While in Beijing, we were given a tour of the National Minority Institute, where we were told of the more than fifty national and ethnic minorities that live in China, the ongoing struggle against discrimination and great Han chauvinism. As we were leaving the institute, I overheard a white member of our overwhelmingly white tour group say:I don't believe they have any minorities in China. They all look Chinese to me.I was reminded to that comment Monday evening by Tucker Carlson. He was focused on one of his usual subjects - the Honduran migrant caravan making its way through Mexico to the US border. Under the leadership of Donald Trump, he and the rest of the Fox News crowd have been crying wolf about what they call an "invasion" of poor refugee families. US white supremacists, led by Donald Trump, have effectively taken over the Republican Party, and have been using anti-immigrant agitation as a gateway to their more extreme goal of creating a white ethnostate.
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| Tucker Carlson, Fox News 19 Nov 2018 |
It might be said that Donald Trump has adopted him with this tweet:
The Mayor of Tijuana, Mexico, just stated that “the City is ill-prepared to handle this many migrants, the backlog could last 6 months.” Likewise, the U.S. is ill-prepared for this invasion, and will not stand for it. They are causing crime and big problems in Mexico. Go home!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2018
Of course, one reason Tijuana has such a massive problem is although thousands of refugees are trying to seek asylum, the US is playing a game of asylum suppression, not unlike the Trump campaign policy of voter suppression, by accepting claims at a handful of legal ports of entry like San Diego, where they are processing only 100 claims a day.
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| Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum in a Trump styled "Make Tijuana Great Again" hat. Does he realize how ironic it is that he says this in ENGLISH, or did he just want to make sure it could be read by his target audience? Does he also agreed with the way Trump talks about Mexicans? Trump talked about the Mayor again in his Thanksgiving call to the troops in which he said he also authorized the US army to use "lethal force" at the border "if they have to." Does this "Mexican patriot" also support Trump on that? |
"Trump was right! This is an invasion!"However, those 300 where enough for Tucker Carlson to build a show segment around because he thought he could use this protest to demonstrate that the dislike of immigrants he promotes nightly was universal [xenophobic], and not racist. Tucker thought that since they were Mexicans protesting immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, he could use them to argue that white supremacy was not behind the anti-immigrant campaign in the US either. The Daily Stormer thought they could use the story the same way:
It looks as if the Jew-run media is mostly trying to ignore what’s happening in Tijuana. That’s because there’s no way they can really spin a narrative in their favor. For weeks they were claiming that the bad orange man in the White House was lying about the caravan. But what’s happening in Tijuana proves that he was right. The mere fact that the Mexicans want these invaders to go back to where they came from is proof of this.Since Tucker pretends to be "Fair & Balanced," he can't be that direct, so he invited on Enrique Acevedo, an anchor at Univision, to be his guest for this segment on the Tijuana protest.
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They do however have multiple videos about Jim Acosta’s press pass and a video about Apple’s CEO Tim Cook talking about how he wants to brainwash children into becoming faggots.
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Their narrative about the caravan was wrong and they can’t start calling Mexicans racist for being angry at the situation. And they definitely want to ignore the fact that Tijuana’s mayor is basically agreeing with Trump in saying that these invaders need to go back to their shitholes.
Tucker played Fox News interviews with four protesters. The show used subtitles even though all the Mexican protesters they interviewed were speaking very intelligible English. They said things like "these are bad people", "they don't belong here", "this is not about racism," and "these caravans are committing crimes." Tucker then proceeded as though those were majority opinions in Mexico, and put his main premise to his guest:
Tucker: I'm confused. We just saw a group of Mexican citizens in Tijuana saying basically the same things that President Trump says, almost to the word endorsing Trump. Are they white supremacists?
Enrique: Well, you have to understand that unlike human beings, intolerance, hate, and even racism flow freely across borders, and that's what you saw in those interviews. They're not running for president. They're not running for president in the United States either. They are part of a group of around 300 protesters in a city of 1.3 million who, like many others along the way of this Caravan, are opposed to their presence in Tijuana, and you know, the overwhelming majority of people in Tijuana welcome immigrants. It's a city of immigrants.
