Interesting lens on birtherism: the racism is submerged into the ostensibly more defensible anti-immigrant logic, where anti-immigrant sentiment is a proxy for "people like that aren't part of this polity."
This pinpoints the quandary of current public discourse. None of the right's political claims––the election was stolen, the FBI, DOJ, and deep state are politicized, social justice concerns are really "grooming" and antifa violence––are actually substantive claims. They are just rhetorical machines for generating stories and memes whose underlying meaning is that *those people* are due no rights or protections because they are external to we the people. All the fact-checking and editorial debunking in the world doesn't matter, because these are not public debates about actual claims.
Yes, this has been a long running narrative thread in their politics around cities especially once Black elected officials began gaining prominence post-CRA. The recent moves to supersede city governments on education, elections, and policing fit neatly within this thinking once seen in this light and neatly fuses the calls to throw out votes in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Atlanta with long standing narratives around crime, and fitness to govern. Buckley's arguments against the people of Mississippi being able and worthy to govern themselves are echoed in the core logic of the Great Replacement Theory as well. I think a key question in the current moment will be how much recognition will be given to these latent tendencies how forcefully they can be addressed given the number and influence who hold them as common sense beliefs even if they wouldn't draw these conclusions to the point modern conservatives have been comfortable taking it.
FWIW, in the late 1860s, when the 14th Amendment was written and ratified, the states managed immigration. For example, Castle Garden in New York City, was run by New York.
So, if a rightie says "well they didn't imagine that it (birthright citizenship) would apply to "illegal" immigrants," it's true, because there was really no such thing as an "illegal." States might prevent entry to a person who was ill, but the 14th Amendment predates the Chinese Exclusion Act by more than a decade, fear of political "radicals" by at least a decade, and fear of mass migration from Latin America by about a century.
the 14th is clear. Unless your parents were diplomats on duty in the US, if you are born here, you're a US Citizen.
Fair point. I'd forgotten about the special status of Native Americans. But would this also apply to "illegal" aliens? Were there any court cases where the same special status of native Americans was applied to immigrants??
The other major case of this period (US v. Wong Kim Ark 1898) is interesting here because it finds that a son of immigrant parents born on US soil is in fact a US citizen! So: two cases with very different outcomes. The majority in Elk seems to say that there's something distinct and perhaps unassimilable, some element that makes John Elk's refusal/renunciation of his own ancestral ties insufficient. This is clearly why the case and the idea of "primary allegiance" is important to Eastman and others in the Claremont/MAGA circle.
Also the Eastman reading is weird because the Citizenship Act of 1924 grants citizenship to members of most Native nations, whether they want it or not. This effectively nullifies the Elk decision.
MAGAs like John Eastman focus on the "jurisidiction thereof" passage or clause of the 14th Amendment, and they try to disinter arguments from old cases like Elk v Wilkins (1884) to animate their arguments. The Elk case held that a Winnebago man (John Elk) was not an American citizen despite being born on US soil; he had primary or "immediate allegiance" to his tribe, which remained even after he voluntarily separated from it. This is a clear example of the "denationalization" mentioned by Arendt above, and it's interesting to see that the first personification of it was in a case concerning an Indigenous man. Such is the logic of settler colonialism!
I will write about all this over at the Unmuted Posthorn.
To refer to the Arendt quote from the John Ganz piece (and to add a spin from Deleuze and Guattari), the Elk case shows us that denationalization (i.e. stripping human beings of rights and privileges associated with citizenship) is preceded by robust forms of renationalization (i.e. articulations of previous or primary allegiances that are so strong and binding that they cannot be voluntarily renounced). It’s clear that at this juncture, race enters the picture: in fact, this is one of the functions the fiction of race serves!
"...there is no guarantee for human rights outside the political community...Human rights lose all their signification as soon as an individual loses her political context...The right to have rights should be recognized as a precondition for the protection of every human right...."
