This feeling of being overrun

Stephen Miller is an immigration advisor to the nasty guy. He’s the one who came up with the idea that children should be separated from parents at the border and housed in cages. So, yeah, quite obviously racist. Miller is in the news because a batch of leaked emails shows how thoroughly racist he is. Reaction has ranged from: Oh wow! Look at that! to: Sheesh, where’ve you been?

Lulu Garcia-Navarro, the host of Weekend Edition Sunday on NPR, first talked to Chelsea Stieber, a scholar of French literature at the Catholic University of America. She teaches the book Camp of the Saints, a novel (as in fiction) about an invasion of hordes of migrants who come to the West and bring about its end. Stieber uses the book to teach how students can detect the language of far-right groups.

Garcia-Navarro also talked to Kathleen Belew, who teaches history at the University of Chicago and wrote Bring The War Home, about white power movements. Belew spoke of an aspect of white nationalism:

Most political issues of the day are, at bottom, about the reproduction of the white race and the birth of white children. This is why you see people focusing on the birth rate, right? We see the birth rate appearing in manifestos of violent actors.

But to people in this movement, white reproduction is not just about sort of a peaceful demographic transformation, but it's about this feeling of being overrun by immigrants, about being threatened with forced integration and about the idea that the white race is under attack. And I think that sense of emergency that is depicted and works like "Camp Of The Saints" and "The Turner Diaries" explains how white nationalism becomes such a captivating and kind of world-consuming way of thinking about politics.

Again, I note that overpopulation, which causes so much societal and environmental damage cannot be solved until ideas of supremacy are eliminated.

Belew says there are laws and policies that oppress people as a side effect. There is also personal racial animus. And then there is organized supremacist ideology.

It has a coherent worldview that is not only deeply racist and xenophobic and anti-immigrant, but also, at times, un-American and dedicated towards war on the state. I think this represents a real difference in intent than a policy that's simply enacted with an after-effect of harm. This is about deliberate construction of a white nationalist public policy coming from the halls of power into our laws and into our nation.

I’m dubious of this notion of policies that have a side effect of oppression. I’m quite sure throughout American history the oppression was intentional, well understood, and why a policy was enacted the way it was.

Garcia-Navarro noted that Miller referenced Camp of the Saints. Belew replied that shows the nasty guy’s immigration policies are not in the category of unintentional harm, but is a deliberate and intentional attempt to impose a white supremacist society.



In my post last Sunday I forgot to acknowledge that it was 12th anniversary of the start of this blog. Yes, that was back when Bush II was masquerading as the president. This post is number 4150. I certainly plan to keep going.