GOP Rep: Terrorists May Learn Spanish to Pose as Illegal Immigrants
I’ve said for a while here that this is the new wingnut convergence: combine muslim-bashing and islamophobia with hatred of Latinos:
According to Representative Sue Myrick (R-NC), Hezbollah agents may be learning Spanish and disguising themselves as illegal immigrants in order to get into the US. TPM reported the following exchange between her and her FOX News interviewer:
“It really bothers me because here we are with a porous border, not really paying attention to who is coming over, what’s happening with Iran and Hugo Chavez and Venezuela. We know that there are people going to Venezuela learning Spanish and then coming up through Mexico with fake documents trying to cross the border. If they’re stopped they say, “Well, I’m Mexican or Spanish.”
…[FOX] host Brian Kilmeade was convinced: “Instead of talking about Mexicans coming here for a better life, we’re talking about Hezbollah coming here to infiltrate our borders and attack the country. That would change the entire dialogue when it comes to illegal immigration.”
Ya think?
Not really. The old meme was that Dems were seekrit Muslim-loving terrorist sympathisers, the new meme is that they’re seekrit Latino-loving terrorist sympathisers.
There are two constants here: 1) paint the liberals as feckless America-haters who are in league with ‘America’s enemies’ (the foremost of the enemies of America being, uh, the entire other half of the country that isn’t Republican) and 2) Only the GOP can be trusted to keep ‘us’ safe.
The third, and unifying, and much more disturbing strand is the racist moronic convergence: “They’re all brown people so therefore ‘they’ are our enemies. And that goes double for that black guy in that white house.”
(it should be obvious that this last bit is snarky restatement; I am riffing on the racists who think that ‘Muslim’ is a race or ethnicity, and also on the racists who think AZ profiling is a good idea.)
Much more at link above.