The really disturbing part is that we so desperately need immigration reform to address very real problems with uncontrolled immigration due to our porous border. This may not be a priority for many on the left, but there is legit grievance, imo, that it amounts to flooding the labor market with low skill workers depresses lower income wages, also presents insecurity, and is also unfair to other would-be immigrants. The longer the system carries on so obviously broken, the more extremism will result. The more extremism, the more appealing this fascistic messaging is to the masses.
2013 was the last serious attempt at immigration reform. At that time, the reasonable, negotiated bipartisan proposal passed the Senate easily, but was held up by populist House Republicans.
This monster feeds itself. The way to defang it is to solve the problems. Its just the monster gets in the way of that too.
This is completely a right wing just so story. First, the numbers are low compared to past decades. Second, there's no proof immigration depresses wages. It's at best a wash since immigrants also create jobs (which is why the cities that they go to and primarily live in do not complain and in fact usually welcome their presence). Third, none of the unrest or rage is coming from the low wage workers. The civil unrest has a top down origin. Fourth, the USA has the longest border between the two most unequal countries in the world--the most unequal regions AND these countries have been culturally blended since the start since the part of the US with higher migration was a territory of the country where migrants come from. So pretending like this is a recent thing and has nothing to do with history or geography is ridiculous. 2 million Americans reside permanently in Mexico and millions more go there yearly. The panic is manufactured by the right for a certain audience, and is no justification for the destruction to democracy and the constitution they intend, and are currently executing.
Obama desperately begged for immigration reform a decade ago, which was cynically denied to him, which has fueled right wing grievance narratives ever since.
This angle could be easily squashed with smart and effective immigration reform the likes of which passed the Senate in bipartisan fashion in 2013.
Here he is on television spewing “right wing just so story”, advocating the same changes as I am.
No immigration reform, however “smart and effective ,” would be acceptable to the right. Anyone suggesting that immigration reform is possible is living in a dream world. This could only happen if the Democrats had majorities in both houses. The fact that the Republicans in the Senate supported it in 2013 is viewed by them as a mistake they won’t repeat again.
No one is "flooding the labor market with low skill workers." Workers are forced to the country that has already stolen their home country's resources and are then kept in unceasing terror so that they do not ask for better treatment while they create even more wealth for said country. All the talk about these "grievances" does is to justify increasing this terror, which is what actually depresses wages.
I respectfully disagree. When there is decades long uncontrolled immigration of millions and millions, that does amount to government failing to control immigration, which amounts to flooding the labor market. This depresses lower income wages, and these have been stagnant for decades.
I am not making value judgements and am pro-immigration. But these are the economic facts.
American Citizenship for migrants is very fair and civil. Here in italy According to Italian law, those born to non-citizen parents can acquire citizenship if they were born in Italy, have had uninterrupted residence until turning 18. It’s unfair law. Children should be proud citizens from young age. I believe more migrants feel proud to be American. In Italy we need to do much more to make more migrants proud citizens. Desantis has Italian grand parents, he should be proud of what America offered to these migrants.
For me, pulp writer Robert E Howard, of all people nailed it: barbarism is the natural state of man. And our right wing has been fighting hard for decades to reduce the nation to same. No need for anything better than show elections because the strong should lead. Like the Founding Fathers wanted, there should be no state interference with one -- well, a white man -- accumulating wealth by any and all means available. If a global pandemic strikes, the proper response is for the state to do nothing. And so on and so forth. The reader can come up with their own examples, I’m sure.
And here we are. Reverting to barbarism is relatively easy -- our conservatives have done it primarily with lies and secondarily with corruption.
And here we are. This civilizational collapse is what we’re facing and it looks like it’s on the edge of becoming a fixed reality.
They will use this to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible. It's quite simple. Most of them will support Democrats or vote for them when they can. Get rid of these people. Elect Republicans. Power to the chosen few!
Interesting lens on birtherism: the racism is submerged into the ostensibly more defensible anti-immigrant logic, where anti-immigrant sentiment is a proxy for "people like that aren't part of this polity."
