Source: The Huffington Post
By Randall Amster
Peace educator, author, and activist
One of the unspoken tragedies and implicit intentions of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, is the promotion of a climate of fear among certain segments of the population. This fear-mongering strategy has been cooked up by the bill’s leading proponents and most likely beneficiaries: the governor, rightwing state legislators, and an unscrupulous sheriff who shall remain nameless. As the political leadership of a failing state, they should be squarely on the hot seat, but instead they have managed to deflect scrutiny and pass the buck down the ladder to the bottom rung instead.
Here in Arizona, constant talk of murders, beheadings, escalating crime, and a rising tide of violence due to the presence of illegal immigrants has fanned the flames of terror and suspicion. It is empirically false but emotionally persuasive, in the true spirit of propaganda and demagoguery. Reporters’ questions about the propriety of elected officials denigrating their own state can be sidestepped — but now, the chickens may be coming home to roost, as indicated by a recent article in The Daily Beast:
[T]he fierce debate over Arizona’s new migrant law … has stirred up the ugly underside of immigration — hate groups with nativist and white-supremacist links. Long story short, Arizona’s new immigration law gives “racism a place to hide,” says Roxanne Doty, an Arizona State University professor who has long studied the nexus of white supremacy and immigration policy in Arizona…. “My view is you can’t separate white supremacists from what is going on with Arizona immigration,” Professor Doty says. “Even if politicians say they aren’t associated with white supremacists, the ideas behind SB 1070 are very attractive to white supremacists….”
There is mounting evidence to support these claims, including the presence of avowed neo-Nazis “wearing camouflage and toting high-powered firearms” while patrolling for — and detaining — illegal aliens on the Arizona-Mexico border. As reported by the Associated Press and reprinted in papers around the state:
Jason “J.T.” Ready is taking matters into his own hands, declaring war on “narco-terrorists” and keeping an eye out for illegal immigrants…. Ready’s group is heavily armed and identifies with the National Socialist Movement, an organization that believes only non-Jewish, white heterosexuals should be American citizens and that everyone who isn’t white should leave the country “peacefully or by force.” … He and his friends are outfitted with military fatigues, body armor and gas masks, and carry assault rifles. Ready takes offense at the term “neo-Nazi,” but admits he identifies with the National Socialist Movement. “These are explicit Nazis,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. “These are people who wear swastikas on their sleeves.” Ready is a reflection of the anger over illegal immigration in Arizona….
Read the rest of this great post by clicking here.
