By Tim Graham ~
New York Times national politics reporter Jazmine Ulloa has deputized herself to patrol the parameters of acceptable political discourse from her liberal perspective, attacked Republicans candidates again for daring to call the influx of immigrants across our southern border an “invasion,” in Sunday’s edition: “Talk of an Immigrant ‘Invasion’ Grows in Republican Ads and Speech.”
As the elections loom, Ulloa’s hypersensitive language radar seems tuned only to the words of one political party.
A campaign ad from a Republican congressional candidate from Indiana sums up the arrival of migrants at the border with one word. He doesn’t call it a problem or a crisis.
He calls it an “invasion.”
….
It was not so long ago that the term invasion had been mostly relegated to the margins of the national immigration debate. Many candidates and political figures tended to avoid the word, which echoed demagoguery in previous centuries targeting Asian, Latino and European immigrants. Few mainstream Republicans dared use it.
….
The resurgence of the term exemplifies the shift in Republican rhetoric in the era of former President Donald J. Trump and his right-wing supporters. Language once considered hostile has become common, sometimes precisely because it runs counter to politically correct sensibilities. Immigration has also become more divisive, with even Democratic mayors complaining about the number of migrants in their cities.
Democrats and advocates for migrants denounce the word and its recent turn from being taboo. Historians and analysts who study political rhetoric have long warned that the term dehumanizes those to whom it refers and could stoke violence, noting that it appeared in writings by perpetrators of deadly mass shootings in Pittsburgh, Pa.; El Paso, Texas; and Buffalo, N.Y., in recent years.
If one truly wanted to police offensive and threatening language, Ulloa should look no further than a “pro-Palestinian” rally at the nearest “progressive” college campus.
Republicans defend using the word and see it as an apt descriptor for a situation that they argue has intensified beyond crisis levels and one that could help sway voters.
Ulloa extrapolated wildly, going from the word “invasion” to mass murder in three sentences flat. “Analysts” of “extremism” say the I-word suggests racism and anti-semitism.
Analysts who study political rhetoric and extremism have continued to raise alarm that the word invasion and what they describe as similarly inflammatory language regarding immigration plays into replacement theory. The racist doctrine, which has circulated in far right-wing corners of the internet, holds that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to “replace” and disempower white Americans. The shooters in Pittsburgh, El Paso and Buffalo echoed the theory in online posts, and targeted Jews, Hispanics and Black people in their killings.
She accused Donald Trump of “using language that invokes the racial hatred of Hitler” (Trump’s “poisoning the blood of our country” remark) before relaying concerns about “Republican fear-mongering about migrants” from a researcher at America’s Voice.
America’s Voice is hardly a non-partisan one. Their main goal, according to the group’s website, is to “win reforms that put 11 million undocumented Americans on a path to full citizenship.”
Tim Graham is the Executive Editor at NewsBusters, and he is the Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. His career at the MRC began in February 1989 as associate editor of MediaWatch, the monthly newsletter of the MRC before the Internet era.
Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/
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Posted on Thu 05/02/2024 by PA Pundits - International
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