This is a new low:
Yesterday, Buzzfeed reported that the Justice Department sent an email to all immigration court employees that included a link to none other than VDARE, one of the worst and most vile white nationalist websites. The article linked to “directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs” — which, even if it hadn’t been on VDARE, is a confusing and hostile thing to send to a group of federal employees which includes immigration judges and their staffs.
As Buzzfeed noted:
“The post features links and content that directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs and the label ‘Kritarch.’ The reference to Kritarch in a negative tone is deeply offensive and Anti-Semitic,” wrote [union chief Ashley] Tabaddor. The VDare post includes pictures of judges with the term “kritarch” preceding their names.
VDARE, by the way, is a “blatantly racist website and a hub for white nationalists and anti-Semites who are opposed to non-white immigration,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which categorizes it as a hate group. Their contributing writers include white supremacists, white ethnic separatists, and Holocaust deniers.
This is far from a one-off problem: the Trump Administration is chock-full of ties to white nationalists and hate groups. Almost two dozen current and former staffers, from senior advisor Stephen Miller to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, had ties to hate groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) — which were founded by white nationalist and eugenicist John Tanton. Still, even Sessions’ Justice Department never, that we know of, linked to a white nationalist website.
It’s not as if the White House doesn’t know this kind of behavior is wrong. Last summer, White House speechwriter Darren Beattie was fired after the White House learned he had appeared on a panel with the British white nationalist Peter Brimelow. Brimelow is, guess what, the president of the VDARE Foundation.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of Administration that seems to pride itself on its ties to white nationalists and hate groups. That’s why, in addition to employing former FAIR and CIS staffers, Trump has cited hate group data and his Administration has regularly met with these organizations. Darren Beattie may have been fired, but White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow remains on staff despite having been friends with Peter Brimelow for more than 40 years. And Stephen Miller, the White House whisperer on all things immigration, knew Brimelow in 2007, when he and yet another white nationalist — Richard Spencer — co-hosted an event with Brimelow at Duke.
Anti-immigrant hate groups have direct connections to the White House now. But with that connection comes renewed scrutiny. As David Nakamura at the Washington Post pointed out in the wake of the El Paso white nationalist shooting, “the online document linked to [the suspected gunman] represents perhaps the most pointed connection between anti-immigration sentiment and white nationalism.” These groups, their policies, their associations, and their ugly rhetoric should be examined, and the Trump Administration should be breaking off their ties with — rather than linking to — these organizations.
