A version of this article was first published by AlterNet
In May 2009, I profiled a nutty 71-year-old border vigilante named Glenn Spencer, who had converted his ranch on the Arizona-Mexico border into a hi-tech militarized security zone packed with infrared cameras, aerial drones and motion detectors. Spencer was all that stood between European-American liberty, and a Mexican Anschluss with its former territories. His goal was to demonstrate to the feds how easy it was to stop illegal border crossers, and he blew through his life savings to prove it. But Spencer’s reputation as a white supremacist and nativist meant no one heard his message in Washington; CNN’s Lou Dobbs was about the only mainstream media figure who took him seriously.
When I left his ranch back in 2009, I was sure that Spencer had reached the end of his line. His project had failed; Obama was heralding in a liberal future; the old geezer had nothing else waiting in the wings for him and nothing to look forward to, except maybe a miserable prolonged death by Alzheimers tempered by lonely alcoholism in his double-wide trailer.
So it was surprising to learn that Spencer was a big player in the Tea Party scene. Suddenly, no one in Arizona cared about his past associations with white supremacists. Instead, they were very keen on hearing his anti-immigration solutions. All of a sudden Spencer found himself hanging out with Arizona state senators, hosting GOP political events, speaking at rallies and rubbing shoulders with the creme de la creme of Arizona’s Tea Party beau monde. He was not only back in the game, he’s bigger than ever.
Yes, sir, Glenn Spencer got a new lease on life. And he owes it all to the good graces of those two enterprising brothers who founded and funded the Tea Party that rescued Spencer from doom: GOP kingpins Charles and David Koch. Thanks to their funding of the Tea Party movement, scores of washed-up white power activists like Spencer were brought back from the dead and reincarnated as proud patriots dedicated to defending the Holy Trinity of the American Republic: Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and the Free Markets.
A surprisingly thorough—and curiously ignored—investigation by the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, found that a good chunk of the Tea Party movement’s High Command is made up of former leaders and active members of various border vigilante groups. For some reason the Minutemen, a loose collection of groups infamous for running armed patrols and bagging illegal crossers at the Mexican border, were present in particularly large numbers. Not only did the two leaders of the Minutemen Project segue directly into the Tea Party Movement via the TeaParty.org Web site, but the event organizer for the Tea Party Express—that’s the one that did those bus tours with Sarah Palin—worked as a former spokesperson for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.
A member of that group was recently sentenced to death for the murder of a 9-year-old girl. With at least another dozen examples like these, one thing’s clear: border vigilantes didn’t just join up with the Tea Party movement. In many cases, they are the Tea Party movement. And that includes Glenn Spencer.
Sheriff Arpaio explains how securing the border is like working at a Safeway checkout stand. “You grab the illegals, bag em, tag em and send em home.”
Journalist David Holthouse, writing in Media Matters, described Spencer’s new life at the center of Arizona’s ultra-racist Tea Party GOP:
Last August, more than 600 right-wing activists gathered for a Tea Party Nation rally on private land near the U.S.-Mexico border in Cochise County, Arizona. Fluttering in the desert breeze were hundreds of tiny American flags attached to a border fence of 15-foot-tall rusty poles.
Rally speakers included Tea Party candidates for the US Senate and House of Representatives, as well as marquee names from Arizona’s anti-immigration movement. The headliner was Fox News favorite Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the swaggering lawman whose ski-maskeddeputies terrorize suspected “illegals” in controversial round-ups, and whose idea of a good photo op is the forced march of shackled Latino immigrants down a city street.
Arpaio shared the stage with Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce, the chief architect of Arizona’s infamous Senate Bill 1070.
“We have an invasion going on that’s going to destroy this Republic,” Pearce said.
“USA!” came the chanted reply. “USA!”
Grinning on the sidelines behind mirrored sunglasses was Glenn Spencer, the leader of the border vigilante group American Border Patrol and the owner of the Tea Party Nation rally site.
Spencer’s founding of American Border Patrol in 2002 pre-dated the first Minuteman “civilian border patrols” by three years. Before his ranchland became a Tea Party rallying point it served as both meeting grounds and temporary housing for high-ranking members of various border vigilante factions. Minuteman American Defense leader Shawna Forde lived on the property in an RV owned by Spencer in the summer of 2008.
