Authors: Christian Parenti
Tropic of Chaos (32 page)
More mainstream characters are almost as bad. Here is Lou Dobbs, formerly of CNN, now a Fox business news host: “There are some Mexican citizens and some Mexican-Americans who want to see California, New Mexico and other parts of the Southwestern United States given over to Mexico. These groups call it the
reconquista
, Spanish for reconquest. And they view the millions of Mexican illegal aliens in particular entering the United States as potentially an army of invaders to achieve that takeover.”
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Dobbsâechoing nineteenth-century concerns about hookworm among Chinese immigrants on the West Coastâlikes to equate immigration with infectious disease: “The invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans. Highly-contagious diseases are now crossing our borders decades after those diseases had been eradicated in this country.”
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reconquista
, Spanish for reconquest. And they view the millions of Mexican illegal aliens in particular entering the United States as potentially an army of invaders to achieve that takeover.”
35
Dobbsâechoing nineteenth-century concerns about hookworm among Chinese immigrants on the West Coastâlikes to equate immigration with infectious disease: “The invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans. Highly-contagious diseases are now crossing our borders decades after those diseases had been eradicated in this country.”
36
Glenn Beck is another respectable mainstream fanatic. Here he is on Muslims: “All right. Here it is. Tonight's exclusive: In 10 years, Muslims and Arabs will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West. . . . The Muslim community better find a spokesman who isn't a âyes, but' Muslim. They shouldn't even understand the word âbut,' because if they don't, when things heat up, the profiling will only get worse, and the razor wire will be coming.”
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Like Dobbs, Bill O'Reillyâwho is more respectable than the baby-faced, conspiracy-theorizing, ranting, dry-drunk Beckâdabbles in
reconquista
paranoia. On May 1, 2006, while Latinos were marching for their
rights in California, O'Reilly warned some of his 3.25 million weekly viewers, “And then there's the hardcore militant agenda of âYou stole our land, you bad gringos.' This is the organizers of these demonstrations: âThe borderâwe didn't cross the border, the border crossed us.' That is their slogan. That you stole our land, and now, we're going to take it back by massive, massive migration into the Southwest. And we're going to control those places, because you stole it from us, and that's the agenda underneath.”
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At times his war rhetoric gets more explicit: “You have no policy unless you have border security. . . . So now, it's becoming a race war. That's what it's becomingâa race war. You see half a million people show up in L.A. and they were waving Mexican flags. And they're saying, âHey, we have a right to be here.' No, you don't. If you're illegal, you don't have a right to be here.”
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Season of Hate, Againreconquista
paranoia. On May 1, 2006, while Latinos were marching for their
rights in California, O'Reilly warned some of his 3.25 million weekly viewers, “And then there's the hardcore militant agenda of âYou stole our land, you bad gringos.' This is the organizers of these demonstrations: âThe borderâwe didn't cross the border, the border crossed us.' That is their slogan. That you stole our land, and now, we're going to take it back by massive, massive migration into the Southwest. And we're going to control those places, because you stole it from us, and that's the agenda underneath.”
38
At times his war rhetoric gets more explicit: “You have no policy unless you have border security. . . . So now, it's becoming a race war. That's what it's becomingâa race war. You see half a million people show up in L.A. and they were waving Mexican flags. And they're saying, âHey, we have a right to be here.' No, you don't. If you're illegal, you don't have a right to be here.”
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In 2010, immigration politics heated up again with the passage of Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, which ordered all police officers to stop and interrogate anyone they suspected of being undocumented. Furthermore, it allowed citizens to sue if they felt an officer was negligent in these anti-immigrant efforts.
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SB 1070 embodied the lifeboat politics of armed adaptation. Internationally, the face of the bill was Governor Jan Brewer, whose bleached-blonde hair, spray-on tan, and perpetual, unblinking, grimace-like smile gave her a robotic affect. The backdrop to all this was Arizona's economic crisis: it had the third-highest foreclosure rate in the United States and an unemployment rate that reached 10 percent in July 2010.
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SB 1070 embodied the lifeboat politics of armed adaptation. Internationally, the face of the bill was Governor Jan Brewer, whose bleached-blonde hair, spray-on tan, and perpetual, unblinking, grimace-like smile gave her a robotic affect. The backdrop to all this was Arizona's economic crisis: it had the third-highest foreclosure rate in the United States and an unemployment rate that reached 10 percent in July 2010.
With the new law, thousands of terrified undocumented Latinos fled the state. Critics said the bill would, among others things, make Arizona less safe as it would be harder for police to solve crimes if Latinos began avoiding cops. Brewer defended the crackdown by claiming that immigrants were beheading innocent victims. But no such crimes were occurring. Neither she nor anyone else could find
any evidence
to back her claim. Next, Governor Brewer banned ethnic studies in Arizona schools on the grounds, as her spokesperson put it, that “public school students should be
taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.”
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any evidence
to back her claim. Next, Governor Brewer banned ethnic studies in Arizona schools on the grounds, as her spokesperson put it, that “public school students should be
taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.”
