Preamble: --With Trump’s 2024 campaign and top Democrats capitulating to echo “Build the Wall�, we need tUS Immigration 101: Follow the Money/Weapons�
Preamble: --With Trump’s 2024 campaign and top Democrats capitulating to echo “Build the Wall�, we need to dive deeper into the US’s contradictions with immigration (from “a nation of immigrants� to “illegal aliens� being the trending scapegoat). --We can start with: a) critical research: --Target audience: mostly activists/academics; ex. Aviva Chomsky’s Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal, for serious structural analysis away from the noise of the political theatre’s short-term maneuvering and the media’s sensationalism. b) mainstream journalism: --Target audience: mostly liberals; ex. this 2024 book by a mainstream journalist (Blitzer, journalist for The New Yorker). --Since elite liberals betrayed the cause, I opted to start with how (the best of) mainstream journalism communicates the topic to default liberals.
Highlights:
1) Personal Stories: --The biggest advantage of mainstream journalism is popularizing topics through storytelling. Ben Goldacre (medical doctor/popular science writer), who prioritizes popularizing the abstract (i.e. big-picture statistics behind evidence-based medicine), faces the challenge of our emotional bias towards individual narratives:
This [individual’s] story always makes me cry a little bit. Two million people die of Aids every year. It never has the same effect. [from “Empathy’s Failures� in I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That]
--As Blitzer is a member of The New Yorker, we should clarify mainstream media and propaganda: a) Reactionarycritique opportunism: --Reactionaries take advantage of mainstream biases by daring to call it out (ex. Trump’s “Fake News�), only to then cherry-pick and intensify the distortions. b) Leftist critique: --US mainstream media indeed has biases; however, it still has the most resources to fund skilled, full-time journalists to do the on-the-ground investigations. --So, nuanced media literacy is foundational for understanding the world. One useful step is to consider the media’s target audience. Media targeting the public (ex. headlines, op-eds) especially on topics that threaten systemic power (i.e. current foreign policy/economics) tend to be the most sensationalized/manipulated. --Media targeting exclusive audiences (esp. business class/military) indeed include rigorous research, since capitalists/generals need to know what is actually going on in the world. This is also why it’s so insightful reading internal documents, ex. what fossil fuel industry scientists and US military strategists think about climate change: -Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming -All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change -For more on media literacy, obviously see Noam Chomsky: -Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies -Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media --A final note on media/target audience: how do we reach the many who won’t read this book? i) For younger people, including Trump gym bros I talk to, Hasanabi's 25-minute video responds to the common concerns (crime/jobs/economy/welfare/culture etc.) ii) John Oliver’s 20-minute video on .
2) Structural Analysis: Imperialism: --This book does try to synthesize personal stories with structural analysis, a messy task; so, let’s walk through the structure, where we follow the money (capitalism) and the weapons (imperialism). --How can former colonies improve living conditions for their masses if their colonial economies (who owns the land/factories; foreign trade relations; debts in foreign currencies) are preserved? --The US empire floods the Global South with weapons/sanctions to keep these relations intact, driving emigration fleeing from violence/poverty. For those triggered by this description and accuse it of being “un-American�, I always start by quoting Smedley Butler (War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier):
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. […] I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. […] During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotion. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
--It’s important to note that such extreme reactionary terror (indeed, fascism) has its vulnerabilities as it's difficult to achieve broad/deep/long-term social consent: i) Despite some big business support (infamously, the United Fruit Company in esp. Guatemala, inspiring the term “banana republic�, later supporting a coup that radicalized Che Guevara), other foreign investors (particularly long-term development rather than just extraction) were hesitant from the constant terror. ii) The US can flood the military with weapons, but enlisting soldiers required coercion thus lacked morale. Ex-soldiers often became addicts (also consider how the US empire treats its homeless veterans). Coups throughout the Global South were often committed not by radical revolutionaries but by relatively-conservative junior officers (i.e. colonel coups) who were sick of imperialist meddling corrupting their military generals and just wanted national sovereignty. --Thus, “democratization� via civilian government may not address the colonial economy and just serve to legitimate military rule. This only started to change with formal truce with guerilla movements, including truth commissions and new civilian police force. --We can now consider how some refugees would be hesitant formally applying for asylum and handing personal info to the US government which directly collaborates with their home regimes running death squads.
…see comments below for rest of the review�....more
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