members shall attend a Constitutional
course by NCCS or Michael Badnarik to ensure that they have a
comprehensive understanding of what they have sworn an Oath to protect
and defend against all enemies both foreign and domestic.
All County Sheriffs and their deputies shall join
www.CountySheriffProject.org and www.Oathkeepers.org. Cost for dues
shall come out of their own pockets, so that they are personally
invested in the program and have financial incentive to know and be
involved with these programs.
All State and local Law Enforcement shall join www.Oathkeepers.org.
Cost for dues shall come out of their own pockets, so that they are
personally invested in the program and have financial incentive to know
and be involved with these programs.
All County Sheriffs Departments shall offer, facilitate and train
Constitutional Militia in each corner and center of their county for a
minimum of five units. All Militia members shall give the Oath to
protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies both foreign and
domestic.
All Constitutional Militia members shall attend a Constitution
course by NCCS or Michael Badnarik paid for by their respective county
government.
Cities and towns shall contribute to facilitate and provide
equipment and gear for their local Constitutional Militia volunteers.
After all of the above State legislative measures been enacted and
engaged, then the State shall start nullifying all unlawful Acts of
Congress AND the Executive branch and all associated usurpation,
tyranny, coercion, mandates and Income and other taxation dating back to
at least 1913 including all Acts that exceed the eighteen enumerated
powers clauses under Article I Section 8 of The Constitution, pursuant
to the 9th and 10th Amendments.
Result: Balance of the Union follows the same process, U.S.
Government dissolved by 2/3rds which exceeds the eighteen enumerated
powers, size, scope and spending WE THE PEOPLE granted them to “secure
the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” (Source:
Preamble of The Constitution).
STATE SOVEREIGNTY + NULLIFICATION = N.B.C.R. !
These measures are specifically designed to PREVENT an otherwise
imminent combo Civil/Re-Revolutionary War to accomplish the exact same
thing WE THE PEOPLE can do by peaceful resolve; RESTORE the RULE of Our
Constitutional Laws on our elected, non-elected and wannabe elected
Republican and Democrat Federal public servants, especially but not
limited to the EIGHTEEN enumerated powers in accord with the 9th and
10th Amendments in The Bill of Rights. And to PREVENT WAR and Martial
Law, following the collapse of the U.S. Dollar by PEACE THROUGH
STRENGTH.
This is your modern NRA, folks: The political vanguard of the armed
Patriot movement. This is not a healthy development, but it does mean we
are nearing the bottom of this organization's long rightward slide.
Sure, it's easy for Republican senators to get all collegial in the confines of their white-granite hallways and talk sweet nothings to the Latino voters who ran the other direction in the 2012 elections. Just wait till they get out and meet their base and try to talk the same sweet nothings to them.
The word came out of the Beltway yesterday that a group of senators from both parties had cobbled together the outlines of a comprehensive immigration-reform bill, just ahead of President Obama's announcement of his own plan:
A bipartisan group of senators has agreed on a set of principles for a sweeping overhaul of the immigration system, including a pathway to American citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants that would hinge on progress in securing the borders and ensuring that foreigners leave the country when their visas expire.
The senators were able to reach a deal by incorporating the Democrats’ insistence on a single comprehensive bill that would not deny eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants, with Republican demands that strong border and interior enforcement had to be clearly in place before Congress could consider legal status for illegal immigrants.
As the L.A. Times story notes, this really is quite a sea change, especially considering the nativist spectacle to which we were treated during the 2012 Republican primary season:
The Senate plan is more conservative than President Obama's proposal, which he plans to unveil Tuesday in a speech in Las Vegas. But its provisions for legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants go further than measures that failed to advance in Congress in previous years — a reminder of how swiftly the politics of immigration have shifted since Latino voters' strong influence in the November election.
It's almost certain that this plan is well short of a progressive plan for immigration reform, but it is at least a start -- particularly given that a path to citizenship is now the preferred model for sensible Republicans, rather than the mass-deportation and self-deportation positions the GOP's nativist wing has favored for so many years.