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Bill O'Reilly defended anti-immigrant repression by repeating myths about immigrant violence: “Arizona had to do something. In the capital city Phoenix, crime is totally out of control. . . . The recent murder of an Arizona rancher by a suspected illegal alien and the shooting of a deputy sheriff by alleged alien drug dealers have made the situation almost desperate.”
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Later, the story of the wounded deputy, like Brewer's decapitation claims, started to fall apart. Forensic pathologists noted powder burns on the sheriff's skin, indicating that the muzzle of the gun was in contact with his body when it fired and not twenty-five yards away as he claimed.
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Later, the story of the wounded deputy, like Brewer's decapitation claims, started to fall apart. Forensic pathologists noted powder burns on the sheriff's skin, indicating that the muzzle of the gun was in contact with his body when it fired and not twenty-five yards away as he claimed.
43
Even Chris Mathews, while debating Amy Goodman, suggested, “Cultural change is not something any society accepts easily, or even with any kind of positive feelings about.”
44
Mathews also promoted Pat Buchanan's
State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America
. Fittingly, this book's title refers, however cryptically, to the Nazi-justifying legal theory of Carl Schmitt. As the title implies, the book posits that immigration is destroying America.
45
Here, trimming only slightly, is the broad scope of history as seen through the narrow confines of Buchanan's mind:
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Mathews also promoted Pat Buchanan's
State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America
. Fittingly, this book's title refers, however cryptically, to the Nazi-justifying legal theory of Carl Schmitt. As the title implies, the book posits that immigration is destroying America.
45
Here, trimming only slightly, is the broad scope of history as seen through the narrow confines of Buchanan's mind:
From the fifteenth to the twentieth century, the West wrote the history of the world. Out of the Christian countries of Europe came the explorers, the missionaries, the conquerors, the colonizers, who, by the twentieth century, ruled virtually the entire world. But the passing of the West had begun.
Spain's empire was the first to fall. . . . By 1918 the German Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires collapsed. World War II bled and broke the British and French. One by one, after war's end, the strategic outposts of empireâSuez, the Canal Zone, Rhodesia, South Africa, Hong Kongâbegan to fall. Within three decades, Europe's headlong retreat from Asia and Africa was complete.
From 1989â1991, the Soviet Union Empire fell and the Soviet Union split into fifteen pieces, half a dozen of them Muslim nations that have
never before existed. Now, the African, Asian, Islamic and Hispanic peoples that the West once ruled are coming to repopulate the mother countries. . . . The crisis of Western civilization consists of three imminent and mortal perils: dying populations, disintegrating cultures and invasions unresisted . . . as Rome passed away, so, the West is passing away, from the same causes in much the same way. What the Danube and Rhine were to Rome, the Rio Grande and Mediterranean are to America and Europe, the frontiers of a civilization no longer defended.
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never before existed. Now, the African, Asian, Islamic and Hispanic peoples that the West once ruled are coming to repopulate the mother countries. . . . The crisis of Western civilization consists of three imminent and mortal perils: dying populations, disintegrating cultures and invasions unresisted . . . as Rome passed away, so, the West is passing away, from the same causes in much the same way. What the Danube and Rhine were to Rome, the Rio Grande and Mediterranean are to America and Europe, the frontiers of a civilization no longer defended.
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Elsewhere, the book oozes with more of the same: “We are witnessing how nations perish. We are entered upon the final act of our civilization. The last scene is the deconstruction of the nations. The penultimate scene, now well underway, is the invasion unresisted.” And, “Chicano chauvinists and Mexican agents have made clear their intent to take back through demography and culture what their ancestors lost through war. . . . We are in the midst of a savage culture war in which traditionalist values have been losing ground for two generations.”
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Buchanan is not of the lunatic fringe. Rather, he is a major figure in American life, aide to presidents, force in the Republican Party, and political analyst for MSNBC. His politics are mainstream.
The Paranoid Style and Its Rational UsesWelcome to the new American
Volksstaat
. Here, hate wears a smile and operates in the name of fairness and freedom. The war on immigrants is very much a war of ideas. Richard Hofstadter dissected the elements of this worldview a generation ago in
Anti-Intellectualism in American History,
then in the famous article that followed from the book, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Here is Hofstadter in 1964ânote how current the critique sounds:
Volksstaat
. Here, hate wears a smile and operates in the name of fairness and freedom. The war on immigrants is very much a war of ideas. Richard Hofstadter dissected the elements of this worldview a generation ago in
Anti-Intellectualism in American History,
then in the famous article that followed from the book, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Here is Hofstadter in 1964ânote how current the critique sounds:
The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic termsâhe traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the
barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse. . . . America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.
48
barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse. . . . America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.
48
This mentality underwrites the current xenophobia. In 2010, Pew pollsters found that 67 percent of Americans said they “approved of allowing police to detain anyone who cannot verify their legal status,” while 62 percent approved of “allowing police to question people they think may be in the country illegally.” And 59 percent said they approved of Arizona's profile and arrest law.
