Former Trump advisers are raising money for Trump while endangering border residents and asylum seekers. A Q&A with Zachary Mueller from America’s Voice.
Wow, Melissa, very important story. This really drills down to how extremists are trying to crush democracy because they truly believe that a dictatorship is the way to run this country. It's tragically easy to fool people by fearmongering.
"Even if it’s a fraction of a percent of the people they’re speaking to, who take their rhetoric literally, that there is a military-style invasion at the border.Well, the logical conclusion of that is violence."
Well stated Todd. Your text tells the story.
In 1830 President Jackson brought about the enactment of the Indian Removal Act. The objectification of Native Americans as savages, including the Cherokees who had signed numerous treaties which conceded lands for peace, was the same end game in order to obtain native resources. In Georgia at the time , it was gold. Today it is to win an election in which White Nationalism plays on the resentment of the highly skewed incomes of working class vs. upper class Americans. Past promises of better paying jobs led to factory flight abroad to Mexico and then to China. Because corporate America is untouchable, blaming those displaced in Central America due to the same economic policies became the political game to play.
Except this is no game and neither was the Removal where tens of thousands of Indigenous peoples died due to forced displacement. At the border, no amount of xenophobia is going to stop displaced and dispossessed farmers. The gun guys want to act as if they are stopping the tide of criminality and Cartels, but they never question who is protecting drug distribution operations in major US cities. If they were so brave, they would investigate that and how banks launder drug money, and stop blaming immigrants.
Then of course they also favor arms as a solution. The problem is that straw man arm sales happen in the border zone regularly and that arms the Cartels. The idea of militias to intimidate and falsify the reasons people resist oppression is not new. It started in the colonies and then converted to slave patrols, and then to official state militias when the colonies became states.
Arizona was not a part of that history. There were however ranchers that stole key watering holes in the desert where O'odham lived, but they were not formally militia. Indigenous peoples outnumbered whites in Arizona territory until way after the civil war. Today, this form of racist violence is inserted into the border area to victimize while making money. Manifest Destiny was the genocide of Indigenous peoples. When these actors collude with Border Patrol, then the Federal Government is sanctioning state violence by using private militias, just as it has in the past.
In the Arizona constitution it is illegal for any militia to operate without the written permission of the Governor.
Jean Guerrero’s book, Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, is based on some 150 interviews with people who knew and worked with Miller. She shows his advocating that the country is in grave danger of being overwhelmed by non-White peoples. Miller has been one of the few advisors to President Trump to remain in service. He encouraged a hatred of Americans who promote policies that are inclusive of non-White ethnic groups; they would “pollute” the White gene pool. It was Stephen Miller’s advice that led to some of the harshest policies such as removing green cards, blocking the borders, and separating children from their families at the border – actions that meet technical definitions for kidnapping and torture. Stephen Miller remained on government payroll as a Trump advisor after he lost the presidency.
If we project behavior based in a belief that one “species” of human is superior, onto a worldwide screen, the horrors of racial divides, civil wars, and genocides come into focus. Hitler convinced his economically wounded citizens that the cause of their troubles was the “racially inferior” Jew. He instilled a hatred so strong that good citizens quickly turned into torturing and murdering monsters – the largest genocide in recent history.
But that is just a portion of genocides in the 20th century, all causing hundreds of thousands of deaths: the Khmer Rouge’s slaughter of Cambodians, the German siege of Leningrad, the slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda, the mass killing of Armenians and Greeks in Turkey, and the racist attacks on the Maya in Guatemala and indigenous tribes in Brazil. Wikipedia provides a much longer, sorrow-filled list under the topic “genocides by death toll.”
(This is from a book that several border crossers and I wrote, Seekers of a Stable Sky: Stories of Altruism and Immigration on the Mexicon Border, (2021) by Elaine Hampton, Sr. San Juana Mendoza, Inez, Cuca, Minerva, Anay Palomeque, Grecia orozco, Linabel Sarlat and Elvia Villescas.)
The ultimate objective is power. I wonder how quickly Trump would lose interest in anything but his own wheelings and dealings if he were to be elected in 2024.
