The Anti-American Ticket
The Anti-American Ticket
Haitian immigrants are not a political cudgel.
Hey everyone. Sorry this post is coming to you late. We were traveling last week (to Ohio, funnily enough) and things got busy. I also wanted this to be a long, detailed post about the Trump Campaign’s targeting of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, so that took time. If you need some background, this piece gives a good overview of the situation.
It has taken me a while to put this post together because the entire episode has made me incredibly angry, and it’s usually not good to write or post on social media when you’re angry. But I’ve realized that when it comes to Donald Trump’s almost decade-long crusade against immigrants, I am a little bit like the Hulk:
Part of my delay is also me coming to terms with the fact that we are in a new era of American politics: Huge swaths of the Republican Party are going to demonize vulnerable immigrants and use them as a political cudgel. For the foreseeable future, they will spit on refugees and curse asylum-seekers, channeling a truly evil and demonic spirit. That is our current reality and the Republican Party is not going to change any time soon.
During her interview with the National Association of Black Journalists, Kamala Harris was asked about Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s comments about Haitian immigrants in Ohio. She called the comments an “old trope,” and she couldn’t be more correct. There are few things older than the demonization of immigrants in America and the comments from the GOP ticket certainly aren’t novel. But they have been successful at various times in our history, which is what makes them attractive to people who hate America and lack morals.
If you have spent some time reading the Jackal, you will know that I’ve cited to the earlier iterations of the America First movement a lot. One of my most treasured possessions is a book called The Illustrious Dunderheads, which was gifted to me by Elisabeth when we first started dating. I have cited to it before1 (mostly in the context of the Russo-Ukraine War) because it highlights the quotes of many old Democratic and (mostly) Republican Congressmen in the America First movement. But its author2 - Rex Stout - helpfully laid out the goals of the Nazi Government’s propaganda arm:
To destroy faith in the elected government.
To destroy the faith of the American people in themselves.
To divide America.
To divide America from her allies.
I cannot help but see echoes of this in the current America First movement and it harkens back to Trump’s original nativist instincts.
The 20th Century America First movement was centered around an opposition to America’s involvement in World War II, but the basis for its ideology was laid out in the nativist movements of the 19th Century.
The Founding Fathers were - SURPRISE - almost all in favor of a more liberal immigration system, with Benjamin Franklin himself trying to lure European immigrants to America in 1782, telling them in a letter that “all the Rights of the Citizen” were easily acquired. George Washington also advocated for more immigrants and said that, “America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions.” Alexander Hamilton also explicitly endorsed an open immigration system.
By around 1850, the nativists begin to acquire major political power, with the American Republican Party (later the Native American Party) gaining popularity in America’s port cities. As the Whig Party collapsed, nativists began to float around in different, small constituencies, until Horace Greeley called them “know-nothings,” and then the Know-Nothing movement was born. The movement ended up within the Native American Party, and the original “America First” credo was born: The Party’s slogan was, “Our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country.”3
The difference between the original America First movement and Trump’s current take on it really just comes down to the immigrants themselves. In the 19th Century it was the Irish, Catholics, and other Europeans “poisoning the blood” of our populace. In the early 20th Century it switched to the Italians, Jews, and Asians, and in the 21st Century it is Mexicans and Haitians, at least according to Donald Trump. It is an old trope, as Kamala said. The actual “America First” slogan does date back to the 1850s, but it was in vogue throughout the late 19th and early 20th Century: The Ku Klux Klan adopted it as a slogan in the 1920s, along with Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding. When Charles Lindberg first started using the phrase to argue against American involvement in World War II, everyone knew what he meant, and his flagrant anti-Semitism wasn’t seen as a peculiarity of his politics but rather a continuation of a nativist and xenophobic thread that has been sowed into American history.
The cherry on top of all of this is that Pat Buchanan - a famous paleoconservative would-be politician - repeatedly praised Lindberg’s World War II movement and also dabbled in anti-Semitism throughout his political career, with some of his attempts to “understand Adolf Hitler” re-appearing on Tucker Carlson’s podcast. So many people have missed this, but Donald Trump’s first foray into politics was in the early 1990s, when he flirted with a run for President on the Reform Party ticket.
