GOPspeak: Multiculturalism breeds terrorism

Gosh, with things going to hell in a handbasket over in Iraq, it sure is good to know that the Republican Congress still has its eye on making sure our troops clamp down on that major front in the War on Terror known as the Brown Peril.

According to the Brownsville (Texas) Herald, the GOP-led House seems to have trouble distinguishing between illegal immigrants and terrorists:

The U.S. House on Wednesday passed an amendment to a defense bill that would place soldiers along the nation's borders.

The amendment, submitted by U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., is part of the National Defense Authorization Act designed to bolster national security by providing more aircraft, missiles, missile defense systems and personnel.

The bill -- House Resolution 4200 -- will be negotiated in House and Senate committees to determine further details, including whether soldiers would be placed at both the northern and southern borders.

U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, opposes the amendment, calling it an "insult" to border communities.

"We already have personnel to take care our borders," Ortiz said, referring to Border Patrol agents.

"Soldiers are trained to kill. They’re trained to kill the enemy."

The story goes on to point out that in situations where military personnel have been placed on the borders, violence has a propensity for cropping up. Moreover, soldiers are not trained at handling border crossings; that's what we pay a Border Patrol for.

"Once again Republicans are attempting to use the men and women of our armed services to promote an anti-immigrant agenda," Rodriguez said. "We all agree that we need to find ways to secure our borders, but immigrants from Mexico and Canada are not our enemy.

"Our troops are already over-extended serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are continuously hearing reports that they need more resources and more manpower to fulfill their duties."

It's not surprising, I suppose, that this confusion occurs. Shutting down the borders and conflating illegal immigration with terrorism is, after all, a staple not only of Michael Savage's radio show, but of the anti-immigration crowd that has been ratcheting up its rhetoric to extremist levels in the past year or more.

It's even being used to attack moderate Republicans who oppose the anti-immigrant agenda, including Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah, who is sponsoring a bill to make it legal for "guest workers" to remain undocumented. He's being attacked in the GOP primary by an extremist anti-immigrant outfit called the Coalition for the Future American Worker (which, you may recall, has also insinuated itself in a Texas congressional race):

"Chris Cannon's bill comes at a time when immigration is costing Utah taxpayers millions," says the radio advertisement playing on several stations along the Wasatch Front.

"When Utah's classrooms are overcrowded, the state is facing water shortages and 15 million Americans can't find full-time jobs. When we now know two of the first World Trade Center bombers were -- you guessed it -- agricultural guest workers driving taxis in New York."

Cannon's campaign said the ads are misleading, especially since the wording is not clear that the message is referring to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, not the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that leveled the two towers.

Meanwhile, up in Oklahoma, state legislators decided to stamp their collective foot and urge the federal government to get tough on illegal immigrants.

The problem? They're too insular. They form their own communities and refuse to learn English:

State Rep. Carolyn Coleman, R-Moore, introduced the resolution May 3. It was signed out of committee without a hearing two days later and approved by the full House on a voice vote May 12.

There was no debate.

"It's over. It's gone," Coleman said Tuesday. She said she was prepared to respond if House members tried to describe the measure as anti-Hispanic, but she never got a chance.

"It just didn't come up," she said.

House Concurrent Resolution 1083 is now before the Senate, where Hispanic activists, playing catch-up, hope to kill it.

The resolution urges President Bush, Congress and the Department of Homeland Security "to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to deal with illegal immigration in the United States."

Coleman said she introduced the resolution because she is tired of illegal immigrants in this country.

"If they want to come in legally through the right channels and integrate into the American culture, that's great. But when they don't integrate and live in their own little subculture, that's not fair to them. They don't learn English. That's not right. We are not multicultural," Coleman said.

Students of history are familiar with these complaints, since they have been leveled against virtually every group of immigrants to come to the United States. Of course, the language complaint also bespeaks a peculiarly American bit of unthinking arrogance about other languages; Americans are possibly the only people on Earth who are positively insulted that people from other nations have failed to learn how to speak English.

The Midwest, as we've noted previously, is quickly becoming a racial and ethnic flashpoint as its Hispanic population continues to swell, particularly in previously heterogeneous white communities.

The attack on multiculturalism, however, is particularly noteworthy here in this context. Because this is the same point at which the far right's most virulent extremists hope to exploit irritation with various immigrants and the appearance of different cultures.

Take, for instance, the recent dustup in the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck, where the public broadcast of a mosque's evening calls to prayer were recently approved by city noise ordinance. The response, as Laura Berman reported recently in the Detroit News including attracting the National Alliance:

The National Alliance, a neo-Nazi-like group whose national clubhouse is based in West Virginia, is circulating fliers to oppose the noise ordinance change, which allows a Hamtramck mosque to broadcast its call to prayer by loudspeaker.

The ordinance has made international news. At a recent City Council meeting, a charismatic Christian group from Ohio drove 5 1/2 hours to protest the mosque's "noise."

One little mosque's request for a legal variance has been heard around the world, largely because it's viewed as an emblem of the ongoing culture wars: multiculturalism versus Eurocentrism, religious freedom versus freedom from religion.

So many rights. So little time to fight about them.

Or, as the National Alliance flier sneers, "Has alarm clock technology not found its way to the Middle East?"

The National Alliance, whose hotline recording describes itself as an advocacy group for "white people," is attempting to insinuate itself into a Hamtramck petition drive to overturn the ordinance. Hamtramck organizers have insisted they aren’t allying themselves with the fringe-group Alliance, which likes to say it's a "race-based organization."

I've discussed previously the ways that the current immigration debate are feeding extremist fires. Attacks on multiculturalism particularly have a dark underside to them, since the chief alternative to multiculturalism is white supremacy; and as we can see in all these cases, that force is an important driver in this debate.