Combating the Nativist Narrative
Week of December 4, 2023
Ramaswamy endorses replacement theory and Trump promises to be a dictator to achieve his white nationalist immigration agenda:
On midday Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy explicitly endorsed the great replacement theory – a white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theory. He wrote on X: “TRUTH #5: The Great Replacement Theory isn’t a grand ‘right-wing conspiracy theory,’ it’s just basic immigration policy for the modern Democrat (sic) Party.” This is far from the first time Ramaswamy has employed this white nationalist conspiracy theory, but it was the first time he has done so as explicitly. Then on the debate stage Wednesday night, Ramaswamy again promoted the deadly fiction. As the New York Times reported: “Mr. Ramaswamy claimed that the ‘great replacement theory’ — the racist idea that minorities, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to replace white Americans — was not a conspiracy theory but instead a ‘basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.’ The ‘great replacement theory has been creeping into the conservative mainstream, popularized by hosts like Tucker Carlson, and has been referenced by several mass shooters.” An excellent report from David Gilbert for WIRED found white nationalists like Nick Fuentes were ecstatic to hear their beliefs so explicitly articulated on the presidential debate stage. Fuentes “appeared visibly shocked that Ramaswamy went so far,” Gilbert noted. “He watched open-mouthed as Ramaswamy continued to boost wild conspiracies. ‘Let’s go,’ a visibly delighted Fuentes told his thousands of viewers.” Gilbert also found that an Irish collaborator of Fuentes (who helped push the riots in Ireland that we wrote about last week), celebrated Ramaswamy’s replacement rhetoric on X which received a repost from Ramaswamy’s own official X account. The repost was subsequently undone, with a Ramaswamy spokesperson claiming it was an “inadvertent retweet.” However, Ramaswamy’s explicit endorsement of racist conspiracy theory throughout the week was pretty clear and anything but “inadvertent.” Others in the hard-right media landscape, like TheBlaze and Gateway Pundit, promoted Ramaswamy's replacement theory declaration as well. Meanwhile, Donald Trump participated in a live interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity in front of an audience of supporters in Iowa, where Trump leaned into his description as a would-be dictator. In his interview with Trump, Hannity tried twice to help the former president out of the jarring description that he would rule as a dictator. Not known for his subtly Trump said, “He [Hannity] says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no. Other than Day One’” with a wink and smile. Trump cited the shorthand for his radical immigration agenda and its implementation as justification for his dictatorial rule. He said he would shut down the border on day one. “After that, I’m not a dictator,” he said. Trump’s latest comments come after his rhetoric over the last few months has drawn widespread comparisons to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini by mainstream reporters and ever more sinister immigration policy proposals aimed at creating massive camps, deporting millions, changing the constitutional definition of citizenship and employing law enforcement and National Guard from red states to enforce his policies in other states. They are spinning a narrative where non-white, permanent foreigners are the pawns delivering the existential threat to ‘real-Americans.’ And all of it takes us down the path towards a bigoted right-wing authoritarian state backed by their radicalized movement base.
COMBATING THE NARRATIVE: These are not kooks making unsavory comments from a dark basement; these are people with real power mainstreaming these ideas to massive audiences. And the violent, bigoted movements are hearing that message loud and clear. Yes, tonight, tomorrow, and the day after, Ramaswamy, Trump, and other prominent Republicans will most assuredly employ bigoted conspiratorial rhetoric again that threatens the core promise of America as a multiracial democracy. And that is exactly the point. We must urgently resist the normalization of the egregiously dangerous rhetoric coming from the highest parts of the right. The embrace of a conspiratorial white nationalist vision for America is not a slip of the tongue or a gaff, it is a strategy to normalize the assault on our democracy. Their strategy may well be designed to solicit reactive outrage, but their vision for America is outrageous – it's a revolutionary vision to remake America through a white nationalist prism. They are telling us exactly who they are and what they will do with power. Their strategic, ongoing assault on institutions to move us towards authoritarianism cannot be met with a shrugging dismissal of nothing new to see here.
