Republicans are counting on fears of immigrants to draw white conservatives to the polls. This calculation is dangerous — and it lets the real villains in our politics off the hook.
There’s a direct line between Donald Trump’s 2015 declaration about Mexican “rapists” and his 2024 lie about Haitians eating pets. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-OH), has echoed the horrific contention about Haitians even while admitting it was a lie.
Both men are married to women of immigrant origins and may not even believe their own lies. In fact, as a Yale law student in 2012, Vance wrote a blog post decrying Republican anti-immigrant rhetoric. But after he found how convenient it is to bash immigrants for votes, Vance asked his former professor to delete it.
During the vice presidential debate between Vance and Governor Tim Walz (D-MN), Vance scapegoated immigrants every chance he got. In Vance’s world, immigrants are smuggling fentanyl and importing illegal guns. They’re also driving up housing prices while simultaneously putting downward pressure on wages by working for pittances.
Never mind that it’s mostly U.S. citizens smuggling fentanyl, and that illegal guns are flowing the other way across the border — from the U.S. into Mexico. Never mind that it makes no sense for immigrants to be working for less while paradoxically being able to afford homes that Americans cannot.
Truth and logic are beside the point. Fear of the “other” is the plan. This makes life very dangerous for immigrants. Haitian migrants, among others, are facing threats to their safety.
Trump has repeatedly deployed Hitlerian language to describe immigrants, blaming them for “poisoning the blood” of the country and claiming that they commit homicide because they have “bad genes.” (One can hardly imagine him extending the same logic to mass shooters, who tend to be overwhelmingly white and male, or to the two white men who recently tried to assassinate him. According to Trump, being white means you have “good genes.”)
Beating the racist, anti-immigrant drum is the first step toward violence. The United Nations identifies hate speech as a “precursor to atrocity crimes, including genocide,” and scholars of past genocides have drawn clear links between language that “otherizes” whole communities and pogroms aimed at them.
Anti-immigrant lies also harm native-born Americans. Trump, Vance, and their supporters recently unleashed rumors falsely blaming immigrants for disaster relief difficulties. Elon Musk jumped on the bandwagon, claiming that “FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives.”
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell called these lies part of a “truly dangerous narrative.” Even Republican governors of hurricane-hit states are deeply appalled, warning that these lies threaten to disrupt disaster recovery efforts.
Most importantly, the purveyors of anti-immigrant hate let corporate power and wealthy elites — like Musk — off the hook for the problems facing Americans. Hedge fund managers, not immigrants, are outbidding Americans for housing. Corporate employers keep wages low and privatization has ruined healthcare, not immigrants.
Oil and gas corporations are responsible for the catastrophic climate change fueling hurricanes like Helene and Milton, not immigrants. (Indeed, migrant workers often help rebuild after these catastrophes as communities struggle with a labor shortage).
If right-wing politicians really want to help Americans struggling with economic stressors, they could ban hedge fund managers from buying up homes, support single-payer health care, increase the federal minimum wage, tax billionaires, divert money from war to climate, hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate crimes, and back a renewable energy transition.
Instead, they attack immigrants — and do nothing.
Attacking immigrants and calling for mass deportations will do nothing to ease the very real struggles people face. What it will do is whip up hate and violence, give the purveyors of hate the political power they desperately seek, and let corporate vultures off the hook.
Sonali Kolhatkar is the host of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
In a civil, polite society we shouldn’t run around slapping comedians, politicians, radio or television personalities, or musical performers. The list goes on and includes everyone. Will Smith’s stunt of slapping comedian Chri Rock at the 2022 Oscars was a bad idea. It was only by the grace of God and mainly the grace of Chris Rock that Smith was not arrested or sued. Before this is all over, Rock could still take him to court. At this point in time, it doesn’t seem likely.
On the other hand, it was a bad idea for Chris Rock to use Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, in a joke that highlighted alopecia, the disease that has been tormenting her.
Diseases and disabilities are issues with which people struggle. The joke angered Will Smith. His feelings got totally out of control as he bounded on stage to slap Chris Rock. While many people understand how Smith must have felt and may have thought Rock deserved it, we still have to restrain ourselves.
I suspect there are people who probably have wanted to slap a politician or two. You can’t do that because you would go to jail. Furthermore, that is the wrong way to conduct our behavior.
What about Vladimir Putin? You couldn’t get by with that in Russia. Regardless of how evil and heinous an individual is, if you slapped him while walking down Broadway in New York City, a policeman would most likely arrest you. This is a far-fetched scenario even though most of the free world is ready for Putin to be totally removed.
If you have been working on your list of people to slap you might as well put it away. It won’t work. You will eventually end up in jail, in court, or both.
We do have free speech in America. People can hurl words freer than hurling punches. Words can and do hurt. There are repercussions if you slander, malign or use your speech against others in a way that “hurts” them. However, television, radio, and political events frequently allow the rhetoric to go way out of bounds.
An idea for us all is to control our tongues and our actions. Most of us have spoken before we thought. We may have reacted in a way without seriously considering the action. Too often a fast mouth or quick action may have brought regret.
There are lessons to be learned from this year’s Academy Awards. Mainly, don’t act like those people.