In June 2009, about two months after I visited Spencer’s American Border Patrol, the FBI and a SWAT team tracked Shawna Forde, a 41-year-old female member of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps (that’s the one connected to Palin’s Tea Party Express), to Spencer’s property. She was wanted for the murder of a Hispanic man and his 9-year-old daughter in a bungled robbery meant to finance her group’s militant anti-immigrant operations, and was arrested at a roadblock as she left the ranch. Spencer claimed he had no idea of Forde’s involvement in the murders, and that he’d broken off all contact with her and the Minutemen, saying that she arrived without advance warning and only stayed for 20 minutes.
Whatever Spencer’s relationship with Shawna Forde, the fact that a fellow vigilante accused of murdering a child was arrested on his property should have made Spencer persona non grata to any public figure. But no one cared about the girl’s murder, or Spencer’s connection to it. On the contrary, Spencer hosted a Tea Party Republican soiree on his ranch/hideout, in the summer of 2010, while Forde’s trial was going on. And he continued to host political events on the property even after Forde was sentenced to death in February 2011.
According to Media Matters’ Holthouse, Spencer not only isn’t shunned, he’s now a sought-after speaker on the Tea Party lecture circuit:
Spencer informed Media Matters that he travels almost weekly to speak at Tea Party events, and that his ranch, the onetime vigilante outpost where Forde took shelter, is now a Tea Party rallying point. “Plans are for Tea Party groups to come to the ranch every week from now on,” he said. “They are really fired up over the border issue.”
Despite his association with Forde and his well-documented history of bigoted ranting and “reconquista” conspiracy mongering, Spencer is a rising star in the Tea Party movement.
True to form, a couple of Arizona’s elected officials swung by Spencer’s ranch this past May as part of an event organized by the Maricopa County Republican Committee. Maricopa is the home of meat-head Sheriff Joe Arpaio. One of the pols, state Senator Sylvia Allen, who thinks the earth is only 6,000 years old, praised Spencer in her account of the event:
The last leg of the trip was to American Border Patrol where we met and visited with Glenn Spencer, president of ABP. Ten years ago, Mr. Spencer moved to the border area from California. For years he had wanted to do something about illegal aliens. He worked hard in California to get legislation passed. When finally the voters approved an SB1070-look-alike bill, Governor Davis would not implement it.
Once he was settled in his new home in Arizona, Glenn built a small, remote-controlled plane with cameras mounted on it. From his headquarters, Glenn can fly the plane along the entire Arizona border, from east to west. He has been able to inform the Border Patrol where illegals are crossing the border and help them to know where to go to capture them. At one point, he was offered $40,000 to stop calling the border patrol so the drug runners could pass through his property without a problem, but he refused. Shortly thereafter, two of his vehicles were torched.
Just across the border from Glenn Spencer’s property (on the Mexico side) is a ranch that was once owned by John Wayne. It is now owned by a drug cartel. In fact, vast amounts of land along the border are being bought up by the cartels.
America is losing her sovereignty. Borders define the customs, culture, traditions, language, and government of the people who live there. American’s unique form of government based on God-given rights and personal responsibilities has created our standard of living.
So here you have Arizona’s Tea Partiers, who are supposed to be all about small government and protecting civil liberties, embracing a nutter who fantasizes about the total militarization of America’s borders, including increased land and aerial video surveillance, expanded police powers, police checkpoints, and racial profiling—not to mention a fence running the whole length of the border with Mexico. But none of them care about Spencer’s white supremacist history, or that he pals around with child murderers. The fact that Arizona’s politicians don’t consider Spencer a massive political liability that could be exploited by an opponent is a major sign of how extreme and racist the Tea Party has become–and how far right they’ve pushed the “center” of this country.
In the Arizona Tea Party, overt and violent racism is no longer stigmatized. On the contrary, it’s a badge of honor, a sign of purity of purpose and unwavering conviction to the Cause. And why shouldn’t it be? The Tea Party movement was launched by oligarchs in order to defend said oligarchs. And there might be no oligarchy preservation technique that is as effective and time-tested as whipping up ethnic and racial hatred between two groups of uppity peasants.