Of course, simply whispering sweet nothings to Latinos after years of demonizing them is not going to be an easy sell to Latino voters, as Digby explains -- these are not going to be voters who lean conservative in any event.
But that is exactly what the Republican base fears about Latino immigrants anyway -- which is why they are now in the opening stages of Going Completely F****ing Nuts on this issue.
Leading the charge, unsurprisingly, is none other than our favorite Anchor Baby herself, Michelle Malkin, who is now tearing out her voluminous hair and glowering in the general direction of Marco Rubio and John McCain, warning that "the solution to the problem" for Republicans, voting-demographic-wise, "isn’t to throw in the towel and tie enforcement-in-name-only to a de jure amnesty":
And don’t believe the hype from Rubio supporters that this warmed-over shamnesty proposal — another recipe for more illegal immigration, a bigger welfare state, and undermined sovereignty — is somehow new, improved and more enlightened.
McCain, Bush, Lindsay Graham, and many of the others pushing Shamnesty in 2007 were saying the same thing, and the answer now is the same as then: these illegals, when they obtain citizenship, will mostly end up being Democrat voters, not Republican voters. So many of them are going to end up right in the social entitlement system. Just like happened in 1986 when Democrats talked Reagan into it, saying “just this one time”. And just like then, any deal will embolden future illegals to come.
That's who these Republican senators are going to be encountering over the next several months -- particularly as the media mouth-foamers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck get into the act. Then we'll see how they talk afterwards.
More significantly, even the passage of a Senate immigration-reform bill will mean nothing once it reaches the Tea Party-dominated House -- as Steve Israel observed this morning on MSNBC:
ISRAEL: It's all about whether House Republicans are willing to stand up to the Tea Party base. You've got a bipartisan group of senators left and right advocating a path forward. You've got the president of the United States, who will unveil his views on a path forward. What this comes down to now is will these House Republicans, who have pandered to their intolerant Tea Party base, who have fed into the extremism of that Tea Party base, are they willing to stand up to the Tea Party and do what's right for America? We'll see whether they're able to amass the votes to move us forward.
We wish them the best of luck. Especially considering that over in the House, they are currently moving in the opposite direction: As Devin Burghart at IREHR reports, efforts to eliminate birthright citizenship are picking up steam in the House Republicans' version of an immigration committee.
Last night, I got the most chilling phone call I have
ever received. It was Jake Burris, Ken Aden’s campaign manager. Last
night, Jake and his four kids had come back to their Russellville home.
As they were getting out of the car, one of his children discovered
their family cat dead on the front porch. One side of the animal’s head
had been bashed in and an eyeball was hanging out of its socket. But
there was something even more horrifying to be found on the corpse.
Written across the animal’s fur in black marker was the word “LIBERAL“.
Pope County, where Burris lives, is a highly-conservative
area of Arkansas. Aden has been running for the 3rd congressional
district seat, currently held by Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR), since August
2011. He released a statement on the matter this morning: “To kill a
child’s pet is just unconscionable. As a former combat soldier, I’ve
seen the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. Whoever did this is
definitely part of the worst of humanity.”
This is terrorism. There’s no other word for it. A
police report has been filed. Jake said the kids seem to be handling it
okay. The one that discovered the cat was too young to be able to read
and Jake had quickly gotten the others into the house before they saw
it. Pope County is an insanely conservative area and the Aden campaign
has been shaking things up even there and it looks like another right
wing sociopath with a taste for violence has come crawling out of the
woodwork in response. I asked Aden for a comment on the record:
“This is sickening. To kill a child’s pet…I’m at a loss for
words…I’ve seen the best and the worst of humanity, but this is
something else.”
Both Ken and Jake though made it clear that they weren’t going to
back down on the campaign trail, both agreeing that caving to this kind
of behavior would only make things worse.
“I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it.”, Jake said. “If I have to protect my kids I’ll do it without hesitation.”
