Elie Mystal for The Nation - A Week of White Supremacy

[Celerity]

from an email, no link



The New York Times reports that the Trump administration is considering proposals to radically reshape the US refugee system, denying entry to Black and brown refugees the world over while opening up the borders for white people from South Africa and Europe who claim they are being politically persecuted. Trump is planning to slash the number of refugees admitted into the country each year to 7,500, a drastic decrease from the 125,000 let in under the policies of the Biden administration last year. Apparently, those few spots are now reserved for white people who espouse Nazi beliefs, as both Trump and Vance have made a point of defending neo-Nazis in Germany and have been apparently making plans to bring them over here.

None of this is surprising to anybody who has done the work of actually listening to what Trump and his MAGA supporters have been talking about for years. The Trump administration is an openly white supremacist regime, and they’ve been acting like it, in both word and deed, since he resumed office. These people are terrified of the browning of America, terrified that white folks will lose their numeric majority in this country in the coming decades, and terrified of the declining white birth rate.

Welcoming white refugees is all of a piece. It fits neatly with bombing boats full of innocent brown people, authorizing Gestapo-style tactics by ICE, taking away birthright citizenship from people actually born here, sending in the military to police brown cities, eviscerating the voting rights of non-white people, and trying to turn white women into brood mothers through the revocation of their reproductive rights. If you believe that America exists for the benefit and glory of white folks, and if you believe that non-white folks don’t “deserve” to be here unless they are working to increase the profits of white people, then every single thing the Trump administration is doing makes sense. It’s how you resurrect white supremacist rule over this nation if white supremacy is your one true calling.

I’ve just about lost my capacity to be horrified by any of it. It’s not that I’m numb to it. Instead, as Django said: “I’m just more used to Americans.” This is just what majorities of white folks do. This is what majorities of white folks have always done whenever their power is left unchecked. And the only reason they’re afraid of losing their majority is that they assume other people will do to them what they’ve done to everybody else, just as soon as we get a chance. We won’t, of course. Because we’re better than that.

[malaise]

1. K & R for visibility

Eff the racists