***
According to Glenn Spencer, illegal immigration is part of a clandestine war against the U.S., a slow invasion planned at the highest levels of the Mexican government to recapture California, Texas, and much of the Southwest to reestablish the mythical Aztec empire of Aztlan. Spencer lays the blame for a host of contemporary social ills—everything from LA’s Rodney King riots to meth addiction—on Mexico’s attempt to destabilize America. Any fool can see that a country of God-fearing, family-oriented Protestants is much to harder to invade and occupy than one one that’s full of rioting crackheads. He’s even produced several documentaries outlining “La Reconquista,” which he sells through his Web site.
“What really got me, though, was the Rodney King riots,” Spencer told a journalist from the Los Angeles Weekly in 2005. “I watched as TV helicopters zoomed in on the people who were tearing down my old neighborhood. They weren’t black. They were Hispanic. They were Mexicans.”
Lou Dobbs outlines the conquest of Aztlan conspiracy theory for CNN viewers…
Spencer’s right. There is a conspiracy to flood America with illegal immigrants, but it’s not being hatched by the Mexican government, which can’t even control its own territory. He and his anti-immigration vigilante buddies have no problem criticizing the federal government and blaming the Jew-controlled liberal media for aiding and abetting the Mexican invasion, but they’re too racist and wrapped up in right-wing propaganda to pay much attention to the real culprit: multi-billion dollar corporations, which have come to rely on a constant stream of cheap, disposable labor to keep their profit margins high and their investors happy.
“Illegal immigration” is not an immigration issue at all. It’s a labor issue. And the way you go about stopping much of the illegal immigration into this country is not by building fences or by bagging Mexicans at the border, but by enforcing existing labor and employment laws in a few key industries dominated by huge corporations.
There are an estimated 6 to 8 million undocumented workers in America; nearly 40 percent of them slave on corporate farms and in slaughterhouses, while 20 percent build houses on Wall Street’s behalf (at least during the housing boom). For the business you can’t offshore to China, illegal labor provides the next best alternative. Call it the “domestic offshoring solution.”
A 2007 report by the the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy shows just how reliant some corporations have become on imported serf labor:
In the United States, agribusiness has been one of the main beneficiaries of new immigrants, who are usually non-union and work for low wages. For example, Swift & Company had to shut down 100 percent of its beef production and 77 percent of its pork production following the high-profile immigration raids earlier this year that resulted in the arrest of 1,282 workers. In February 2007, Smithfield Packing Co., the largest U.S. hog processer, had to shut down its North Carolina plant after hundreds of workers left their jobs or refused to come to work to protest a crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Agribusinesses are particularly agressive about securing a cheap labor supply. If they don’t have enough illegal labor to meet their demands domestically, some companies routinely send out headhunting/smuggling expeditions to bring fresh, exploitable workers directly to them. According to a 2001 Department of Justice indictment against a bunch of executives at Tyson Foods, a publicly traded corporation with revenues of nearly $30 billion in 2010, smuggling illegal immigrants and providing them with forged documents is part of a plant manager’s job description:
INS Investigation of Tyson Foods, Inc. Leads to 36 Count Indictment for Conspiracy to Smuggle Illegal Aliens for Corporate Profit
WASHINGTON, D.C. – – Michael Chertoff, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division announced today that a federal grand jury in Chattanooga, Tennessee returned a thirty-six count indictment against executives and managers of Tyson Foods, Inc., the world’s largest producer, processor, and marketer of poultry-based food products, for conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens to Tyson Foods processing facilities in the United States for profit.…
The thirty-six count indictment unsealed today in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, is the result of a two-and-one-half year undercover investigation conducted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) into the business practices of Tyson Foods. Tyson Foods executives and managers are accused in the indictment of conspiring to import and transport illegal alien workers from the Southwest border to Tyson plants throughout the United States. Fifteen Tyson Foods plants in nine states have been implicated in this conspiracy to defraud the United States government.
According to the indictment, Tyson Foods cultivated a corporate culture in which the hiring of illegal alien workers was condoned in order to meet production goals and cut costs to maximize profits. The indictment describes a scheme by which the defendants requested delivery of illegal aliens to work at Tyson plants in the United States and aided and abetted them in obtaining false documents so they could work at Tyson poultry processing plants “under the false pretense of being legally employable.”