He was asked about KKK-leader David Duke’s run for governor of Louisiana on Larry King, and Duke’s ability to capture 55% of the white vote. Trump called it an “anger vote,” and speculated that if Duke were to run for President, he would pull a lot of votes away from George H.W. Bush. Then, Trump said one of the most fascinating things he has ever uttered in an interview: That Pat Buchanan might run for President and has “many of the same theories [as David Duke], except it’s in a better package.” Trump was actually right: Buchanan did run against Bush in 1992 and leaned heavily into anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and isolationism. I love Charles Krauthammer’s storied takedown of Buchanan:
The real problem with Buchanan (as Jacob Weisberg suggested two years ago in the New Republic) is not that his instincts are antisemitic but that they are, in various and distinct ways, fascistic. First, there is Buchanan's nativism. "What happened to make America so vulgar and coarse, so uncivil and angry?" he asks. After serving up the usual suspects ("a morally cancerous welfare state" etc.), he finds "another reason": "Since 1965, a flood tide of immigration has rolled in from the Third World, legal and illegal, as our institutions of assimilation ... disintegrated." The next paragraph advises us that since 1950 America has gone from 90 percent to less than 77 percent European. "If present trends hold," he warns, "white Americans will be a minority by 2050."
"Who speaks for the Euro-Americans?" (read: white Americans) asks Buchanan. Guess. "Is it not time to take America back?" Guess for whom and from whom. This naked appeal to racial and ethnic exclusivity puts Buchanan firmly in the tradition of Jean-Marie Le Pen and Europe's other neo-fascists whose platform is anti-immigrant resentment, fear and loathing of the unassimilated Other (my emphasis).
Trump saw all of this and correctly connected Buchanan to the KKK. “David Duke except it’s in a better package.” Say whatever you want about him (and I’ll say a lot below), but his political observations are sometimes incredibly astute. The kicker to all of this? You’ll never guess what Pat Buchanan’s Campaign slogan was in 1992. “America First.” Trump’s Campaign isn’t novel; he’s just Pat Buchanan in a “better package.”
Of course, trying to explain all of this history to Donald Trump would be like trying to explain gravity to a chicken. But you probably could explain all of it to J.D. Vance. In fact, Vance probably knows it better than all of us. Here is Kevin D. Williamson’s Krauthammer-esque takedown of Vance:
Poor people have been coming to Ohio in search of jobs in its factories and warehouses for centuries: From the original New Englanders who settled in the Northwest Territory to the Scots-Irish to the Irish and Germans in the 19th century to the Haitians today, that story has been repeated over and over. At the turn of the 20th century, a majority of Cincinnati’s population consisted of those who either were foreign-born or were the children of foreign-born parents, mostly German. Naghten Street in Columbus, on the other hand, became “Irish Broadway” in the middle of the 19th century. The J.D. Vances of that era didn’t much care for the whiskey-drinking, potato-eating papists invading their cities, but they made good use of the canals and railroads built by those illiterate exotics from distant lands.
The guy who wrote Hillbilly Elegyunderstood all that. This asshole who is running for vice president, on the other hand …
Asshole. I cannot find a more apt word to describe Vance.
Williamson’s piece is incredible reading, and worth a subscription to The Dispatch all on its own. When the cat-eating stories emerged during the debate and then percolated for days later, I was half-tempted to just link to Williamson’s piece and bore you with legal writing. But then Vance out-assholed himself.
When Vance’s team first heard about the rumors about Haitian migrants supposedly eating cats, they called the city of Springfield to find out of they were true. They were told that the city looked into all of the reports and found them to be untrue. Vance posted about them anyway. When the Wall Street Journal first contacted Vance’s team about the story, they gave the Journal contact information for a woman who had said a Haitian migrant stole her cat (presumably to eat it). When the Journal contacted the woman she said her cat was hiding in her basement, leading to her apologizing for the confusion. Vance’s team didn’t even bother to call the woman to find out if her report was true; the mere fact that she blamed it on a Haitian immigrant was enough for them.
