Combating the Nativist Narrative - Weekly Summary
Combating the Nativist Narrative - Weekly Summary
Week of June 26, 2023
THREE OPPOSITION MESSAGES FROM THE WEEK
1 - White nationalist slogans are central to DeSantis’ immigration plan rollout: Ron DeSantis traveled to remote Eagle Pass, Texas, on Monday morning to have the southern border as a backdrop for the rollout of his wildly extreme and unworkable immigration plan. His plan promises to: overturn the 14th Amendment to lock citizenship behind a wall of white supremacy, challenge the Supreme Court to allow indefinite detention of migrant children, and initiate a mass deportation regime, among a host of other radical and dangerous proposals. And DeSantis made the white nationalist slogan “stop the invasion” the centerpiece of the rollout. This conspiracy theory about a so-called “invasion” has inspired multiple deadly domestic terrorists. Beyond invoking a bigoted slogan linked to deadly violence, DeSantis called for “deadly force” to be used against those suspected of tampering with the border wall to gain entry into the US. His rollout should be viewed for exactly what it was: an ugly incitement to violence for anyone with hate in their heart and a gun in their hand. At The Washington Post, Greg Sargent encapsulated the rollout, noting DeSantis’ “ugly descent into ‘invasion’ hysteria.” The news this week about racist and anti-semitic texts from Pedro Gonzalez, a far-right influencer vocally supporting DeSantis, is not surprising nor unique, but it further illustrates the urgent concerns about the type of people the DeSantis campaign is inspiring. The line Andrew Gillum from their 2018 gubernatorial debate feels more prescient than ever, saying: “I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”
COMBATING THE NARRATIVE: The Florida Governor says he wants to overturn the 14th Amendment, indefinitely detain children and create a mass-deportation regime that would uproot families and destabilize communities across the country. It’s as ugly as it is unworkable.
2 - After six months of a GOP House majority, what do they have to show for it besides empowering the extremists? After six months of the Republican majority, members have vanishingly few accomplishments that substantially improve the lives of the working families in their Districts. For many battleground members, like Reps. Monica De La Cruz (TX-15), Lori Chavez- DeRemer (OR-05), Juan Ciscomani (AZ-06), David Valadao (CA-22), Mike Garcia (CA-27), or Jen Kiggans (VA-02), their votes are not reflective of bipartisan solution-oriented deal-making but instead are empowering the vocal extremists and obstructionists in their party. Actual votes, not words, matter and show their true agenda. Last week these members provided the votes to advance Rep. Lauren Boebert’s sham impeachment effort of President Biden, which was steeped in nativist disinformation and white nationalist conspiracies about a so-called “invasion” – ideas that have inspired multiple domestic terrorist attacks. A few weeks prior, they gave the critical votes to pass the extreme, cruel and unworkable Child Deportation Act (H.R. 2). Six months in, with several votes tallied, these battleground members are building quite a repertoire of evidence and a consistent voting pattern of empowering the GOP’s drift further into extremes on immigration, while remaining silent on the deadly white nationalism espoused by their colleagues. It's well past time these elected leaders are asked to defend these positions on the record.
COMBATING THE NARRATIVE: Hey @RepCiscomani is there an affirmative vision for the House GOP caucus or, as it seems, is the priority partisan impeachments over baseless accusations and policy disagreements?
3 - Desperate for chaos, Republicans reveal their hand that for them, it's not about the “right-way” but the right look on migration: Flailing about after their predicted chaos did not come to pass in the wake of the ending of the Title 42 policy Republicans are now further revealing their concern lays in the ability to seek asylum not concerns over an orderly process. Sen. John “Cornyn-con” provided a revealing example on Tuesday, whining on Twitter that President Biden is supposably “‘cooking the books’ by funneling migrants to ports of entry & then deeming their entry into the U.S. legal.” An outlandish assertion that is more indicative of the fact that desperate people fleeing for their lives are also desperate to follow an orderly process to legally enter the US than any nefarious plot by the Biden administration. American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick pointed out the further hypocritical angle of his faux concern of having asylum seekers apply at ports of entry as it is exactly what the Trump administration asked migrants to do. While there is plenty to criticize about Biden’s handling of the asylum system, Republicans' attempts to stir up panic about a less irregular process reveal that the concern is over the type of asylum seeker, not the process.
