A deliberate fabrication, Republicans are embracing white nationalist rhetoric out of a cynical political calculation, which has nothing to do with the health and safety of Americans.
Washington, DC – In a new article for America’s Voice, political director Zachary Mueller unpacks how Republicans are running to adopt the racist “invasion” language around immigration and using this rhetoric to attack President Biden, the Democrats, and the lifting of COVID restrictions that have kept asylum seekers from seeking asylum for the past two years. What was once a fringe rhetorical device to dehumanize and demonize immigrants – casting them as an invading army hostile to America – is now a mainstream GOP talking point deployed throughout the Capitol Hill debate on ending Title 42 and managing border issues and is being deployed in political ads across the country.
Mueller, who heads the GOP Ad Tracker project at America’s Voice, writes:
Republicans…are seeing the ending of Title 42 as an opportunity for a disingenuous political attack in the run up to the midterms. They want to boost turnout by scaring voters with white nationalist conspiracy theories. Republicans increasingly claim that the arrival of people at the border to exercise their legal right to apply for refugee status constitutes an ’invasion.’ […] Many in the GOP go further, arguing that Democrats are intentionally letting in immigrants and refugees to ‘replace’ white Americans.
From Donald Trump to leading senate candidates to senior party leadership in Washington, Mueller details how Republicans are embracing the idea that the “invasion” Americans need to worry about is not the one taking place in Ukraine, but the fictitious one in the southern U.S. (Also see today’s Washington Post Plum Line column by Greg Sargent, “As vile as it gets: “J.D. Vance goes full ‘great replacement theory’”).
Mueller writes:
Once the provenance of white nationalists, these absurd and dangerous conspiracy theories are now central to the Republican party’s political attacks.
Critically, these baseless conspiracy theories also entirely ignore the alleged public health justification for Title 42. Despite the lack of a sound justification for such a blanket approach to denying asylum claims, the Trump administration used the opportunity to further its cruelty and chaos approach to the border. Ultimately, hoping to completely end asylum. Now, even the thinly veiled pretext is largely dismissed.
The complete article, Republicans Continue to Warn of an “Invasion” at the Southern Border – That Doesn’t Exist, is available here.
- For more, read the recent America’s Voice analysis on how Republicans are using their political ads to attempt to connect the issues of fentanyl to their overall nativist appeals despite lacking basic logic or facts.
- Check out ongoing examples of Republicans’ anti-immigrant ads at the America’s Voice GOP Ad Tracker: http://gopadtracker.com/