Of course, the Haitians aren’t eating cats and J.D. Vance knows they aren’t.4 But it doesn’t matter to him, because his goal is to demonize the immigrants in Springfield so that it wins him and Trump the election.
Last week, CNN had a pretty neat scoop: They found an old blog post from J.D. Vance after Mitt Romney’s loss in the 2012 Election. It is, ultimately, a repeat of a lot of the other pre-Trump J.D. Vance posts: The GOP relies too heavily on white voters, racist tropes, and old ideas that don’t work. He specifically mentioned immigration:
On immigration, Republicans are similarly tone deaf. I became a conservative in large part because I felt that the Right was far more honest about the real state of the world. Yet a significant part of Republican immigration policy centers on the possibility of deporting 12 million people (or “self deporting” them). Think about it: we conservatives (rightly) mistrust the government to efficiently administer business loans and regulate our food supply, yet we allegedly believe that it can deport millions of unregistered aliens. The notion fails to pass the laugh test. The same can be said for too much of the party’s platform.
I would have gotten along with 2012 J.D. Vance, because I am still the same person I was back then, unlike him. Vance explains all of his old posts about Trump (e.g., that Trump was possibly “America’s Hitler”) by saying he had a “conversion” to Trumpism right around the time he decided to run for the open Senate seat in Ohio.
But what stood out to me about the old blog post wasn’t its content; it was Vance’s attempts to get rid of it. A big part of CNN’s story was that Vance actively lobbied the hosting website to delete the post and they did. If Vance’s conversion was genuine, then why did he need to delete the post? Why couldn’t he simply say, “I used to believe those things and I was wrong, and Donald Trump was right.” The only explanation is that Vance knows that everything he said in 2012 is true today. He knows the GOP’s attacks on immigrants could do lasting damage to the Party if Trump were to lose in November. He knows all of this because Vance - unlike his running mate - is not a stupid man. He could join huge chunks of conservatives who still have the same thoughts from 2012 and oppose Trump.
Instead, Vance tripled down a few days ago, when he suggested that the Haitian immigrants (who are all here legally), should be called “illegal immigrants,” simply because he wants to call them that. Sick, evil, and demonic.
There have been bomb threats at schools in Springfield’s schools and health facilities. Children had to be sent home from school. Haitian immigrants are keeping their kids inside as they watch their homes and personal belongings get vandalized. And Vance wants to keep going.
A thing that always irks me about Vance is that so many political writers talk about his “conversion story,” and not just to Trumpism. He was supposedly an Evangelical and then had a miraculous conversion to Catholicism, and now has re-modeled himself into a “Trad Bro™” who just wants to bring about a semi-Catholic Federal government that looks out for the “Common Good” of the American people. To which I can only say: Please.
When it comes to miraculous conversions that happen to coincide with the jumpstarting of a political career, I think we have to be a little more cynical. I think we have to be especially cynical when it also coincides with Vance linking up with Techno-Fascist billionaire Peter Thiel. And then we have to be triple-cynical when Vance - who, again, is a Protestant-to-Catholic convert, i.e., one of the most conservative brands of Catholics out there - did not even bother to convert his wife, who currently practices Hinduism.
Vance is neither a Catholic nor a Christian. He’s not a conservative either; it’s all a ruse. He’s just a politician. And we can know this by looking at how he treats immigrants.
The Christian Bible is possibly the most pro-immigrant religious text in world history. The Old Testament repeatedly calls on Israel to welcome migrants and refugees into its country, to treat them with dignity (Deuteronomy 24:14), and as one of their own. Jesus later tells his disciples this is one of the highest goods they can perform and He explicitly uses a term that describes an immigrant to highlight that good (Matthew 25:35). Paul repeats this in his own letters (1 Timothy 5:10).
It is in Leviticus 19:34 where we find out why God wants Israel to treat immigrants as natives: It’s because the Jews were foreigners in Egypt, where they were enslaved and mistreated. It is such a beautiful story it almost feels cheap to write it down: The Christian religion emerges from a tiny group of refugees,5 because the human race is, ultimately, a collection of refugees created with the intent of communion with God. Instead of fulfilling that created purpose, we are refugees from God, stuck here on Earth, caked in our own sin. The glory of the Cross is that it penetrates that layer of sin and allows us to commune with God again. When that happens in a legitimate way, the human heart changes and a desire to help the most vulnerable (e.g., immigrants, ostracized members of society, children in the womb) emerges.