Most of you know I've written at length about this kind of right-wing behavior, especially in my book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.
Unfortunately, the book's publisher went belly up in the past year, and
it's currently hard to obtain, though we are working on at least making
it available in Kindle form.
In any event, I thought I'd include some relevant passages, all from the Introduction:
These incidents – the nasty personal encounters, the
ugliness at campaign rallies, the violent acts of “lone wolf” gunmen –
are anything but unique. If you’re a liberal in America – or for that
matter, anyone who happens to have run afoul of the conservative
movement and its followers – you’ve probably heard it. Anecdotally,
hundreds of Americans have similar tales to tell – unexpected and brutal
viciousness, coming from otherwise ordinary, everyday people, nearly
all of them political conservatives, nearly all directed at their
various “enemies”: liberals, Latinos, Muslims, and just about anyone who
disagrees with them.
This kind of talk – voiced sometimes as inchoate rage, and at others
as perverse “humor” – is not aimed at public discourse, but its very
antithesis: threatening and intimidating and, ultimately, eliminating
opponents. It does this by framing them as the Enemy, verminous scum,
disease-ridden and disease-like cancers on the body politic who deserve
not dialogue but simple purgation.
This is called eliminationism: a kind of politics and culture that
shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas for the pursuit of
outright elimination of the opposing side, either through complete
suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination.
Rhetorically, eliminationism takes on some distinctive shapes. It
always depicts its opposition as simply beyond the pale, and in the end
the embodiment of evil itself -- unfit for participation in their vision
of society, and thus in need of elimination. It often depicts its
designated "enemy" as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or
diseases, and loves to incessantly suggest that its targets are
themselves disease carriers. A close corollary -- but not as nakedly
eliminationist -- are claims that the opponents are traitors or
criminals, or gross liabilities for our national security, and thus
inherently fit for elimination or at least incarceration.
Eliminationism is often voiced as crude "jokes", the humor of which,
when analyzed, is inevitably predicated on a venomous hatred. But what
we also know about this rhetoric is that, as surely as night follows
day, this kind of talk eventually begets action, with inevitably tragic
results.
Two key factors distinguish eliminationist rhetoric from other political hyperbole:
• It is focused on an enemy within, people who constitute entire blocs of the citizen populace, and
• It advocates the excision and extermination, by violent means or civil, of those entire blocs.
Eliminationism -- and particularly the rhetoric that precedes it and
fuels it -- represents a kind of self-hatred. In an American culture
which advertises itself as predicated on inclusiveness, eliminationism
runs precisely counter to those ideals. Eliminationists, at heart,
really hate the very idea of America.
It has its origins, like slavery and war, in some of man's most
ancient and most savage impulses: the desire to dominate others, through
violence if necessary. However, in contrast, it goes largely unnoticed
and largely unexamined, perhaps because it is a side of human nature so
ugly we prefer not even to recognize its existence -- so much so that
only recently have we even had a term like "eliminationism" with which
to frame it.
The term's first significant use came from historian Daniel Jonah
Goldhagen in his controversial text, Hitler's Willing Executioners:
Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, where it appears extensively and
plays a central role in his thesis that "eliminationist antisemitism"
had a unique life in German culture and eventually was the driving force
behind the Holocaust. In the text, Goldhagen never provides a concise
definition of the word, but rather constructs a massively detailed
description of the eliminationist mindset:
The eliminationist mind-set that characterized virtually all who
spoke out on the "Jewish Problem" from the end of the eighteenth century
onward was another constant in Germans' thinking about Jews. For
Germany to be properly ordered, regulated, and, for many, safeguarded,
Jewishness had to be eliminated from German society. What "elimination"
-- in the sense of successfully ridding Germany of Jewishness -- meant,
and the manner in which this was to be done, was unclear and hazy to
many, and found no consensus during the period of modern German
antisemitism. But the necessity of the elimination of Jewishness was
clear to all. It followed from the conception of the Jews as alien
invaders of the German body social. If two people are conceived of as
binary opposites, with the qualities of goodness inhering in one people,
and those of evil in the other, then the exorcism of that evil from the
shared social and temporal space, by whatever means, would be urgent,
an imperative. "The German Volk," asserted one antisemite before the
midpoint of the century, "needs only to topple the Jew" in order to
become "united and free."