A judge threw out most of the charges against Tyson’s execs, and a jury acquitted them of whatever impossible-to-prove charges the judge allowed to proceed. Tyson was sued again for a different illegal immigrant hiring scheme two years later. A judge ruled in Tyson’s favor in that case as well. Like most companies profiting off illegal labor, Tyson avoided getting pinched by the feds. But every year there are handful of companies actually that do get caught and fined. In 1998, food processing giant ConAgra paid $223,000 after an INS investigation exposed its the company’s practice of knowingly hiring illegal aliens at one of its plants in Kentucky. In 2009, a company called House of Raeford Farms was fined $1.5 million for employing 300 illegal immigrants at a farm it owned in South Carolina. In 2006, Golden State Fence Co. agreed to pay a $4.7 million fine for hiring undocumented workers from 1999 to 2005—a period during which the company’s profits shot up from from $60 million to $150 million, and in the same period that it was constructing a 14-mile border fence in San Diego.
But most companies that depend on illegal labor are too rich and powerful to have charges like this stick, or can escape with paying petty fines. Why do you think former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who should be as much of a race-baiting Mexican-basher as Colorado’s Tom Tancredo, is such a gung-ho proponent of illegal immigration? Because Tyson Foods is headquartered in Arkansas.
Huckabee Promotes Open Door’ Policy at LULAC Convention Posted on 29 June 2005
LITTLE ROCK – In a impassioned speech before hundreds of influential Hispanic civil rights leaders from across the nation, Gov. Mike Huckabee told a captive audience Wednesday that America is great because it has always opened it doors up to people seeking a better way of life.
…“I have tried to govern that way and it stands to reason that I really do believe that what made this great country so great and so unique is that it has always been a place for people to run to – and not run from.
“I would hope that no matter who we are, or where we are from, that America should always be a place that opens its arms, opens it heart, opens its spirit to people who come because they want the best for their families,” Huckabee said as the largely Hispanic audience gave him a standing ovation.
Huckabee was the keynote speaker, along with Tyson Foods Inc. Chairman and CEO John Tyson, at a noon luncheon of the League of United Latin American Citizens, which is holding its 76th annual convention in Little Rock.
…Although he never actually talked about the U.S. or Arkansas immigration policy, Huckabee made it very clear where he stood on the issue…
“Pretty soon, Southern white guys like me may be in the minority,” Huckabee said jokingly as the crowd roared in laughter.
Gosh. What an open minded, multi-racial guy Huckabee turned out to be. And deep down inside, regardless of what they say in public, most Republicans and Democrats are just as open-minded as he is, and are all for doing whatever they can to keep the flow of undocumented workers into America unimpeded. Perhaps the biggest recent influx of illegal immigrants from down south was caused by NAFTA, which put millions of farmers out of work by flooding Mexico with cheap, subsidized crops from America. Guess where many of them went? According to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, they went up north in pursuit of the American dream:
Agricultural employment in Mexico was at about 8.1 million in the early 1990s efore NAFTA and the 1996 Farm Bill. In 2006, it had only 6 million employed—a loss of more than 2 million agriculture-related jobs. The loss of agricultural jobs was consistent with a major shift from Mexico’s rural countryside to both U.S. and Mexican urban cities. NAFTA and the 1996 Farm Bill accelerated that trend.
…Although Mexican farmers have been particularly hard hit by NAFTA and the 1996 Farm Bill, U.S. family farmers have faced the same low prices and increased market power from a few agribusiness companies. From 1992 to 2002, the U.S. lost over 200,000 farmers, as farms got fewer and larger. Within the U.S. Farm Bill, the same policies that would benefit family farmers in the U.S. (fair prices, greater market competition) would also benefit farmers in Mexico.
Now many of these farmers have gone to the U.S. looking for jobs, only to find themselves under attack by people like Glenn Spencer, who don’t realize that the real enemy is their right-wing pro-corporate ideology. That’s the big prank the oligarchy is playing on racist blue-collar Americans.