This pinpoints the quandary of current public discourse. None of the right's political claims––the election was stolen, the FBI, DOJ, and deep state are politicized, social justice concerns are really "grooming" and antifa violence––are actually substantive claims. They are just rhetorical machines for generating stories and memes whose underlying meaning is that *those people* are due no rights or protections because they are external to we the people. All the fact-checking and editorial debunking in the world doesn't matter, because these are not public debates about actual claims.
The people who were surprised when all the immigrants weren't gone the day after Brexit
This is the next front in the battle over the Great Replacement fear/theory
Yes, this has been a long running narrative thread in their politics around cities especially once Black elected officials began gaining prominence post-CRA. The recent moves to supersede city governments on education, elections, and policing fit neatly within this thinking once seen in this light and neatly fuses the calls to throw out votes in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Atlanta with long standing narratives around crime, and fitness to govern. Buckley's arguments against the people of Mississippi being able and worthy to govern themselves are echoed in the core logic of the Great Replacement Theory as well. I think a key question in the current moment will be how much recognition will be given to these latent tendencies how forcefully they can be addressed given the number and influence who hold them as common sense beliefs even if they wouldn't draw these conclusions to the point modern conservatives have been comfortable taking it.
FWIW, in the late 1860s, when the 14th Amendment was written and ratified, the states managed immigration. For example, Castle Garden in New York City, was run by New York.
So, if a rightie says "well they didn't imagine that it (birthright citizenship) would apply to "illegal" immigrants," it's true, because there was really no such thing as an "illegal." States might prevent entry to a person who was ill, but the 14th Amendment predates the Chinese Exclusion Act by more than a decade, fear of political "radicals" by at least a decade, and fear of mass migration from Latin America by about a century.
the 14th is clear. Unless your parents were diplomats on duty in the US, if you are born here, you're a US Citizen.
see Elk v. Wilkins (1884)
Fair point. I'd forgotten about the special status of Native Americans. But would this also apply to "illegal" aliens? Were there any court cases where the same special status of native Americans was applied to immigrants??
The other major case of this period (US v. Wong Kim Ark 1898) is interesting here because it finds that a son of immigrant parents born on US soil is in fact a US citizen! So: two cases with very different outcomes. The majority in Elk seems to say that there's something distinct and perhaps unassimilable, some element that makes John Elk's refusal/renunciation of his own ancestral ties insufficient. This is clearly why the case and the idea of "primary allegiance" is important to Eastman and others in the Claremont/MAGA circle.
Also the Eastman reading is weird because the Citizenship Act of 1924 grants citizenship to members of most Native nations, whether they want it or not. This effectively nullifies the Elk decision.
MAGAs like John Eastman focus on the "jurisidiction thereof" passage or clause of the 14th Amendment, and they try to disinter arguments from old cases like Elk v Wilkins (1884) to animate their arguments. The Elk case held that a Winnebago man (John Elk) was not an American citizen despite being born on US soil; he had primary or "immediate allegiance" to his tribe, which remained even after he voluntarily separated from it. This is a clear example of the "denationalization" mentioned by Arendt above, and it's interesting to see that the first personification of it was in a case concerning an Indigenous man. Such is the logic of settler colonialism!
I will write about all this over at the Unmuted Posthorn.
This is from my Notes page:
To refer to the Arendt quote from the John Ganz piece (and to add a spin from Deleuze and Guattari), the Elk case shows us that denationalization (i.e. stripping human beings of rights and privileges associated with citizenship) is preceded by robust forms of renationalization (i.e. articulations of previous or primary allegiances that are so strong and binding that they cannot be voluntarily renounced). It’s clear that at this juncture, race enters the picture: in fact, this is one of the functions the fiction of race serves!
This is a fine essay. I wish it were not needed.
"...there is no guarantee for human rights outside the political community...Human rights lose all their signification as soon as an individual loses her political context...The right to have rights should be recognized as a precondition for the protection of every human right...."
https://criticallegalthinking.com/2019/07/12/hannah-arendt-right-to-have-rights/
This got me thinking: has anyone ever done a comparison of Strasserism and the idea of the Welfare Queen in conservative thought?
