Washington, DC — While Republican Party elected officials and candidates are increasingly embracing and mainstreaming the use of dangerous “invasion” and “replacement” immigration conspiracies, even long established anti-immigrant organizations and leaders are trying to do damage control and spin away their past and ongoing usage of such rhetoric, as a new story from Rafael Bernal in The Hill highlights. It underscores how far the GOP has gone off the rails on anti-immigration lies and conspiracies that right-wing voices outside of the GOP seem more careful in associating with rhetoric tied to deadly acts of real-world violence.
According to Zachary Mueller, Senior Research Director for America’s Voice:
“When the groups founded by the late white nationalist and eugenicist John Tanton attempt to publicly distance themselves from rhetoric linked to conspiratorial white nationalist violence like ‘invasion,’ while at the same time, the Republican Party employs the rhetoric, the dangerous radicalization occurring in the GOP should be blindingly clear. They are doubling down to advance ‘invasion’ as the undergirding of actual policies and laws while spewing rhetoric with clear connections to violence at the Tree of Life synagogue and elsewhere.
The Tanton anti-immigration network of organizations has a long and well-documented history of aligning itself with white nationalists and their ideas. It is this history that likely makes them sensitive to further association with bigoted, violent, and anti-democratic ideas. The fact that the Republican Party has fully embraced the dangerous rhetoric is something that we cannot afford to ignore. Elected leaders are giving the invasion conspiracy legitimacy and normalization that is exponentially increasing the threat to public safety from white nationalist and antisemitic political violence.”
The Rafael Bernal story, “Even immigration restrictionists stay away from GOP’s ‘invasion’ rhetoric,” is filled with quotes from anti-immigrant leaders from CIS and Numbers USA trying to distance themselves from the conspiracy rhetoric. Mario Lopez of the conservative Hispanic Leadership Fund puts it succinctly, saying of those advancing the dangerous falsehood:
“They’re off their rocker, and they’re doing damage to the country not just in terms of the policy, but in terms of their rhetoric — and it’s not a coincidence that the El Paso shooter, the Buffalo shooter, the Pittsburgh shooter, and I think I’m missing at least one more, and maybe more than that, all cited invasion rhetoric in their pre-shooting-spree manifestos and social media posts.”
Below are some additional key excerpts:
“Republican use of the term ‘invasion’ is putting party officials at odds with the immigration restrictionists behind much of the GOP’s ideological framework on the issue. The term has become a mainstay of Republican political rhetoric ahead of elections in November, but its use as a descriptor of the situation at the southern border has been widely panned as inaccurate and incendiary, even by groups including the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA. At a House Natural Resources Committee hearing earlier this month, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) outlined the dangers of the so-called “great replacement theory,” in the process accusing CIS Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan of using the term, which Vaughan vehemently denied …
… ‘The implications about me and my organization and our work are completely wrong. We reject the ideas that she was attributing to us, and I find this to be a distraction in a discussion of a really serious public policy problem, public safety problem that certainly is very serious to the representatives of Indian country here, and a distraction from that,’ Vaughan said …
… But Republicans, egged on by former President Trump, who’s been using the term in the immigration context since at least 2018, are all in on calling migration ‘an invasion.’ Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), a potential Trump running mate, used the term in a social media post Friday blaming President Biden for the number of people who have entered the United States through the southwest border. The rhetorical issue has taken on real-world consequences in the fight between Texas and the federal government over immigration jurisdiction …
… Whether legal or political, the language can have grave consequences, say critics of rhetoric that seems to have superseded its ideological underpinnings. ‘They’re off their rocker, and they’re doing damage to the country not just in terms of the policy, but in terms of their rhetoric — and it’s not a coincidence that the El Paso shooter, the Buffalo shooter, the Pittsburgh shooter, and I think I’m missing at least one more, and maybe more than that, all cited invasion rhetoric in their pre-shooting-spree manifestos and social media posts,’ said Mario H. Lopez, president of the conservative Hispanic Leadership Fund and a longtime critic of the Tanton network.”
Additional Resources
- Interview with Zachary Mueller via The Border Chronicle, “Border 911 and the Cruelty and Chaos Agenda”