Texas GOP fails to ban collaboration with Holocaust deniers while the rest of the Party peddles the replacement theory:
Earlier this month, the Republican Party of Texas voted down a resolution that would have banned members from associating with antisemites, Holocaust deniers, and Nazi sympathizers. The resolution was prompted after reports surfaced of a meeting between the leader of Defend Texas Liberty PAC, which has significant influence with Republicans in the State, and the notorious white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Failing to clear this extremely low bar, the Texas GOP attempted to hide the vote while Defend Texas Liberty PAC sought to change its name following the ensuing outrage. That is a lot of work to make sure the Texas GOP can still associate with Holocaust deniers and Nazi sympathizers. More from Gabe Ortíz HERE. However, as we weekly document, the problem of conspiratorial white nationalism and antisemitism isn’t an isolated problem. This week the NRCC sent out a fundraising email employing a version of the replacement theory claiming migrants seeking safety in the US are a "threat to the very fabric of our Democracy." It's worth stating plainly to underscore this shocking reality – the NRCC is employing a white nationalist conspiracy theory that has inspired multiple domestic terrorist attacks to raise small-dollar donations from their base. Meanwhile, Fox News reported on a conspiratorial claim from Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) about a plot to register new migrants in New York City. Far from any “smoking gun” evidence, as she claimed, Malliotakis was using her position as a Member of Congress to advance the replacement theory. Her “evidence” was language about voter registration that was included in a packet of materials given to migrants and asylum seekers staying in shelters. As the spokesperson told Fox News in a story, they still ran leading with Malliotakis' bigoted and baseless allegation: “DHS is legally required to include language around voter registration in shelter contracts and this guidance applies only to eligible clients who are citizens, and would clearly not apply to asylum seekers in shelter.” This active disinformation strategy allows election and replacement conspiracies to flourish. Over in the right-wing website swamp, they are moving a similar message. RedState published a piece pushing a replacement attack against Sen. Dick Durbin's (D-IL) speech on the Senate floor. They write: “Oh, so of course, then they can vote. What a quick way to facilitate that! I'm sure that isn't what this is about.”
COMBATING THE NARRATIVE: These specific examples are not of particular importance, just see any of the previous posts on this Substack for similar examples. Instead, we should see these as reflections of the larger sentiment motivating the radicalized movement base the GOP is trying to ride to political victory. The steady stream of these examples reveals the centrality of the confluence of nativism and antisemitism that crafts a conspiratorial story where non-white immigrants are the existential threat from below, controlled by the “globalist elites” from above to squeeze the “real Americans” in the middle to popularize the assault on the promise of a multiracial democracy. One product of this mixture is the replacement theory. Their argument isn’t about voting but voting by the wrong type of person. They want voting like the kind that “elects” Vladimir Putin in Russia or Viktor Orbán in Hungary. But the idea of democracy is, thankfully, still quite popular. So the NRCC fundraises to their base, claiming it is a conspiracy of Democrats in collusion with non-white migrants that is the real "threat to the very fabric of our Democracy." As we head into next year, we must be clear that the nativist dehumanization isn’t ancillary to the threat to democracy but core to the narrative driving it forward.
GOP’s extreme demands for critical aid to fight Putin kickstart Trump’s immigration agenda with mass nationwide roundups and an end to asylum as we know it:
From the jump, the Biden administration tied the aid package for our allies in Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel to some additional money to help manage the increased numbers of migrants arriving at the border and for cities managing the new arrivals. For that strategy to work, however, it relied on a reasonable partner committed to finding compromise or solving problems, and not a GOP enthralled by an increasingly extreme nativism bent on a cruelty and chaos agenda where immigrants remain a central threat for their political messaging. On the Senate side, Republicans took the White House’s offer as an opening to demand an end to asylum as we know it. After those negotiations broke down over the weekend, the Senate attempted and failed to pass the president's original proposal with the 60 votes necessary to overcome the Republican filibuster. Now Biden has signaled he is willing to capitulate further, adopting extreme Trump policies that gut asylum and reinstate national expedited removal – in essence, starting up mass nationwide roundups of long-settled immigrants. But these policies won’t make the border secure. Instead, they are likely to cause more problems in the immediate and long-term. Beyond bad policy, it's bad politics. No capitulation short of the white nationalist vision recently outlined by the Trump campaign will satiate the political nativism on the Republican side. As Speaker Mike Johnson has said Ukraine aid is "dependent upon enactment of transformative change to our nation’s border security laws." He is calling for the enactment of the cruel, extreme, and unworkable H.R.2 as the extortion price for supporting our allies aboard. Said another way, even if Biden agrees to kickstart the extreme Trump agenda to move the aid package out of the Senate, the House will demand even more, including indefinite detention and mass incarceration for kids. And even if Democrats concede and throw our immigration system under the bus, the very next day, the nativist narrative attack ads about an open border, fentanyl, and a migrant invasion will begin again. Recall that the GOP was echoing extremist talking points and claiming within hours of President Biden’s inauguration that he was “inducing an immigration and border crisis.” This is their political strategy and their demands are not about solving problems in the best interest of American working families but calculated to advance that political strategy on which they have made so much investment.