Tucker: Wait but, wait but, I'm sorry, can I just backup a little bit? Its a big city for sure. Hold on. Woe, I think you just said that they're racist but they're Latino, Spanish-speaking Latinos attacking other Spanish-speaking Latinos. So where's the racism?
Enrique: Well, we're not a monolithic community Tucker. We have people from Central America, from Venezuela, from Colombia. Different backgrounds, different ethnicities, and yes, racism exists in Mexico toward Central Americans. It's not new. It's happened through...
Tucker: Okay, but I'm not quite sure how it's racism if they appear to be of the same race?
Anti immigrant protest in Tijuana getting violent. They start attacking woman defending Honduran migrants in caravan. Yelling perra (bitch) pic.twitter.com/aeauXYoASt— Emily Green (@emilytgreen) November 18, 2018
He is delusional.
He should start with the objective reality that while humans of all races and nationalities have eyeballs and teeth that are white (more or less), nobody has skin that is objectively the color white. The main determinate of human skin color is its density of melanin. As the English rulers of colonial America begin to create a system of African slavery as a solution to their labor problems, they sought to built a pro-slavery unity among all those exempt from slavery based on their lighter skin color, and for this new synthetic "race" they appropriated the label "white" because it carried with it many positive attributes. Soon after that, they began to label the Africans they were enslaving "black," although their skin color was not black like their hair color. They labeled them "black" because that color already had many negative connotations. These labels were chosen to support slavery and white supremacy. This happened in the 17th century in what would become the United States.
It was a marketing and branding coup d'état, and the inauguration of white supremacy. People like Tucker, who don't understand the fraudulent nature of the title "white," and think of themselves as white, also assume that racism or white supremacy is limited to the sphere of conflict or interaction between "white people" and "people of color," indeed they strive to limit it to that, as though the racial categories he has in his head have some objective, persistent reality to them. This makes it hard for him to understand that their was a time when people he may now welcomes into the white race, such as the Irish, Jews, and less than a hundred years ago, as I reported in The Rise of Xenophobia, the Poles, where not considered white and were subjected to racism, or white supremacy, by those that did consider themselves white. I wonder in Tucker considers Jews white, even today. I know his Daily Stormer buddies don't. I'll bet Gastélum thinks he is white, although Tucker thinks he is the same race as every other Latino.
It is also problematic for racists like Tucker to conceive of a white supremacist hierarchy existing among people he considers all to be in another race. This is a simpleminded view of the world.
Anyone familiar with African American culture and history knows very well that there is a racist hierarchy of discrimination based on skin color, with lighter skin being favored. This discrimination is supported by the white power structure, but it also is a reflection of white supremacy within the oppressed race. In other places, I have report on how even in Sudan, Africa, among the brown and black skin population, where exists a white supremacist hierarchy enforced by those who think themselves "white" no matter how brown they may look to European eyes.
The Guardian also reported on this protest. Sarah Kinosian wrote:
On Sunday, anti-caravan protesters chanted: “Out Hondurans, we don’t want you here”, “Tijuana first” and “Long live Mexico”, and waved Mexican flags and signs reading “no to the invasion” and “no more migrants”.She also wrote about how this Mexican anti-immigrant movement had been influenced by the US:
The group, which at its height numbered about 300, gathered in front of a statue of the Aztec warrior Cuauhtémoc before making their way to a sports complex serving as a temporary shelter to about 2,500 migrants from the caravan.
