A lot of talk the past few weeks about refugees flooding into southern and eastern Europe, mainly people from the hell that is Syria and the catastrophic landscape of post-revolution Libya. First reaction of the right-wing government in Hungary was to thug them with riot police and hastily build a border fence. One of the more memorable videos was the one where Hungarian officials are tossing baloney sandwiches into a corral filled with hungry migrants, including young children. Then there was the Hungarian broadcast journalist who deliberately tripped a fleeing refugee. Nice. People.
The thing is, you need to listen to their rhetoric. They’re talking about “illegal immigrants”. They’re echoing the applause lines of our own crackpot politicians. No surprise, because we’re witnessing the same experience on our own southern border. People fleeing from the neoliberal aftermath of our bankrupt Central America policy, starting with support for decades of regressive, kelptocratic Mexican governments to our serial interventions in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and elsewhere, pouring into this country in hope of a better life. And we’ve got freaks like Donald Trump calling them rapists, murderers, etc., and not just him. Those Hungarian xenophobes? Turns out, they are us.
The plan to expel something like 11 million people from the United States is, well, something tantamount to ethnic cleansing. It’s clear that a major party candidate advocating racial profiling raises very few eyebrows these days. Take, for instance, Trump’s town hall event this past Thursday, when one attendee called for the expulsion of all Muslims, to which the candidate said he would be looking at this once elected. Really? As Chris Hayes and Charlie Pierce pointed out the other day, this business is like having a wolf by the ears. When you play with racism and xenophobia, it tends to play back … and hard. Easy to lose control of that particular sentiment. There are plenty of historical precedents.
Here we go. I have to say, as someone who watched a good bit of the second Republican debate, we are headed for some very troubled waters. Beware what a nation will do when it’s effectively fear-mongered.
luv u,
jp