Hitler's Willing Executioners is an important and impressive piece of
scholarship, particularly in the extent to which it catalogues the
willing participation of the "ordinary" citizenry in so many murderous
acts, as well as in the hatemongering that precipitated them. And his
identification of "eliminationism" as a central impulse of the Nazi
project was not only borne out in spades by the evidence, but was an
important insight into the underlying psychology of fascism.
The eliminationist project is in many ways the signature of fascism,
partly because it proceeds naturally from fascism's embrace of what
Oxford Brookes scholar Roger Griffin calls palingenesis, or a
Phoenix-like national rebirth, as its core myth. And the Nazi example
clearly demonstrates how eliminationist rhetoric has consistently
preceded, and heralded, the eventual assumption of the eliminationist
project – indeed, it has played a critical role in giving permission for
it to proceed, essentially creating the cultural and psychological
conditions that enable the subsequent violence.
Goldhagen's focus is almost solely the Holocaust and the virulently
anti-Semitic form that took root in Europe prior to the Second World
War. However, as a principle, we can see eliminationism playing a role
in human history through the ages -- including its special role in
American history and the shaping of American culture, right up to the
present day.
I noticed this in part because, at the time that I read Goldhagen’s
text, I was engaged in a historical research project involving the
internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and was struck by
the similarity of what Goldhagen was describing regarding the buildup to
Nazi power to both the rhetoric and the behavior of Americans not only
during the nadir of that horrific episode, but over the course of the
forty years and more that had preceded the event, toward Asians
generally and the Japanese specifically.
But a familiarity with the darker corners of American history tells
us the phenomenon has not been restricted to Asians. Eliminationist
rhetoric, followed and accompanied inevitably by an actual campaign of
often-violent eliminationism, has been a specter hanging over our most
shameful episodes: the destruction of the native American people; the
subjugation of African Americans, from slavery to Jim Crow, the
“lynching era,” and “sundown towns”; and the nativist anti-immigrant
campaigns of various eras targeting ethnic minorities from the Irish to
the Germans to Italians, Asians, and today, Latinos. It lives today in
the form of hate crimes and hateful rhetoric directed toward gays and
lesbians, Muslims, and various minorities.
More recently the eliminationism has also come to be directed at not
merely these minorities, but the “liberals” who are perceived as their
enablers – antiwar activists, environmentalists, civil-rights guardians.
Which means that the hateful rhetoric and its poisonous consequences
are starting to spread.
I began observing this phenomenon back in 2003 at my blog Orcinus,
almost as an offhand observation at first, but I asked readers to chip
in and tell me their own experiences, as well as to link me to stories
that fell into this category. It was like tapping into a high-voltage
power line. Comments poured in to my blog, and there were as many if not
more e-mails.
Incidents like these are difficult to catalog or quantify. Only on
occasion (as in the Van Der Meer case) do matters ever reach the level
of being reported in the press – indeed, it’s rare that police are even
called or involved. But judging from the outpouring at Orcinus and
elsewhere, it seems clear that, as far as many progressives are
concerned, eliminationist rhetoric has so deeply infected the popular
discourse that it is now almost pervasive, and indeed poisoning how we
treat each other in our daily lives.
...
Eliminationism has become an endemic feature of modern movement
conservatism – not bothering to argue the facts or merits of issues but
to simply demand outright the suppression or violent oppression (and
ultimately the purgation) of elements deemed harmful to American
society. It is aimed not merely at Latinos and Muslims – the current
major targets – but also its historical targets: blacks and Indians,
gays and lesbians, Jews and other religious minorities. But perhaps most
commonly and generically, and most casually, its target is the common
liberal.
