Certain politicians try to dress up their rhetoric about immigration as a concern for national security. But they’re really peddling an old, racist theory that has already fueled several massacres in the United States, an alliance of eight anti-hate groups report.
They say a slew of public statements and some legislative and state actions are based on the “great replacement” theory — a belief that shadowy, often-Jewish actors are orchestrating mass immigration by people of color to break the dominance of white people in American society. The theory has been connected to racist massacres in El Paso, Buffalo and Pittsburgh in which Hispanic, Black and Jewish people were targeted, respectively.
The anti-hate groups include the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Western States Center, and the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. Issued earlier this month, their report documents “a disturbing trend among a faction of the 118th Congress: the normalization and amplification of xenophobic ‘great replacement’ and ‘invasion’ conspiracy theories.”
Peddling the notion that immigrants are “invading” the United States as part of some nefarious plot is to promote a lie.
U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra has defined “‘invasion’ as a hostile and organized military force, too powerful to be dealt with by ordinary judicial proceedings.” Even when the numbers of undocumented immigrants crossing the border peaked, there was never any evidence that they were part of a military force of any kind.
There’s also the fact that claims that immigration is a plot to subsume white power come from the most evidence-free precincts of the conspiracy world.
It’s also relevant to note that despite the fact that former President Donald Trump relentlessly hypes stories of crimes committed by the undocumented, that group commits crimes at substantially lower rates than the native-born.
People who study hate speech say claims of an invasion or a great replacement dehumanize immigrants and people of color and make them targets of violent extremists.
Despite their inaccuracy and their toxicity, many in the current Congress have made statements related to those theories.
“As of publication, the 118th Congress has held more than 30 Congressional hearings where bigoted conspiracies of cultural replacement or an invasion were espoused, and dozens of… immigration hardliners, far-right figures, and members of SPLC-designated anti-immigrant hate groups were called to testify,” the report said. “In total, there have been 1,411 unique social media posts from official congressional accounts promoting the same bigoted conspiracies.”
The report cited statements made by dozens of lawmakers, including several from Ohio.
For example, U.S. Rep. Warren Davidson of Troy on June 27, 2023 posted on X, “America welcomes about 1-million new citizens each year. An organized invasion and occupation is not the same thing. Border security is national security and Congress must restore our sovereign southern border with appropriations/impeachment.”
“Impeachment” referred to an attempt to oust Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The effort failed, but Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, all but accused him of plotting to destroy the United States.
She said Mayorkas “has inflicted great damage on our cities and families, the kind you would expect from a hostile foreign adversary looking to destabilize America,” the report said. “Criminal illegal immigrants are murdering, raping, and beating people in broad daylight. This is the death and destruction of our country and people, not just a policy difference.”
Never one to be outdone, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, took the floor during the impeachment debate and accused the Homeland Security secretary of actively working to take the country down.
“Mayorkas is guilty of aiding and abetting the complete invasion of our country by gang members, murderers, rapists, and thousands of immigrants,” she said.
The report also said that conspiracy theories about an invasion and the great replacement have spurred legislation.
For example, Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, “introduced H.R. 552: ‘No Tax Dollars for the United Nations’ Immigration Invasion Act,’ which would prohibit the federal government from making contributions to the United Nations migrant and refugee agencies. The U.S. has given bipartisan support to the UN refugee agency for over 70 years,” the report said.
It adds that “coded versions of replacement-style ideas” are manifesting at the state level.
Despite Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, voter fraud of any kind is exceedingly rare. So rare that when expressed as a percentage, it’s usually a number that starts 0.000…”
Whipping up unfounded fears of fraud to justify measures that reduce minority voting isn’t new. But the New York Times in 2022 reported a new trend — Republican officials claiming that undocumented immigrants were voting in substantial numbers.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has undertaken several potentially suppressive measures, supposedly to stop undocumented immigrants from voting.
Last week, he referred 597 cases of possible non-citizen registration for prosecution, but LaRose’s batting average in this arena isn’t good. An investigation by the Capital Journal last year found that of the 521 cases of noncitizen voting referred to law enforcement up to that point in LaRose’s tenure, just one resulted in prosecution. LaRose has been in office since the start of 2019, and the number of ballots cast in the state since then is well over 10 million.
However, LaRose continues to conduct voter purges that opponents say disproportionately target voters of color, and his office has improperly purged citizens from the voting rolls.
Yet he was back on X last week, again behaving as if noncitizen voting was a substantial problem in Ohio.
“It is my sworn-duty to ensure only U.S. citizens vote in Ohio’s elections,” LeRose said. “Following the most extensive citizenship verification audit ever conducted, our Public Integrity Division has now formally referred evidence of noncitizen voter registrations to the Ohio AG for potential prosecution.”
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