While many have welcomed the migrants – as they have the thousands of others who have come to the city over recent years – some Tijuana residents have expressed hostility to the caravan, amid intense media coverage and aggressive rhetoric from the US president, Donald Trump.The Associated Press echoed this sentiment, saying that while some blamed the backlash on the sudden arrival of the caravan:
Others point to social media and the hostile rhetoric of U.S. President Donald Trump, who said it harbored criminals and gang members and was planning an "invasion."There has been a well developed social media campaign at work building this anti-immigrant movement in Mexico. Karla Zabludovsky on Buzzfeed wrote about this 15 November 2018 in The Racist Backlash To The Migrant Caravan Is Building In WhatsApp Groups In Mexico:
Several Facebook and WhatsApp groups advocating for the caravan's deportation have sprung up in the month since the migrants set out from Honduras, underscoring escalating anti-immigrant sentiment in northern Mexico. The violent language used against Central Americans in these groups echoes that used by Trump supporters in the US, referring to the caravan as an "invasion" and issuing a call to arms in defense of borders.Considering that all that they still had only 200-300 protesters at their rally. These are the people Tucker supports-a minority of haters who advocate violence. James Fredrick, writing for NPR described them as a "few hundred Tijuanenses gathered in the city's high-end Rio area." While some of the marchers headed for Mayor Gastélum's office, other headed off towards a shelter where more than 2,500 immigrants are staying. Alonzo Castillo, 37, a construction worker from Honduras was not intimidated by their tactics, and had no trouble putting a name to what they are facing:
Inside the WhatsApp chat, people have felt free to share their unfiltered views:
"These people are a Cancer that signals the end of Mexico."
"I'm asking the men here to defend their women and children... Since the majority of Central Americans who've arrived are men, violent thefts will start any moment now."
"Plagues are confronted with venom. And [bullets] are the venom here. Hondurans are equal to gonorrhea."
Other messages in a WhatsApp group called "Citizen’s Blockade" — which BuzzFeed News had access to after joining a related, closed Facebook page — included suggestions to deliver pizza and hamburgers filled with pesticide to migrants, and a call to burn down one of the biggest shelters in the city. The group has more than 250 participants.
“I’m not afraid of them, this is just racism.”Tucker Carlson may think that opposition to Central American immigrants in Mexico can't be based on racism because they all "appear to be of the same [brown] race," but as CNN Contributor Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote in 2012 In Mexico, racism hides in plain view:
The enduring taboo subject is skin color, whether an individual's complexion betrays an allegiance to the Spanish who conquered the Aztec empire in 1521 or the Aztecs who were conquered. It's no exaggeration to say that, in this country and especially in this city, the best, highest-paying, most important jobs often seem to go to those who, in addition to having the best education and the strongest connections, have the lightest skin.He also talked about the role this racism has played in holding Mexico back:
On television, in politics and in academia, you see light-skinned people. On construction sites, in police forces and in restaurant kitchens, you're more likely to find those who are dark-skinned. In the priciest neighborhoods, the homeowners have light skin, and the housekeepers are dark. Everyone knows this, and yet no one talks about it, at least not in elite circles.
Nor do Mexicans seem all that eager to discuss the larger dynamic that race feeds into: the fact that this is, and has always been, a country of deep divisions. In the 100 years since the Mexican Revolution, one part of Mexico has often been at war with another: urban vs. rural, rich vs. poor and, yes, dark-skinned vs. light-skinned.Those like Tucker Carlson who promote the narrowest possible view of the problems caused by racism are just wrong. It was a core feature in the development of early capitalism because white supremacy was developed as a ideological tool that could be used to justify domination not only of the newly created "non-white" people of the Earth, but the very Earth itself. Just as it has held back Mexico's develop, so has it held back revolutionary development worldwide. Capitalism can never be transcended so long as white supremacy has so many under its spell.
It's one reason that institutions such as the economy, the political system and the social structure haven't matured as quickly as they should have, given Mexico's advantages.
This country of 120 million people has ports, highways, airports and skyscrapers. It takes in billions of dollars every year in revenues from oil and natural gas, and billions more from tourism and remittances from Mexican migrants living abroad. Mexico's economy is growing faster than the U.S. economy, and investments are flowing in from Asia and Europe. It's consistently within the top three of trading partners for the United States. But what good is all that when only a small number of the population can live up to their full potential? Prejudice kills progress.
Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!
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