This kind of rhetoric doesn’t constitute actual discourse, but rather
its opposite – it is, in effect the death of discourse itself. Instead
of offering an opposing idea, it simply shuts down intellectual exchange
and replaces it with the brute wish to silence and eliminate.
As we’ve seen from the preceding examples, a lot of eliminationist
talk occurs on a small, personal level, often during chance encounters
with other drivers or shoppers or diners-out. But it is not occurring in
a vacuum. Much of this kind of talk in fact has been publicly
encouraged by a steady patter of similar talk from prominent right-wing
media and political figures. It's being promoted at the highest levels
of movement conservatism, by everyone from media figures to religious
and political leaders.
It can be heard not just in bizarre road-rage incidents and ugly
exchanges among former friends, but from the very fonts of public
information that are the mass media. Figures like Rush Limbaugh, Bill
O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, and Glenn Beck routinely engage in it
and inflame it with bogus stories -- nonsensical conspiracy theories and
outrageously inflammatory misinformation – derived from fanatical
far-right sources. What happened to Timothy Burke is becoming a
commonplace because it’s being openly encouraged by major figures in the
conservative movement, both in the media and in officialdom.
...
The problem with eliminationism isn’t that it is simply unpleasant or
ugly or even uncomfortable discourse, which is what can often be fairly
said of the left’s frequently charged rhetoric. The problem, as we
already noted, is that it implies the death of discourse, as well as its
dissolution into violence and the use of force.
These are not mere jokes, even when they’re presented as such. The
humor in them – whatever might be funny about them – is entirely
contingent on an underlying attitude about conservatives’ fellow
Americans that not only demonizes them, but reduces them to subhuman
level, prime targets for violent elimination. The people telling them
and repeating them may think they are mere jokes, and perhaps in their
own minds, they are. But they have a concrete real-world effect --
because inevitably members of their audience (particularly the more
hate-filled and mentally unstable types) will eventually act them out.
...
It is by small steps of incremental meanness and viciousness that we
lose our humanity. We have the historical example of 20th-century
fascism to remind us of this. The Nazis, in the end, embodied the
ascension of utter demonic inhumanity, but they didn't get that way
overnight. They got that way through, day after day, attacking and
demonizing and urging the elimination of those they deemed their
enemies. They did this by not simply creating them as The Enemy, but by
denying them their essential humanity, depicting them as worse than scum
-- disease-laden, world-destroying vermin, in desperate need of
elimination. But that kind of behavior has hardly been restricted to the
Nazis; indeed, it has a long history in America as well.
This is why eliminationism is such an acute warning sign: It has
historically played the role of creating permission for people to act
out their violent impulses against its targets. More than any other
facet of para-fascism, it poses the greatest specific danger of
transformation into the real thing.
This is why there is a special quality to eliminationist rhetoric. It
has the distinctive odor of burning flesh. And when it hits our
nostrils, that is a warning we dare not ignore.
If you've been frustrated by the profound meaninglessness of the
just-finished Beltway battle over the fiscal bluff, and its followup
fake debt-ceiling "crisis" this March, take heart: The next really big
fight shaping up this spring and summer will at least be over something
genuinely consequential -- comprehensive immigration reform.
An Obama administration official said the president plans
to push for immigration reform this January. The official, who spoke
about legislative plans only on condition of anonymity, said that coming
standoffs over deficit reduction are unlikely to drain momentum from
other priorities. The White House plans to push forward quickly, not just on immigration reform but gun control laws as well.
... It remains unclear what type of immigration policies the White
House plans to push in January, but turning them into law could be a
long process. Aides expect it will take about two months to write a bipartisan bill, then another few months before it goes up for a vote, possibly in June.
A bipartisan group of senators are already working on a deal, although
they are still in the early stages. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) will
likely lead on the Democratic side in the House. While many Republicans
have expressed interest in piecemeal reform, it's still unclear which of
them plan to join the push.
