I was telling my children, who are 4 and 6, about their great-great-grandfather and how he left Russia and why. Then it dawned on me…
Whether it’s Srinivas Kuchibhotla getting shot in Kansas, the many Latino immigrants like my neighbors, my children’s schoolmates, the Muslim green card holders from the seven countries of the Axis of Random, or Jewish families at JCCs all over the country, hate is off the leash.
Remember this expression: the cossacks work for the tsar.
After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, his successor blamed “the Jews” for the murder and a series of anti-Jewish riots, or pogroms, took place throughout Russia. Sometimes the authorities even blamed the Jews for the riots. And while it was never explicitly an order from on high, the rhetoric of the leader certainly encouraged it and the authorities made only token steps to stop it. From this brew of scapegoating came the publication of the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion that to this day is believed world-wide and used as an excuse for antisemitism.
After this, many of these Jews, just like Tevye the Dairyman pictured above at the end of The Fiddler on the Roof, made their way to the United States.
So, now wonder Kuchibhotla’s wife is asking the government if she belongs. Because no matter how many token statements organizations seem to claw out of Trump, from the beginning, his entire politics has been built on scapegoating Latinos and Muslims. His campaign closing ad was as close to the Protocols as you can get, though he seems to tolerate his Court Jews even if he has no Court Brown people.
And today instead of the Protocols we have Breitbart, Stormfront, /pol/, and numerous subreddits that organize the cossacks along the perceived and/or actual wishes of the tsar. And it’s not just crackpots in Kansas or crank-callers following these orders. It seems that ICE, one of whose unions endorsed Trump, has winked back too.
Let’s not forgot that early Bannon-influenced executive order than came while semi-sane voice Ivanka and Jared were observing the sabbath that the White House chose not to fight for. Why bother? The cossacks will chase them out anyway.
Indeed, it’s working. I have never practiced a day of immigration law in my career and two lawyers who know this have asked me if I could help them with overflow work, since at least I’m a lawyer who speaks Spanish. I declined because I’m too ignorant, but to hear them tell it, their phones ring off the hook all day. Most of the time, there’s not a lot to do, but there are panicked calls everywhere. Families are worried that even their legal family members will be deported by accident to send a message, one that they appear to have received.
So, the plan after all may have nothing to do with enacting any kind of immigration reform or organizing a military expulsion—there’s an order I would refuse if it came up while I was on drill—that puts the full weight of the state behind it. This is what everyone is waiting for. The Reichstag Fire, The Hitler Playbook. But I don’t think that’s coming, what’s happening is already happening. The “message” is being received and people are scared. If enough of them leave, just like enough Jews left from Russia, then the goal is accomplished and no one can say there was a mass deportation, ethnic cleansing, or genocide, right? I think this is the M.O. This is why we get executive orders that aren’t really going to go far enough in the law or last long enough to do what we fear the most directly. Because they send a message, get in the news for two weeks, and scare the crap out of people.
If Trump really wanted this to stop, he would fire Bannon, make a huge speech about diversity even if it wasn’t as far as we’d want it to go, and warn that he would punish people responsible for this and make some executive order saying the Justice Department will punish these people for terrorism using the death penalty, or some other over the top Trumpism that makes it clear.
Instead, it’s wait a week and scapegoat another group. This last week it was trans people.
Whose next?