{"id":389344,"date":"2018-12-16T13:53:16","date_gmt":"2018-12-16T12:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-troubling-link-between-attacks-on-immigrants-and-labor-activists\/"},"modified":"2018-12-16T13:53:16","modified_gmt":"2018-12-16T12:53:16","slug":"the-troubling-link-between-attacks-on-immigrants-and-labor-activists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-troubling-link-between-attacks-on-immigrants-and-labor-activists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Troubling Link Between Attacks on Immigrants and Labor Activists"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Republican pre-election strategy of exploiting \u201cthe caravan\u201d was irredeemably ugly.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to say what was worse: the shameless and farcical framing of a helpless stream of people as a national security threat, or the president\u2019s <\/span>off-hand suggestion<\/span><\/a> that these people <\/span>might<\/span><\/i> actually be funded by the prime villain of most anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: George Soros.<\/span><\/p>\n

Few commentators have failed to point out the obvious effects of this gutter-politics playbook: the <\/span>debasement of public discourse on immigration policy<\/span><\/a>; the wink-and-nudge of encouragement offered to the most sinister fringes of the American far-right; or <\/span>the aggravation of racial animosity against people of color in the United States<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet this country\u2019s history also points to other, often overlooked tendencies. Politically, institutionally, and legally, the targeting of immigrants has almost always figured prominently in wider attacks on labor movements and civil liberties. To a large and alarming extent, it\u2019s the same story today.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAliens and Dissenters\u201d<\/b><\/h2>\n

The story of American \u201cnativism\u201d is replete with contradictions and ironies.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Protestants fled from the Catholics \u2014 and then oppressed them. The Irish and the Italians fled various forms of privation in Europe \u2014 and then <\/span>fought to keep each other down in New York<\/span><\/a>. West Coast politicians <\/span>hated the Chinese and respected the Japanese<\/span><\/a> in the late 19th century \u2014 and then reversed the equation in the 1930s and \u201840s. <\/span>Mexicans were defined as \u201cwhite\u201d<\/span><\/a> by the Census Bureau until 1930 \u2014 and now they\u2019re a much-favored punching bag for white supremacists. <\/span><\/p>\n

Almost everyone, at some point, has fought to keep someone else out. And Donald Trump is far from the first to realize that this impulse can cut across class lines: uniting the honest Midwestern auto worker with the duplicitous New York real estate developer \u2014 or, in another time, <\/span>the…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Republican pre-election strategy of exploiting \u201cthe caravan\u201d was irredeemably ugly. It\u2019s hard to say what was worse: the shameless and farcical framing of a helpless stream of people as a national security threat, or the president\u2019s off-hand suggestion that these people might actually be funded by the prime villain of most anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-389344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}