Lofgren expressed hope that immigration reform would be able to get
past partisan gridlock, arguing that the election was seen as something
of a mandate for fixing the immigration system and Republicans won't be
able to forget their post-election promises to work on a bill. "In the
end, immigration reform is going to depend very much on whether Speaker [John] Boehner wants to do it or not," Lofgren said.
Indeed. No doubt any bill that has a chance of passing the House will
be larded with all kinds of punitive, enforcement-heavy measures,
emphasizing "border security" even beyond the extreme measures that have
been instituted in the past decade, that will be insisted upon by
conservatives of all stripes, Republican and Democrat alike.
But Republicans in particular are having to face the hard realities
of demographic change in the USA, having just had their hats handed to
them by Latino voters in the last election -- due punishment for the
party's disgusting embrace of the naked nativist faction that now is
embodied in the Tea Party. Boehner and Co. may not want to deal
with the issue, but cold reality is almost certainly going to compel
them to act in a quasi-reasonable fashion.
The demographic writing on the wall says that Republicans must be
more pro-immigrant and willing to reach out to Latino voters. The 2012
election results have sparked a frenzy of Republican and conservative
soul-searching about how they can avoid a repeat of the 2012 election
cycle for future national elections. One of the most universal
acknowledgements is that the Republican Party must do better among the
rapidly-growing Latino voter population and, concurrently, that the Party must change its dominant, hardline immigration stance. As Republican strategist Ana Navarro tweeted, “Mitt Romney self-deported himself from the White House.”
Twenty percent of Latinos would be willing to vote Republican if the
GOP had more tolerant positions on immigration. That extra 20% would put
Republicans in reach of regaining the White House. One-in-five Latinos
voted for President Obama in 2012 but said that they would be open to voting for Republicans if the Party leads on immigration.
Combining this subset of Obama voters with the 23% of Latinos who voted
for Mitt Romney, a pro-immigration reform Republican Party would be
poised to again achieve the 40% threshold of Latino support that George
W. Bush received in 2004 and many analysts say the GOP will need going
forward to remain a nationally competitive party, especially as
demographic trends accelerate for the 2014 and 2016 elections.
The GOP’s demographic problems will only get worse from here. Noting
the long-term implications of the Republican Party’s “Latino problem,”
former Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) noted that the 2012 elections were,
“a clarion call that we have to [respond to]. Soon we are going to have
to start worrying about Texas and Arizona. Unless we step up, we are going to be the minority party.”
Similarly, newly-elected Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Ryan Lizza of the
New Yorker, “If Texas is bright blue, you can’t get to two-seventy
electoral votes. The Republican Party would cease to exist. We would
become like the Whig Party.”
Progressive Democrats will be entering this debate from a
position of strength, especially given the American public's eagerness
to resolve the immigration mess. Yes, Republicans will make the most
noise and will pout and make faces, but progressives have the upper hand, and should act accordingly.
So what should progressive Democrats expect in any immigration-reform
legislation? Obviously, at some point things will be diluted in the
process of negotiation. But instead of taking the standard Obama
approach to negotiations -- which has been to dilute everything down by
negotiating with our own side first, then making that the
starting point in negotiations with Republicans -- it's time to take an
aggressively progressive approach and insist first on progressive
legislation, which is to say, lawmaking that will actually work to solve the problem.
What does a progressive agenda on immigration look like? Something like this:
An earned path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants
currently in the country who wish to remain -- and a guest-worker
program for those who just want to work and return home.
Modest, appropriate penalties for those currently here illegally,
plus requirements to study English, pay taxes, and otherwise get right
with the law.
Make obtaining citizenship a rational process, free of unnecessary red tape and bureaucratic hurdles.
Create a guest-worker program that ensures participants’ full
constitutional rights, including the right to organize, while enabling
the distribution of labor, both skilled and unskilled, to those
industries where it is needed.
Discard the current system's longstanding phobia regarding
"chain migration", instead emphasizing the value of family ties when
considering admission and work visas.