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Nor is it a coincidence that some of the biggest financial supporters of the xenophobic and “paranoid style” are oil magnates, most famously, the Koch brothers. These two mild-mannered and quiet billionaires started Americans for Prosperity, a free market advocacy shop that passed on at least $5 million in start-up money to the Tea Party. The Koch family has long followed Hayek's ultra-antistatist theories and more recently has promoted climate-change denial. The two positions are naturally aligned: to venerate the market and despise the state is to oppose legal limits on greenhouse gas emissions. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Koch brothers spent more than $100 million to assist a network of thirty-four Far Right political and policy organizations. Among these were the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Independent Women's Forum, and the American Enterprise Institute.
50
The noise from this network is a
mash-up of free market fanaticism, climate-change denial, and xenophobia. Talk radio and cable TV are the amplifiers.
Fortress Europe50
The noise from this network is a
mash-up of free market fanaticism, climate-change denial, and xenophobia. Talk radio and cable TV are the amplifiers.
In Europe, the xenophobic Right is also alive and well. The older cryptofascist leaders, like Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France's
Front National,
and Jörg Haider, long-time leader of Austria's Freedom Party, are now fading.
51
But a new generation of leaders is taking the old message mainstream; among them are Dutch politician Geert Wilders and Danish People's Party leader Pia Kjærsgaard.
52
Perhaps more worrying is the adoption of overtly racist policies by center-right governments: witness, for example, President Nicolas Sarkozy's expulsion of eight thousand Roma from France, Chancellor Angela Merkel's statement that Germany's multiculturalism had “utterly failed,” and the walling off of Roma communities in the Czech Republic.
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Romancing the End TimesFront National,
and Jörg Haider, long-time leader of Austria's Freedom Party, are now fading.
51
But a new generation of leaders is taking the old message mainstream; among them are Dutch politician Geert Wilders and Danish People's Party leader Pia Kjærsgaard.
52
Perhaps more worrying is the adoption of overtly racist policies by center-right governments: witness, for example, President Nicolas Sarkozy's expulsion of eight thousand Roma from France, Chancellor Angela Merkel's statement that Germany's multiculturalism had “utterly failed,” and the walling off of Roma communities in the Czech Republic.
53
Even among good liberals, one finds the temptation to embrace the armed lifeboat. Consider environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben, who has done stellar work bringing the reality of climate science to a mass audience and started the international climate activist group
350.org
. In his latest book, when he addressed the question of climate security, his politics faltered:
350.org
. In his latest book, when he addressed the question of climate security, his politics faltered:
If you think about the cramped future long enough, for instance, you can end up convinced you'll be standing over your vegetable patch with your shotgun, warding off the marauding gang that's after your carrots. . . . The marines aren't going to be much help thereâthey're not geared for Mad Maxâbut your neighbors might be. Imagining local life in a difficult world means imagining taking more responsibility not only for your food but for your defense. (Consider Switzerland, for example, where every adult male is a soldier.)
Militia
is an ugly word to many of us, but
it's worth remembering, at least for those of us with tricorne hats in the closet, that a local militia fought the fight on Lexington Green.
54
Militia
is an ugly word to many of us, but
it's worth remembering, at least for those of us with tricorne hats in the closet, that a local militia fought the fight on Lexington Green.
54
That is an image of America as a failed state. There really must be a better option. Civilization, for all its faults, has much to recommend it, much within it that is worth defending. World civilization, this largely capitalist global economy, for all its exploitation and inequity, has produced phenomenal wealth and technology. Can we really not imagine a way to redeploy and redistribute these assets and capacities?
CHAPTER 16
Implications and Possibilities
In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory of my own,
partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons
with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a
Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering
there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasper-
ated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enor-
mous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.
partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons
with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a
Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering
there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasper-
ated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enor-
mous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.
âHERMAN MELVILLE,
Moby Dick
Moby Dick
Â
Â
Â
C
IVILIZATION IS IN CRISIS , though the effects are not yet fully felt. The metabolism of the world economy is fundamentally out of sync with that of nature. And that is a mortal threat to both. In the preceding pages, I have shown how the social impacts of climate change are already upon us, articulating themselves through the preexisting crises of poverty and violence, which are the legacies of Cold War militarism and neoliberal economics. The combination of these factors, their imbrications and mutual acceleration, is the catastrophic convergence. As part of the catastrophic convergence, we see forms of violent adaptation emerging.
IVILIZATION IS IN CRISIS , though the effects are not yet fully felt. The metabolism of the world economy is fundamentally out of sync with that of nature. And that is a mortal threat to both. In the preceding pages, I have shown how the social impacts of climate change are already upon us, articulating themselves through the preexisting crises of poverty and violence, which are the legacies of Cold War militarism and neoliberal economics. The combination of these factors, their imbrications and mutual acceleration, is the catastrophic convergence. As part of the catastrophic convergence, we see forms of violent adaptation emerging.
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