COMBATING THE NARRATIVE: While there is plenty to criticize about Biden’s handling of the asylum system, Republicans' attempts to stir up panic about a less irregular asylum process reveals that the GOP's concern is more about what asylum seeker looks like & not over the lack of an orderly process.
ELECTORAL UPDATES
DeSantis Part 2: Greg Sargent wrote about DeSantis’ immigration plan in his column for Washington Post this week, concluding: “DeSantis views Trump’s inability to implement his horrors at full scale as lamentable — as something that should be rectified, and even outdone.” Sargent notes the steep hurdles DeSantis’ plan would face beyond the confidence and toughness he promises to uniquely bring, but we have Florida as an ongoing reminder of what even a sliver of the draconian nativist agenda he’s proposing looks like when the rhetoric is turned into policy. And on the eve of implementation of his show-me-your-papers legislation the backlash grows alongside the threats to the economy with the Florida Policy Institute estimating $12 billion per year loss in State GDP. And as MSNBC columnist Julio Ricardo Varela wrote this week: “Fortunately, the kind of political game he [DeSantis] and Republicans are playing hasn’t led to many recent wins. Cries of an immigrant invasion and the so-called great replacement theory didn’t lead to the results Republicans hoped for in 2018, 2020 or 2022.” A point we have noted in detail, that despite a massive investment into nativism, it has failed to deliver and may have backfired and alienated the general electorate.
Fundraising Emails: While the campaign fundraising emails rarely stop, they are about to ramp up as candidates look to pad their war chests. Nativist narratives remain a consistent and constant part of the opposition's email strategy. Vocal hard-right members who will not face serious election challenges still regularly fundraise off the issue, like Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) who fearmongered in a fundraising email this week about “5 million illegal migrant encounters along the southern border.” Meanwhile Speaker McCarthy signed an email from the NRCC fearmongering about “deadly drugs crossing our border.”
It’s not just Trump and DeSantis embracing nativism: Beyond the front runners, the entire GOP presidential primary is an object lesson on how extreme nativism has captured the GOP. (Check out a great piece on the topic from this week from Gabe Ortiz, here.) One example is the dangerously absurd idea that the US should bomb and send troops (a real invasion) into Mexico to combat the fentanyl crisis. Vox’s Zack Beauchamp wrote an excellent explainer on how this “astonishingly bad idea” has been so quickly mainstreamed. An NBC poll released over the weekend found that 55% of registered voters and 86% of likely Republican primary voters support “deploying the U.S. military to the Mexican border to stop illegal drugs from entering the country.” While the poll does not make the false association between migration and illicit drug smuggling, Republicans, and right wing media regularly do. They pushed this nativist narrative relentlessly over the last two years, to the tune of 600 paid ads through the ‘22 cycle, and there are indications that this pernicious myth is taking hold. Most assuredly, the GOP will continue down this path as it clearly works for their base. However, when held to account for their extremism, it may be a liability outside of a primary.
WEEKLY STATS OF NATIVIST NARRATIVE
Of the 400 GOP Twitter accounts we track, this week, they sent:
156 original tweets peddling anti-immigrant attacks mentioning “border”
25 original tweets about “open borders,” with Ron DeSantis tweet having the most reach with 255.5K Views, 361 Retweets, and 3,419 Likes.
12 original tweets that used “Biden Border Crisis” with Ted Cruz tweet having the most reach with 1.9M Views, 1,910 Retweets, and 15K Likes.
16 original tweets that mentioned both “fentanyl” and “border” with Ron DeSantis tweet having the most reach with 434K views, 616 Retweets and 4,978 Likes.