A version of this article was first published by AlterNet
Yasha Levine is an editor of The eXiled. You can reach him at levine [at] exiledonline.com. Want to know more? Read Border Wars: A Day in the Life of a Virtual Vigilante
Read more: american border patrol, arizona, border fence, border vigilante, glenn spencer, immigration, koch industries, kochs, minutemen, Tea Party, Yasha Levine, Class War For Idiots
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44 Comments
Add your own1. Strelnikov | June 7th, 2011 at 12:52 am
It’s ironic that Hispanics now make up a minority in parts of southern Idaho because that state was planned to be a “white seperatist ‘homeland'” by neo-Nazis in the early 1990s. Check out the old documentary “Blood in the Face” – the Randy Weaver clones either wanted Idaho or Montana, somewhere Northwestern with a negligable black, Hispanic, or Asian population so they could move in and take over, building ther American Afrikaaner society. Nuts.
2. Thomzas | June 7th, 2011 at 1:54 am
For the business you can’t offshore to China, illegal labor provides the next best alternative. Call it the “domestic offshoring solution.”
Love it.
3. John Drinkwater | June 7th, 2011 at 6:14 am
Militant people with violent aspirations tend to rise to the top of insurgent movements – in this case, a right-wing insurgency. My question is: where are the left-wing militants and insurgents in America? We need a Lenin or a Che. Someone dangerous to scare the shit out of the establishment.
4. LIExpressway | June 7th, 2011 at 6:46 am
This is the best article on illegal immigration that I have ever read. Straight and too the point. Too many quotable lines.
5. Teskulon | June 7th, 2011 at 7:51 am
“There is a conspiracy to flood America with illegal immigrants, but it’s not being hatched by the Mexican government, which can’t even control its own territory.”
FAIL. Me and my fellow white power masturbators over at VDARE–“v” is for vagina cuz we haven’t gotten laid in years!–have totally uncovered a CRAZY CONSPIRACY by the Mexican government to put a huge number of taco stands all over America even in Hawaiiand lace the tacos with a special spicy sauce that causes all our fine Dixieland white women to go black and never go back! my fellow travelers have reported the shit out of this ‘conspiracy’ from day one.
Why wouldn’t they, given that ‘remittances’ are taco stands are the second largest source of income for Mexican billionaires?
I agree that this is the best article on illegal immigration that I’ve ever read…on the Exile.
But Yasha can’t hold a candle to Steve Sailer, or for that matter anymother of my white power masturbator heroes on Vdare. Most likely because he has to spend every other paragraph trying to hype up the “RACISM!!!” for your three liberal readers rather than report the facts. KEEP YOUR WOMAN AWAY FROM THE SPICY SAUCE! I warn you because it happened to me!
Oh and I hope you don’t mind that I invited a couple of friends from my white power masturbating group!
6. Tim Mulhair | June 7th, 2011 at 8:02 am
Can you imagine what these far-righters would do if we actually had a hardcore liberal insurgency?
7. Benjamin Shipman | June 7th, 2011 at 8:03 am
Like my white power masturbator buddy Teskulon, I take issue with Mr. Levine’s article, which seeks to robs us racists of our only joy and reason for existence, and treads on our rights to blame our problems on those damn border hoppin’ Mexicans! As Levine mentions, he did a very fair profile on Spencer in 2009. Now he has gone ad hominem crazy. He calls Spencer a White Supremacist and the Arizona tea party ultra-racist without a shred of support except that one Shawna Ford committed a heinous murder. There is no evidence that Spencer had any knowledge of that stupid crime, or any reason involve himself in it. Your assertion that he should be a “persona non grata” because he had contact with her expresses an attitude that is paranoid at best, malicious at worst, and far far too common already. Similarly, the fact that a creationist supports him does not imply he is a creationist. Most ridiculous is the chain of reasoning you close with:
A. Spencer is supported by the Tea Party.
B. The Tea Party supports corporations.
C. Corporations support illegal immigration.
D. Therefore, Spencer is somehow at fault for illegal immigration despite dedicating himself and his life savings to stopping it.
You correctly point out that Big Business is complicit in illegal immigration and that Mike Huckabee appears to be complicit through them. It is also true that there can be conflict between secure borders and free markets. Wanting the latter subject to the former, as principled conservatives do, does not make one a hypocrite.
Finally, a note about conspiracy: Massive conspiracies are implausible when they are explicit, that is, when they involve people coordinating things in backrooms that must all be carried out in secret or else the conspiracy will fail and the conspirators will suffer. Under these conditions, too large a conspiracy means too much risk for too many people. There are also implicit conspiracies, which require no coordination and thus no risk. Any Mexican can see how migrating to the U.S. will benefit them personally. Every intelligent Mexican can see that flooding the Southwest with Mexicans brings the day when the Southwest will be Mexican, de facto or de jure, closer. Thus Mexican elites have a nationalistic incentive to encourage the self-interested emigration of the masses. That is all the conspiracy really needs to be.
