Monday, February 20, 2012

Why Did Republicans Invite White Nationalist Peter Brimelow to their National Conference?

The Republicans recently held their 2012 National Conference "CPAC" which is an annual political conference attended by conservative activists and elected officials from across the United States. In the past, keynote speakers included: Ronald Reagans, the Bushes, Karl Rove and Mitt Romney. These speakers "Spread the News" Republicans want their attendees to hear and pass along to back in their home states. Who did they invite to speak at the 2012 CPAC conference? Peter Brimelow, an infamous White Nationalist with restrictionist views that promotes Whites Only Immigration policies and opposes multi-culturalism. In a recent interview, Brimelow, an immigrant from Great Britain, said he’s opposed to not only illegal immigration, but legal immigration too. He said it is creating a “Spanish speaking underclass parallel to the African American underclass.”
Here is what Ruben Navarette says about Brimelow at CPAC: BRIMELOW IS A BIGOT
You'll often hear that the immigration debate suffers from a lack of political will. But what it really needs is honesty and clarity. And so, thank goodness for people like Peter Brimelow. His beliefs are vile, dangerous and antithetical to the greatest traditions of this country. But what is extremely helpful is that he's honest and clear about what he believes.

Brimelow is convinced that -- as he recently told a reporter for CBS News -- "diversity is weakening American identity."

He is not alone. A few years ago, commentator Patrick Buchanan published a book where he argued that the United States was better off when most of the immigrants to its shores came from Europe and not Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Question: What do immigrants from those parts of the world have in common? Answer: They're not white.

Brimelow shares his beliefs on the website he founded -- VDARE.com. The site is named in honor of Virginia Dare, the first child born to English settlers in America before all that dreadful race mixing and diluting of bloodlines occurred. He writes books like his best-seller "Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster." And he also gives speeches and appears on panels like the one in which he participated recently at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) titled: "The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the Pursuit of Diversity Is Weakening the American Identity."
Most Americans are not as honest or as clear as Brimelow. They waste a lot of time and effort trying to keep up appearances and pretending to be more progressive and open-minded about immigration than they really are. They'll deny until their last breath that they have anything against immigrants who come to the United States legally from countries like China, Pakistan, India or Brazil. Why, this is a country of immigrants, they'll say. It's only illegal immigration they have a problem with, they'll insist.

That's not true. The three dirty little secrets about the immigration debate are that how Americans feel about immigrants has a lot to do with what country people are coming from, that racism and xenophobia are part of the equation and always have been, and that legal immigrants are as much of a target as their illegal brethren.

Powerful groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) or the Center for Immigration Studies advocate for limits on legal immigration, and they influence Congress. My congressman, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), was once a lobbyist for FAIR. Little wonder that lawmakers occasionally call for a moratorium on legal immigration or that, in the 1996 welfare reform law, one group stripped of benefits was legal immigrants.

Still, Americans cling to the fantastical claim that they love and appreciate immigrants -- as long as those immigrants come legally. I blame the indoctrination that many of us went through in public schools. We were taught that the United States is a nation of immigrants, that we draw strength from our diversity, that we should cherish our cultural differences, and that people from all over the world come here for second chances and wind up building a first-rate nation.

As someone who grew up in Great Britain and came to the United States in the mid-1970s, Brimelow missed those lessons. An immigrant who is critical of immigration, he is described as a "white nationalist" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the SPLC, the website that Brimelow founded and edits is a hate site.

I would imagine that the people who invite someone like Brimelow to address their group know exactly what to expect, and his remarks to CPAC did not disappoint.

According to CBS News' "Political Hotsheet," Brimelow said during the panel that immigration -- both legal and illegal -- was, along with multiculturalism, damaging America by creating a "Spanish-speaking underclass parallel to the African-American underclass." He described Hispanic immigrants as "completely dysfunctional" and declared the state of California as "rapidly turning into a Hispanic slum" that is "totally overrun by barrios of illegal immigrants."

Anyone else feel like they need a shower? Let me honest and clear. My Mexican-American family has been in the United States for five generations. By comparison, Peter Brimelow has been here for five minutes. No wonder he doesn't understand the first thing about America and the values that make it great.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Off topic, reading this blog is making me hungry for Tacos!

Brent Kryda said...

Much of this attitude has been inherited from the earliest colonial times when the "Black Legend" was deeply ingrained in the English psyche. Until the twentieth century, even Caucasians of Irish, Slavic, or Italian descent were discriminated against in the same manner that persons of Hispanic descent are now. Some of this still creeps in from time to time; in my personal immigration experience as a French-Canadian, I get treated lukewarmly by immigration officials until my heritage is discerned, at which point I tend to get dirty looks, paperwork, and attempts to speak to me in slow, spaced-out English (despite the fact that everything thus far had been done in English just fine!). Clearly "white European" is not enough to define who belongs here according to these people, but "white, non-accented English-speaking, preferably Protestant".

Defensores de Democracia said...

Dow Jones Industrial Index in 12988.02. breaking 13,000 soon today - NASDAQ in 2,961 and soon to break 3,000 - Standards and Poor in 1,365 -

Please all Wall Streeters and Investors kneel on the floor of New York Stocks Exchange and thank God for for President Obama :


I have said so ! - Ditto Ditto Ditto - He Dicho !! -- Roma Locuta Est, Cause Finita -


All words are superfluous when President Obama has saved America and the World of a Big Depression and now the bulls are running like mad, like in the San Fermin Fiesta of Pamplona Spain.

......

Anonymous said...

Not that you give a damn. Afterall, he is a Republican, right?

Shelby Township— Mitt Romney, facing a tough fight before Michigan's Feb. 28 primary, said he'll further outline his plan to lower taxes, reduce spending and "PROTECT" Medicare and Social Security in Detroit this week.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120221/POLITICS01/202210407/Romney-detail-tax-Medicare-Social-Security-plans-Detroit?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Anonymous said...

Are you aware that there are more Mexicans and other Latino "immigrants" here by far in the largest numbers both legally and illegally? So much for your claims of discrimination!

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