Undertake a complete overhaul of immigration-quota system, so that
immigrants are admitted on the basis of economic needs and are not based
on nations of origin.
Making a progressive argument for this agenda really is a matter of
common sense -- though often, the messaging on immigration has often
focused on advancing ethnic rights and fairly narrow interests, when the
larger arguments that reach across many different interests and
backgrounds and appeals are what we need to be discussing.
It is, for instance, easy to dismiss the fact that what many ordinary
people – many of whom are otherwise sympathetic to immigrants -- really
don’t like about the immigration mess is that laws are being broken,
and with such apparent disregard. It’s why the meme that reduces
immigrants to the dehumanizing term "illegals" resonates so widely.
It's why they so often say, “We should just enforce the laws on the
books.”
Of course, we used to hear people say that about the "war on drugs"
all the time. Hardly anyone makes that argument anymore, though, because
it's been proven an abject and expensive failure.
And it has failed for exactly the same reason the our immigration
laws have failed: The "laws on the books" simply don't work -- and they don't work because they criminalize a whole lot of otherwise law-abiding, decent, hard-working people.
I'm not just talking about the immigrants themselves, though that
certainly describes them. But I'm also talking about the other people
who are criminalized in the process as well: Farmers and orchardists who
need immigrant labor to survive economically, landscape and
construction operations that need the unskilled labor to function, and
anyone else who dares to employ an "illegal immigrant." When you
see decent people being criminalized for simply trying to make a decent
living by working hard, that's when you know that the laws themselves
are the problem.
Once you open that conversation, the rest is logical: It makes no
more sense to deport (or “self-deport”) all 12 million undocumented than
to retroactively fine and imprison every farmer, stockyard owner and
landscaping businessman for having hired them in the first place.
What's clear and similarly logical is that what's needed is a
comprehensive overhaul of the laws that squares everyone with the law,
and gets all aspiring immigrants into a rational system of legal
immigration instead of the bollixed-up bureaucratic tangle that exists
now.
Frank Sharry and his staff at America's Voice offered these thoughts
on what we ought to be looking for in any immigration package:
Direct, clear, fair, and inclusive path to citizenship for
immigrants in the U.S. without papers. No complicated processes like a
requirement to return to their home countries for paperwork
(touch-back); no unfair exclusions (e.g. people who have outstanding
removal orders, people who worked in day labor and have harder time
proving sustained employment, elderly people, people with HIV/AIDS,
etc.)
Legal channels that are flexible and functional for future
immigration—and robust protections for all workers. Both the family and
employment-based immigrant visa programs need an overhaul. There
should be a way for individuals to come and work legally in
lesser-skilled or trade jobs, which doesn’t exist today. Immigrant
workers need full labor rights and access to citizenship. If we
increase visas for high-skilled workers, it can’t be done at the expense
of other visa categories and there must be strong labor protections for
American workers. Family-based immigration should also be adjusted to
reflect today’s realities. Family is supposed to be the cornerstone of
our nation’s immigration laws, so the system needs to reflect that. In
addition, the law should prioritize and resource labor law enforcement
to empower workers and punish employers who abuse and exploit them.
Enforcement should be fair, not ferocious. Great damage was done to
the legal rights of immigrants through prior immigration laws (like the
laws passed by Republicans in 1996 and signed into law by President
Clinton), and through administrative fiat (287(g), S-Comm, record levels
of deportations, aggressive prosecutions of illegal re-entry, etc).
Even long-term legal immigrants have lost basic due process rights, and
undocumented immigrants who could once obtain immigration status under
the law are now barred. We spend more federal tax dollars today on
immigration enforcement than on the FBI, Secret Service, Drug
Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms, and Explosives combined. This has created a state of siege in
many communities that are inundated with Border Patrol agents, or
targeted regularly by ICE. And, it hasn’t fixed anything. The new law
should NOT pile on to the damage done by 1996 with additional
restrictions on immigrants’ rights. It SHOULD begin the process of
restoring fairness and balance to our nation’s immigration laws and
enforcement.