COMBATING THE NARRATIVE: “Biden risks a major strategic error flipping from drawing a sharp contrast with Trump’s extreme immigration agenda to adopting parts of that same extreme agenda himself,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice. “If President Biden or any Democrat thinks giving in to GOP demands on immigration will help ratchet down Republicans' ugliness and lies and political attacks on immigration - or help advance policy solutions that move us toward a more orderly border - they are wrong on both the politics and policy.” More HERE.
POLITICS UPDATES
Artificial Xenophobia: The National Republican Congressional Committee’s latest digital ad employs AI-generated images to falsely assert our National Parks will be “overrun with illegal immigrants.” They show images from the most iconic Parks with AI-generated masses of cramped camping tents, with piles of trash scattered about. The NRCC isn’t the first to employ “Artificial Xenophobia” in their political ads, nor will they be the last. The technology employed in these ads can make these xenophobic attacks more believable and more dehumanizing. It brings the bigoted conspiratorial narrative more to life which can make it more believable and more visceral for their audience. Even if the imagery isn’t created to fool people into thinking it's real, the visualization of the fiction is nevertheless a powerful tool. At the same time, the unreal images further distance the humanity of non-white migrants painted as the existential threat – a dehumanization that courts racist political violence. The NRCC ad is the latest reminder of this new disturbing trend heading into a pivotal election year, but also how much their nativist message is reliant on fiction. Read more HERE.
Impunity for supporters: The Washington Post published a must-read report this week that documents how a team of high-profile bigots and political cronies that Trump pardoned are spending their freedom helping to return the favor and return him to office. Topping that list is the notorious and disgraced former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio, who they report bonded with Trump “years earlier as they both falsely contended that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and spread phony theories about his birth certificate.” They also note Arpaio’s early support and draconian immigration positions brought him close to the former president, whose pardon “violated nearly all of the requirements established by the Justice Department for clemency requests.” But as Arpaio’s attorney, Jack Wilenchik told the Post, “Trump was not going to be hamstrung by guidelines by some Justice Department lawyers sitting in a closet,” or said another way, the law was always secondary for Trump. This report follows the campaign promises to set up massive detention camps that Arpaio could have only dreamed of. Trump’s designs on a lawless, bigoted authoritarianism are clear, those supporters granted impunity working to realize that vision are just another telling reminder. (Also see Trump’s Hannity event promising to be a dictator on day one). And Trump’s example is being followed: as the GOP House released the 40,000 hours of footage from January 6, they intentionally blurred out the faces of those engaged in the deadly riot, as part of their ongoing effort to whitewash the violent coup attempt. Speaker Mike Johnson said they blurred out the faces of the insurrectionists “because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and be charged by the DOJ.” The promise of impunity carries real practical weight for Trump allies, a reality that has deeply concerning implications.
Debate for Second Place: On Wednesday, the four Republican presidential candidates not named Donald Trump held a debate despite not having a path to the nomination barring an unforeseen massive shift in the Republican presidential landscape. As with the others, it was a predictable childish food fight and platform of extremism that, while having a marginal impact on the presidential contest, revealed the radicalization of the Party runs much deeper than Trump. The candidates affirmed their pledges to invade Mexico as part of their dangerous and counterproductive rhetoric as a pretend policy to combat the fentanyl crisis. As noted above, Vivek Ramaswamy directly invoked the deadly great replacement theory and called for mass deportations by deputizing all of the nation's police officers to round people up. While slightly less explicit but no less dangerous, Ron DeSantis also promoted the bigoted replacement theory, asserting: “Europe is committing mass suicide with mass migration, and that is illegal and legal … we should not be importing people from cultures that are hostile.” No one should mistake the conspiratorial white nationalist orientation towards immigration as the exclusive property of the Trump campaign nor as simply an agenda to manage global migration through harsh crackdowns. What DeSantis and Ramaswamy epitomized on that stage is a fundamental assault on American democracy that actively courts mass political violence dressed up as an immigration agenda. Wednesday’s spectacle should make it abundantly clear that this threat is squarely in the mainstream and cannot be banished solely by defeating Trump.
WEEKLY STATS OF NATIVIST NARRATIVE
Of the 525 GOP Twitter accounts we track, this week, they sent:
602 original tweets peddling anti-immigrant attacks mentioning “border”
95 original tweets about “open borders,” with Rep. Lauren Boebert tweet having the most reach with 336.5K Views, 1.9K Retweets, and 6.3K Likes.
72 original tweets that used “Biden Border Crisis” with Gov. Greg Abbott tweet having the most reach with 29.5K Views, 143 Retweets, and 825 Likes.
21 original tweets that mentioned both “fentanyl” and “border” with Vivek Ramaswamy tweet having the most reach with 156.4K views, 988 Retweets and 5.6K Likes.