Wow, Melissa, very important story. This really drills down to how extremists are trying to crush democracy because they truly believe that a dictatorship is the way to run this country. It's tragically easy to fool people by fearmongering.
Does the IRS know about this supposed non profit?
Good job. Keep it up.
"Even if it’s a fraction of a percent of the people they’re speaking to, who take their rhetoric literally, that there is a military-style invasion at the border.Well, the logical conclusion of that is violence."
Well stated Todd. Your text tells the story.
In 1830 President Jackson brought about the enactment of the Indian Removal Act. The objectification of Native Americans as savages, including the Cherokees who had signed numerous treaties which conceded lands for peace, was the same end game in order to obtain native resources. In Georgia at the time , it was gold. Today it is to win an election in which White Nationalism plays on the resentment of the highly skewed incomes of working class vs. upper class Americans. Past promises of better paying jobs led to factory flight abroad to Mexico and then to China. Because corporate America is untouchable, blaming those displaced in Central America due to the same economic policies became the political game to play.
Except this is no game and neither was the Removal where tens of thousands of Indigenous peoples died due to forced displacement. At the border, no amount of xenophobia is going to stop displaced and dispossessed farmers. The gun guys want to act as if they are stopping the tide of criminality and Cartels, but they never question who is protecting drug distribution operations in major US cities. If they were so brave, they would investigate that and how banks launder drug money, and stop blaming immigrants.
Then of course they also favor arms as a solution. The problem is that straw man arm sales happen in the border zone regularly and that arms the Cartels. The idea of militias to intimidate and falsify the reasons people resist oppression is not new. It started in the colonies and then converted to slave patrols, and then to official state militias when the colonies became states.
Arizona was not a part of that history. There were however ranchers that stole key watering holes in the desert where O'odham lived, but they were not formally militia. Indigenous peoples outnumbered whites in Arizona territory until way after the civil war. Today, this form of racist violence is inserted into the border area to victimize while making money. Manifest Destiny was the genocide of Indigenous peoples. When these actors collude with Border Patrol, then the Federal Government is sanctioning state violence by using private militias, just as it has in the past.
In the Arizona constitution it is illegal for any militia to operate without the written permission of the Governor.
Guv? where are you?
Jean Guerrero’s book, Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, is based on some 150 interviews with people who knew and worked with Miller. She shows his advocating that the country is in grave danger of being overwhelmed by non-White peoples. Miller has been one of the few advisors to President Trump to remain in service. He encouraged a hatred of Americans who promote policies that are inclusive of non-White ethnic groups; they would “pollute” the White gene pool. It was Stephen Miller’s advice that led to some of the harshest policies such as removing green cards, blocking the borders, and separating children from their families at the border – actions that meet technical definitions for kidnapping and torture. Stephen Miller remained on government payroll as a Trump advisor after he lost the presidency.
If we project behavior based in a belief that one “species” of human is superior, onto a worldwide screen, the horrors of racial divides, civil wars, and genocides come into focus. Hitler convinced his economically wounded citizens that the cause of their troubles was the “racially inferior” Jew. He instilled a hatred so strong that good citizens quickly turned into torturing and murdering monsters – the largest genocide in recent history.
But that is just a portion of genocides in the 20th century, all causing hundreds of thousands of deaths: the Khmer Rouge’s slaughter of Cambodians, the German siege of Leningrad, the slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda, the mass killing of Armenians and Greeks in Turkey, and the racist attacks on the Maya in Guatemala and indigenous tribes in Brazil. Wikipedia provides a much longer, sorrow-filled list under the topic “genocides by death toll.”
(This is from a book that several border crossers and I wrote, Seekers of a Stable Sky: Stories of Altruism and Immigration on the Mexicon Border, (2021) by Elaine Hampton, Sr. San Juana Mendoza, Inez, Cuca, Minerva, Anay Palomeque, Grecia orozco, Linabel Sarlat and Elvia Villescas.)
Excellent information. Thank you!
The ultimate objective is power. I wonder how quickly Trump would lose interest in anything but his own wheelings and dealings if he were to be elected in 2024.
Melissa, my apologies, this was our article, not Todd's. Very well done.