Because their lives are shit and they need somebody to blame.
The right will accept a boot on their face as long as they’ve got a face on which to rest their own boot.
Oh we’ve been fighting about this for centuries
I mean they blare “brown man make your life bad” 24/7 on state tv
When the rich figured out that our innate tribalism could be weaponized to distract us from their abuse, lawlessness, and greed.
Once we stopped needing cheap labor to build the railroads and mine ore and occupy native lands and farm crops and roof houses and paint walls and run the cash register at the gas station. Actually we still need immigrants for some of that in order to sustain the level of growth required to fund our retirement plans and do the jobs that we would rather not do for wages that we would rather not work for. It looks like Republicans are hoping to fuel that growth internally through reproduction among existing citizens (under the theory that kids will work for lower wages), while the democrats want to rely on immigrants. That’s my theory anyway.
The interesting thing is that the US economy (in fact, even the economy worldwide) is probably gonna face a steep decline in demand of human labor in the next few decades.
The reasons include the limits to growth (i.e. the economy can’t grow anymore due to natural constraints, but growth is what causes the majority of demand for human labor) and automation and AI.
Having a higher number of people in the country when there’s a low demand for human labor (a.k.a. few jobs) means higher unemployment numbers, and that in turn is more expensive for the country, because the people still need resources so the country has to pay out unemployment money if it wants to avoid revolts. Now, companies face higher taxation, and everyone is worse off. If people make fewer children today and there’s less immigration, both companies and citizens will be better off in 20 years from now, because they face lower unemployment rates. This insight is relatively new (because until now, supply of human labor was the constraining factor for economic growth), but interesting.
The US has always had an anti-immigrant streak. Whoever the last group are they are unhappy with the next group. The Irish were not welcome, except by Tammany Hall, then the Italians were suspect. The Chinese have always been seen as suspicious and we all know what happened to the Japanese in WW2. Interestingly those of German descent haven’t been suspect, probably because they formed a large chunk of the US (PA, OH) and Eisenhower had German ancestry.
I doubt any country has never had an issue with someone seen as outsiders.
DOJ did denaturalize many members of the German American Bund due to their ties with the Nazi party.
Source: You Are Not American by Amanda Frost, great book.
It’s just super wrong all around.
https://ohiomemory.ohiohistory.org/archives/3673
Because Google sucks now that’s the best source you’re getting but people should at least be aware that the point of calling them “Huns” was like excluding Irish, Italians, Slavs, and Spaniards from “whiteness,” a racial slur ultimately accusing them of having non-white ancestors.
Because racists are very stupid, the fact that the Anglo-Saxon conquests happened after the Hunnic conquests of what would become Germany and most of Europe for that matter never seemed to be worth thinking about.
The US is not anti immigrant.
There’s a few greedy white people with lots of money who bought the media and the elections who are anti-immigrant.
Don’t confuse policy with popular sentiment.
There are a few greedy people who figure out that no one will notice them picking folks pockets if they distract them with racism.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Lyndon B. Johnson
I get what you’re going for, but it’s hard to believe that when said billionaires’ propaganda campaign was so easily and eagerly adopted by the majority of one of our political party bases. Including some of our own family members who had never openly expressed such sentiments before.
Propaganda is powerful, but can it make you suddenly, deeply believe something you weren’t already secretly feeling?
That is pretty much the point of propaganda. It takes advantage of people’s psychology to manipulate them.
This. I recommend reading Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent. Or, you could watch the movie
For sure, great book and movie!
Maybe. Fictional stories can make you feel things, even though these stories aren’t real. Just look at (fiction) movies, tv shows, books. If people can watch scary movies and get scared of fiction, maybe people can be made to be scared of other, real life people. Or worried, or whatever. Especially if maybe one doesn’t know or doesn’t have experience enough on the matter at hand.
The vast majority of people who lean right are not individually as hateful as youtube and social media and most of the content algorithmically fed to us would have us believe.
Do they say horrible things around each other? Yes, they ramp up the rhetoric and make it seem like they’re absolute super-villains at times… but what we really miss in all this is how shallow their values are. They are not complicated people. They go with the popular sentiment but are so comfortable living in a state of cognitive dissonance that they will work all day with a team of black and hispanic coworkers, get along great, consider them true, best friends… then go home and upvote the most racist shit you’ve ever seen on facebook because it makes them laugh. They simply cannot make comparisons or connections the way the other ~66% of the population does, so they don’t see things like hypocrisy or inconsistency. They don’t see larger pictures. They don’t understand the concept of punching down.
As a group, they are our country’s biggest problem, a menace, a scourge upon the Earth who are enabling the worst, most malicious people to engage in plans of oppression we haven’t seen in a century.
But as individuals, we could reach almost each of them. They’re stupid enough to believe whatever we tell them and we’re afraid of them. The math is broken.
We have to get more social, we have to get more confrontational, we have to get less isolated.
I will get some rando lefties screaming at me that they don’t want to “compromise with their oppressors” and that’s fine. Don’t. I’m not making you personally, and if you get that insinuation that I’m telling you personally to do something traumatic, you’re part of the problem. For everyone else, I’ve changed the hearts of people with apparently “set in” bigotry simply by listening and talking to them. It’s not jedi mind magic, it’s just a skill that comes from engaging with people in real life.
Historically, I’m quite certain that the “small” people (e.g. peasants, and such) had always had incredibly right-wing views, including tribalism (we’re better than anyone else, for no reason, we just are), “hard-work” ethics, who doesn’t work doesn’t deserve to eat, and such.
The landlords couldn’t care less about immigration. As long as the immigrants pay their taxes, the landlord is happy. Why would they bother?
It’s the peasants who see their land occupied (sothat their own land’s relative share decreases) who get furious at the foreigners who take their jobs and eat their food, while also possibly bringing infectious diseases and an inferior way of life.
They have always been anti-immigrant. Gor the longest time they simply tolerated it, but no more.
As for the the statue of liberty, a, it was built by the French not Americans, b, I can also happily say that I pride myself on being a great person, while in truth being a terrible peraon.
General population was always anti immigrant but the ruling class was smart enough to understand they needed immigration to sustain the growth. What changed is that everyone got so dumb they don’t know what’s in their best interest anymore.
So it turns out that the Statue of Liberty never represented the opinions of all Americans to begin with
A large majority of ‘anti-immigrant’ people wouldn’t care if say, a French person immigrated into their country. When these people say immigrants, most of the time they mean people of color.
Yes. It’s a polite way of being racist with most. And if they are asked, they say “I can’t be racist [so and so] is my friend and they are black” or some dumb shit.
Easier communication. Thousands of people each living far apart had no way to amplify each other. Immigrants were mostly centered around cities, thus the rural divide.
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Sigmund Freud’s work, and those who built upon it after his death, proved humans are very very very very easy on a large sample size to mislead.
Theres even a phrase “you are not immune to propaganda.”
