The Real Reason Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Is So Dangerous

It's been a long, boiling summer of race-baiting in America, and anti-immigrant sentiment reached a fever pitch with a spike of hate crimes in the past few weeks against Muslim Americans and Latinos.

Last week, Politico deemed immigration the primary battleground of the new American culture wars. In the lead-up to the next big Tea Party bash in Washington, it's worth taking a step back and looking at the narrowing of American identity that's being pushed from the right this summer, and the role militant white supremacist groups are playing behind the scenes.

The narrowing of American identity, a brief summer recap:

May: Chicano history and African American history suddenly don't count as 'real' American history, and encourage the overthrow of the American government.

July: Muslims aren't 'real Americans,' and "each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government."

August: Threats to the American government: babies and moms.

It's funny that, with all this fear about the American government being overthrown, there's relatively little coverage of the people who are actually calling for the overthrow of the American government: Militant white supremacists, many of whom are looking to the tea party as a platform for mainstream appeal.

A number of connections between the "popular" anti-immigrant movement and militant white supremacist groups have come to light over the past year. A recognized hate group has been behind SB 1070 copy-cat legislation. Neo-Nazi message boards heart Pam Geller's articles. Rick Rowley and Jacquie Soohen of Big Noise Films produced a segment for Al Jazeera English earlier this year documenting American Neo Nazis' turn toward the mainstream. One major theme is that anti-immigrant rhetoric from media figures and politicians has empowered them to take their message to the general public:

Note how white supremacists have co-opted the slogan "USA! USA!" — it's the narrowing of the American identity in a frightening nutshell.

Abhi at Sepia Mutiny, a blog of Indian American students and young professionals, makes the case that the most recent spate of nativism isn't just going to have long-term implications for Muslims and Mexicans — it's going to have consequences for anyone who looks, thinks, or acts in a way that falls outside of a narrow vision of an exclusively white, straight, Christian, isolationist, conservative America.

"In no way am I trying to say that Muslims should not be both concerned and saddened by what is happening right now," Abhi writes. "On the contrary, I am saying that none of us non-Muslims should for a second believe that we will be spared or that we need not concern ourselves because we are not the immediate targets of this ugly behavior by some politicians and media organizations. This isn’t just the Muslim and Latino community’s problem. This is the Global American’s problem too."

He mentions that part of the blame lays with mainstream politicians who are stirring these tensions up for political gain, something that also comes up in a Black Youth Project post linking today's anti-immigrant rhetoric to Nixon's southern strategy in the 1960

As Leonard Zeskin, author of Blood and Politics, told Rowley and Soohen: "There's two hearts beating in the American breast.  One's multiracial, democratic. And there's a white heart, if you will, that is narrow and exclusionary. At this moment there's a struggle going on in the United States. Both hearts are there, both beating strong, and which one will become dominant has yet to be decided."

We have to decide which America we want to inherit, before someone else makes the choice for us. Calling out the narrowing of American identity wherever we see it is a first step.

Braden Goyette is a staff writer for Campus Progress.

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