🔥🔥🔥 thats it, indeed.
The really disturbing part is that we so desperately need immigration reform to address very real problems with uncontrolled immigration due to our porous border. This may not be a priority for many on the left, but there is legit grievance, imo, that it amounts to flooding the labor market with low skill workers depresses lower income wages, also presents insecurity, and is also unfair to other would-be immigrants. The longer the system carries on so obviously broken, the more extremism will result. The more extremism, the more appealing this fascistic messaging is to the masses.
2013 was the last serious attempt at immigration reform. At that time, the reasonable, negotiated bipartisan proposal passed the Senate easily, but was held up by populist House Republicans.
This monster feeds itself. The way to defang it is to solve the problems. Its just the monster gets in the way of that too.
This is completely a right wing just so story. First, the numbers are low compared to past decades. Second, there's no proof immigration depresses wages. It's at best a wash since immigrants also create jobs (which is why the cities that they go to and primarily live in do not complain and in fact usually welcome their presence). Third, none of the unrest or rage is coming from the low wage workers. The civil unrest has a top down origin. Fourth, the USA has the longest border between the two most unequal countries in the world--the most unequal regions AND these countries have been culturally blended since the start since the part of the US with higher migration was a territory of the country where migrants come from. So pretending like this is a recent thing and has nothing to do with history or geography is ridiculous. 2 million Americans reside permanently in Mexico and millions more go there yearly. The panic is manufactured by the right for a certain audience, and is no justification for the destruction to democracy and the constitution they intend, and are currently executing.
Obama desperately begged for immigration reform a decade ago, which was cynically denied to him, which has fueled right wing grievance narratives ever since.
This angle could be easily squashed with smart and effective immigration reform the likes of which passed the Senate in bipartisan fashion in 2013.
Here he is on television spewing “right wing just so story”, advocating the same changes as I am.
https://youtu.be/6Q_Xk66gsRU
No immigration reform, however “smart and effective ,” would be acceptable to the right. Anyone suggesting that immigration reform is possible is living in a dream world. This could only happen if the Democrats had majorities in both houses. The fact that the Republicans in the Senate supported it in 2013 is viewed by them as a mistake they won’t repeat again.
No one is "flooding the labor market with low skill workers." Workers are forced to the country that has already stolen their home country's resources and are then kept in unceasing terror so that they do not ask for better treatment while they create even more wealth for said country. All the talk about these "grievances" does is to justify increasing this terror, which is what actually depresses wages.
I respectfully disagree. When there is decades long uncontrolled immigration of millions and millions, that does amount to government failing to control immigration, which amounts to flooding the labor market. This depresses lower income wages, and these have been stagnant for decades.
I am not making value judgements and am pro-immigration. But these are the economic facts.
American Citizenship for migrants is very fair and civil. Here in italy According to Italian law, those born to non-citizen parents can acquire citizenship if they were born in Italy, have had uninterrupted residence until turning 18. It’s unfair law. Children should be proud citizens from young age. I believe more migrants feel proud to be American. In Italy we need to do much more to make more migrants proud citizens. Desantis has Italian grand parents, he should be proud of what America offered to these migrants.
For me, pulp writer Robert E Howard, of all people nailed it: barbarism is the natural state of man. And our right wing has been fighting hard for decades to reduce the nation to same. No need for anything better than show elections because the strong should lead. Like the Founding Fathers wanted, there should be no state interference with one -- well, a white man -- accumulating wealth by any and all means available. If a global pandemic strikes, the proper response is for the state to do nothing. And so on and so forth. The reader can come up with their own examples, I’m sure.
And here we are. Reverting to barbarism is relatively easy -- our conservatives have done it primarily with lies and secondarily with corruption.
And here we are. This civilizational collapse is what we’re facing and it looks like it’s on the edge of becoming a fixed reality.
They will use this to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible. It's quite simple. Most of them will support Democrats or vote for them when they can. Get rid of these people. Elect Republicans. Power to the chosen few!