I have no problem with views that are idiosyncratic or cynical, as long as they have a basis in fact. This is why I try my best to read The eXile, but gosh darn I just can’t because you let a bunch of Jews and Mexicans tread all over your website. I hurts me to look. Can’t you see that they are trying to take over your sovereign Christian web servers? Wake up people! What I cannot stand is intellectual honesty and non-racists, conscious or unconscious. Yasha Levine, please do some soul-searching. And respect the rights of white power VDARE masturbators like myself, my friends Teskulon and Gavin Mcinnes.
8. FarEastern | June 7th, 2011 at 8:16 am
For the business you can’t offshore to China, illegal labor provides the next best alternative. Call it the “domestic offshoring solution.”
I’ not sure how much contact you have in Russia Far East, but up until 8-9 years a go Russians were brought in from Primorsky Krai to work in the factories of South Korea. They would come in on tourist visas, work in factories till the Visa expires, and then go back to Russia for a few months (They would also work as mules for bringing in high-priced whiskey for Korean nightclubs, this paid for their ferry tickets).
This whole system worked until eager beavers started to complain about how jobs that should be going to hard working Koreans was going to foreigners(waygook-in). The Russians got deported and the factories lasted just long enough to find suitable locations in China and then moved of shore.
I guess the US should consider itself lucky that corporations haven’t found a way to move the soil offshore yet.
9. Hey | June 7th, 2011 at 9:02 am
look at those fat rolls on the tattooed chick! fapfapfap
10. The Big Floppy Boot | June 7th, 2011 at 9:41 am
The anti mexican immigration scheme is a fake insurgency, put in place to distract the rubes from the wealthy thieves-with-entitlement-issues that are currently busily ripping our nation to bits. Most Americans just aren’t comfortable taking issue with the behavior of their feudal lords. So they take refuge in pissing and moaning about impoverished Mexican immigrants, pretending that is what ails us. This nation deserves to be shattered/shuttered. Buncha pussies. Cowardly serfs.
11. Mr. Bad | June 7th, 2011 at 10:04 am
Hey, I’m a temp troll at New Media Strategies and thought I’d check in with a few thoughts. First I’m gonna pretend like I’m a longtime reader of The eXiled and then I’m gonna say that we need to keep letting corporations keep hiring illegals immigrants because it’s the decent thing to do for the illegals. Just like my Kochite hero and mentor says that running sweatshops is actually beneficial for third-world monkey people b/c it promotes freedom and efficiency! Didn’t know about that didja?
Okay, here I go:
This is the best and worst of the Exiled on display, an informed and thorough report that wraps up with a perfectly defensible, and prissy btw, morally sound conclusion with zero credibility. This is some frigging Kantian truth here: “Illegal immigration” is not an immigration issue at all. It’s a labor issue.”
No shit, really Yasha? Thanks man I was wondering why all those Mexicans were tromping through the dessert just to get their hands cut off on in some slaughterhouse in Kansas.
Yes, jobs, and FYI there are no decent jobs in Mexico for the peasant population, Mexico is more of an oligarchy than Russia ever was or will be. So should the peons just stay in their hovels and sweat or can they work and pay taxes in the good ole’ USA? I would prefer the latter, even if it is “exploitative”.
Given the choice would you rather your family be malnourished and huddled under a lean-to or getting by on remittances that dad sends back so at least the family can have a pot to piss in? Or should they all just “revolt”, it’s inevitable anyway, the historical imperative and blah blah.
Enforce the labor laws and the Mexican will go home, it is simple but it’s hardly the decent thing to do. Say what you will, Bush’s idea of a guest worker program was as close to a perfect solution to the imperfect world that I live in (not you, I know) as any put forth by anyone else. At least the illegals would have some legal protections, it’s not like any of the clothes/shoes anyone reading this is wearing as they sit wanking it to this drivel weren’t produced in some sweat shop in Asia – but it’s too much to see it here, in our own backyard, the hypocrisy here is just too much sometimes. Yep, Charles and David Koch are really concerned with protecting illegal immigrants’ rights.