The Trump Campaign’s targeting of society’s most vulnerable is, indeed, an old trope, but I think it is much older than Kamala Harris suspects; it is an evil that predates America.
By chance, I was near(ish) Springfield this weekend and was able to take a ride through Trump Country™, as I made the trek from Columbus to the rural outskirts of Cleveland. It was around three hours of non-Colorado driving in God’s Country Ohio, and I will fully admit I did not appreciate it as much as Williamson.
At one point on Sunday morning, I drove through a tiny back road and started counting Trump signs. At first, I was surprised because I expected to see a lot more. I remember driving around in 2016 and seeing TRUMP emblazoned on the sides of houses, so the peppering of signs I saw felt a little tame.
As I drove further I started to lose count. I got up to ten or fifteen and ultimately realized I was in the thick of Trump country (although I was encouraged by the few Harris/Walz signs I saw). As I saw the residents wander in and out of their houses, work on their old cars, and care for their lawns, I couldn’t help but wonder what they saw in Donald Trump, the billionaire from New York. Then it hit me: It’s Sunday morning. Why aren’t any of these people at church?
In hindsight, it makes sense. A few months back, the Jackal was featured in Christian Century and they cited to a post where I laid out my thoughts on Evangelicalism’s identity crisis. I said this:
I think Trump is perfect for American christianity and conservatism because he is “Christianity” with zero christianity, and he is conservative without an ounce of conservatism. He ultimately exposes everyone - from Rubio to Copeland to Robert Jeffress - as a grifter. Because Trump is the perfect representation of the human heart’s id, he pulls that out of anything that gets close to him.
Trump is great for American Christianity because he makes it cost nothing. The rural Ohioans with their Trump flags would probably call themselves more Christian than me, even though I was live-streaming my church’s service while they were mowing their lawns.
However, I did stop at a store and meet one nice Ohioan there, who gave me some brief information about hunting local bourbon (Pro-tip: Ohio forces liquor stores to sell their bourbon at retail, which means you can get great deals there). It was a Sunday and unlike his neighbors, he was at work. He also happened to be an immigrant.
I do not expect Donald Trump to stop his demonization of immigrants, even as the spotlight on him tunes up over the next month and a half. Apparently he is planning to go to Springfield and Aurora, Colorado. He will attack immigrants even though they have helped make America great, and he will do it because it has worked countless times before. But that does not make it any less anti-American or anti-Christian.
I’ll end this post with what Charles Krauthammer said about Pat Buchanan: “The man is a menace, but no great mystery.”
“Nothing will be easier to produce than a bloody revolution in North America. No other country has so many social and racial tensions. We shall be able to play on many strings there.” - Paul Joseph Goebbels (Quoted in The Illustrious Dunderheads)
I’ll be back on Friday to hopefully talk about how Kamala is currently winning.
In the original post, a copy of the book was going for $920. It has since risen to $1,103, so I have to say it again: No babe, we are not selling our copy.
Stout is credited as the editor because it is really just a compilation of quotes from sitting Congressmen.
All of this is from Daniel J. Tichenor’s Dividing Lines, a must-read if you are interested in the history of American immigration.
My favorite micro-story that emerged from all of this is that Chris Rufo (of anti-Critical Race Theory fame) offered $5,000 to anyone who could find evidence that the Haitians were eating cats in Springfield. He ended up with African immigrants cooking chicken in a different city, and then declared victory. Shortly after that, it was revealed that his own wife came to the country illegally. And he was also registered on AshleyMadison.com, a website for married people who want to cheat on their spouses. I want to say his implosion is complete, but I feel like a bigger downfall is coming.
One of my favorite writings on the origin of the Jews is from Israel Knohl, who dives into Egyptian records to find a figure awfully similar to Moses, with one caveat: He joins a leper colony and later leads them out of Egypt. Wouldn’t that be something, that Judaism and later Christianity emerges from people on the absolute, lowest rung of society.