It's also clear that there needs to be a system in place for
employing short-term unskilled labor wherein the workers can easily
return to their homes after seasonal employment ends. As the folks at SEIU note, immigration reform needs to address the future flow of immigrants:
Replace the current undocumented flow of workers with a
21st Century system that allows new American immigrant workers and
family members to come to the U.S. in a safe, legal and orderly manner.
Any new worker visa program must provide for strict compliance with U.S.
labor standards and wage and hour standards; portability of visas so
that workers can change jobs; and the ability for workers to petition
for permanent residency.
One of the most thorough examinations of the problem can be found at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which has as well-designed a blueprint for legislation as you'll find. As their paper on the subject observes:
Most unauthorized workers are law-abiding, hardworking
individuals who pay their taxes and contribute to our society and as
such they are essential to many sectors of our economy. By requiring
these people to come out of the shadows, register with the government,
pay an appropriate fine, go through security checks, and earn the
privilege of permanent legal status, we can restore the rule of
law in our workplaces and communities, and maximize the contributions
this population can make to our country.
They too recommend a seasonal visa system for guest workers:
In the current regime, there is no non-immigrant visa
category authorizing essential workers in low- or semi-skilled
occupations to work in the U.S., except on a seasonal basis. In order to
regulate and control the future flow of essential workers, a new
program should be created to provide visas, full labor rights, job
portability, and a path to permanent residence over time for those who
would not displace U.S. workers. It would thereby significantly diminish
illegal immigration by creating a legal avenue for people to enter the U.S. and return, as many wish, to their countries, communities, and families.
Moreover, as they note, any reform must revolve around the principles of permanent immigration:
Restoring family values to the family-based program
requires eliminating the family-based visa backlogs, reforming the
family preference system and providing adequate numbers of visas to
support family reunification. Likewise, alleviating the employment-based
backlogs and providing appropriate numbers of employment-based visas
will ensure the continued growth and vitality of our economy. U.S.
citizens and legal permanent residents are often required to wait 7–10
years (and sometimes up to 20 years) to reunite with their close family
members.
Such long separations make no sense in our pro-family nation and
undermine one of the central goals of our immigration system: family
unity. Backlogs for employment-based immigrant visas have also increased
dramatically for workers with certain high-demand skill sets from
certain countries. These backlogs make it difficult for employers to
attract and retain the best and brightest talent from around the world,
thus undermining our competitiveness in the global economy. Any workable
comprehensive immigration reform proposal must eliminate our
family-based and employment-based immigrant visa backlogs and improve
our preference systems to adjust to 21st century realities.
And while the right, no doubt, will dream up all kinds of expensive and probably unnecessary "border security" measures, these should be held in check as much as possible.
Instead, we need (as the AILA notes) "smart enforcement that includes
effective inspections and screening practices, fair proceedings,
efficient processing, and strategies that crack down on criminal
smugglers and lawbreaking employers."
As immigration attorney Bo Cooper observes:
It’s difficult to see a broad immigration reform bill,
particularly assuming that it includes legalization, not including
additional enforcement measures. Congress will not, and should not,
consider a robust legalization policy without some level of assurance
that the problem will not just repeat itself. On the other hand, many of
the enforcement measures that were raised by some as preconditions of
broader reform in the last debates in 2007 have largely been met in the years since.
There will be a strong effort this time around to make sure that
additional enforcement measures are properly targeted. One area that
employers should be attentive to is employment verification. Those rules
are virtually certain to change if immigration reform moves ahead.
Our archaic, xenopohobia-driven immigration system has crumbled under
the weight of the nativist insistence on "enforcing the laws on the
books," and even right-wing organizations like the Cato Institute
are able to recognize that it's been not just a social disaster but an
economic wreck as well. Or you could just ask the folks in Arizona and
Alabama, the states that have most ardently adopted the nativist agenda,
how it's worked out for them economically. Answer: Not very wellat all.
The same is true for the nation as a whole. It's past time it got fixed.