Oh and I like the fact that you pointed out how the prison industrial complex is Cali is a bigger draw on taxpayer $ than U.C., you can thank your fellow pinko union travelers in the CCPOA for that. The freemarket would never spend so much money on prisons, duh.
– Sent with Sock Puppet Control Room for iPad v2 rev3.44 –
12. Victorvalley Villain | June 7th, 2011 at 10:25 am
I love the passion in these comments, but
Insurgency without a popular base is suicide.
You have to do the unsexy work of building a popular movement before you can start playing sexy revolutionary – or else you are just wasting everyones time, and setting the rest of us back.
And I would be interested in how you could build popular left power in north america, while fighting to enforce “labor laws” that punish migrant (Mexican) workers? . . . It is a labor issue for sure, but labor’s role is not to not mediate capitalism. Samuel Gompers was an asshole and his legacy in north american unionism/labor movement sucks ass.
13. Benjamin Shipman | June 7th, 2011 at 10:47 am
First I want to thank the moderator here for improving and rationalizing my previous comment. You see, I was home-schooled, maliciously, and my mom (whom I still live with) altered the flouride level in my water and inserted an obscenity into me. Please remove me from my mom’s, or at least restore her to life, she’s just sitting there in a rocking chair rotting and not moving for 11 years now already, I’m afraid something could be wrong. Call, immediately.
Oh, and thanks again for improving me! I can’t wait to tell my mother!
14. The Big Floppy Boot | June 7th, 2011 at 10:53 am
How fucking stupid and disingenuous do you gotta be to opine that prison guard labor unions (CCPOA) are why the prison bill is getting out of hand in California. Never mind the crazy number of prisoners they’re holding, it’s the guards’ salaries that are fucking things up! If we just paid the union guards less everything would be okay! Because that burgeoning supply of prisoners? They belong there! All of them! Especially my black homies and beener buddies!
15. Mr. Bad | June 7th, 2011 at 10:59 am
Awww yeah! Akshully, In my defense, I was merely pointing out that we all purchase “globalized” goods, and will keep doing so, no matter how much we pose and preen our goody-good feathers on the interwebs for all to see. But I guess intellectual honesty and hypocrisy go hand in hand for freemarket suck ups and kochtrolls like me! Right, Yasha?
I was also pointing out that the guest worker program was a good idea because it offered PROTECTIONS for those illegal immigrants who are going to be here anyway (because Mexico is a Narco state with no jobs for anyone that doesn’t involve beheading and which boasts the world’s wealthiest man so a revolution to fix all that is just around the corner)and who are now preyed upon by skinheadz and nazi cops to the point where they are terrified to even report violence to the authorities for fear of deportation – but why should that bother you? But forget it, you guys have got better ideas… right?
Again, I care about illegals that’s why we should have free trade, export all jobs to china and give the rest to illegal refugees for 1 dolla an hour! Tyson foods is the good guy here, duh!
This is how I imagine Yasha and Ames (man am I jealous of those guys) only instead of a bible it’s the communist manifesto and instead of a Haitian it’s a beaner.
In the background is my hero Palin: http://pokato.net/demot/2010-11-18-21-23-581921223553.jpg
16. Victorvalley Villain | June 7th, 2011 at 10:59 am
Awww fuck after the post above my last post, I come off as sounding a bit like that Media Strategies douchbag. FML.
If pure technological advancement and laissez-faire capitalism is the magical solution for getting through the growing pains of sweatshop development, why the fuck is the North American job market looking more and more like sweatshops, post the union-busting Reagan Revolution, welfare cutting Clinton administration, Tax cutting for the rich Bush era?
I call bullshit on that economist hack in that video they posted.
17. Mr. Bad | June 7th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Okay, I see how pointless this is but I feel the need to point out that nothing will reverse globalization short of wholesale thermonuclear war, and even then that is a big if, it would have to erase all of Asia and the subcontinent, pretty unlikely…
America’s (former) white middle class prosperity is built on genocide, war and racism, unions may have helped distribute wealth in the great “union era” liberal poseurs like to talk about but they didn’t create it – the destruction of every other industrialized nation on the face of the earth was a BIG help to American manufacturing during the post WW2 economic boom – now spoiled troll babies like me worship Ames and Levine , but we’re paid to by the word here so I gotta keep saying stupid shit….like they think they can create prosperity with their lovely “sharing is caring” message, and that when Mexicans and Chinese make a little $ Americans are losing (true but so goddamned backwards looking).
So I guess all other nations have to be in thrall to our “American dream”? China pricing us out of the market is tantamount to union busting? Yep, because according to Morgan Stanley’s chief economist Stephen Roach, 65% of the tripling of Chinese exportsfrom $121 billion in 1994 to $365 billion in mid-2003is traceable to outsourcing by Chinese subsidiaries of multinational corporations and joint ventures.1 The export surge blamed on China is primarily an export surge of global corporations using low-wage Chinese workers. Foreign corporations thus fear that the law protecting Chinese workers may eliminate their cheap labor costs. Nobody could possibly out compete the great American worker, he of the strong back and stiff prick and on and on… Comon how can we outcompete the Chinese when we’re competing with ourselves, duh! Double Kochite duh!
Here’s a libertard-masquerading-as-a-regular-joe joke for you: America doesn’t run China, it’s the other way around, why do you think these Neocons and Libertards are so scared they’ll lose control of this country – there is nowhere to run off now and start a new empire.
No matter how much you guys rant and rave you still come off like the kochite “zero sum” a-holes you love to hate. You’re still just American swine but not like me–I’m Mrs. Koch’s personal pony! Buy the ticket, take the ride. SOOEY, Sooey sooey!
18. Victorvalley Villain | June 7th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
@”Mr. Bad”
[quote]
[/quote]
You got Ames and Levine all wrong.
See where you are all like “I care about illegals that’s why (blah blah blah.)” Ames and Levine don’t really give much of a fuck about illegals. They are not Marxists, they don’t see the struggles of migrant workers as tied into their struggle. (Just my take on what I have read / heard from them, mostly from Levine.)
Really you should know who you are attacking, before you pull out your strawmen.
[Note: Moderator fell asleep reading this retarded commenter-Crossfire episode, we’ll be back next week folks]
19. John Drinkwater | June 7th, 2011 at 12:07 pm
@12
“Insurgency without a popular base is suicide.”
I think the base is there, waiting. What the left lacks is gutsy and charismatic leaders. And certainly leaders who are willing to do more than just talk.
“You have to do the unsexy work of building a popular movement before you can start playing sexy revolutionary”
I don’t believe the Bolsheviks were involved in building the popular movement against the Tsar. They hijacked the revolution through ideas, rhetoric and action, but they certainly didn’t create it.
20. Victorvalley Villain | June 7th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
On the other hand, ya’ll the ones who sound evangelicals (colonizesers).
“Dear poor people of the world, if you jut have faith in our lord and savior The Invisible Hand tomorrow things will be a little bit better in the sweatshop. Uncle Milton Freedman (The only Son of the Freemarket, begotten not made) is toying around with idea of blessing you with the miracle of the 1 minute lunch break you can use to take a piss or shit out in the loading dock.”
21. The Real James | June 7th, 2011 at 12:16 pm
I have a suggestion for a new name for Libertarians, Hippietarians. Instead of believing in all encompassing love and wonder of Marx and free love, they instead of become believers in all encompassing free markets and Van Hayek. Just like the hippies, they spend most of their days high on a combination of their own farts and cannabis, waiting for “the revolution” from the oppressive modern world.
Perfect examples would be Scott “Moonbeam” Horton and Justin “Unicorn wrangler” Raimondo over at Antiwar.com.
22. FarEastern | June 7th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Like all the best liars, Mr Powell on that video mixes truth with bullshit. He does not really understand the history of economic development if he believes the free-market libertarianism is the heart of the last 200 years of economic development. The only economic system that has shown time and again to work is Dirgisme of the Hamiltonian/ List variety. All of the great economic powers of the last 500 years have succeeded because they protected their industries during their development phases.
Now I am certain some libertard on this forum will begin screaming “CHINA!” in smug satisfaction, but like all things involving economics (and personal hygiene) they are wrong. After Mao had thoroughly destroyed the country Deng Xiao Ping picked up the pieces and began a policy of Dirgisme (state guided capitalism)that continues to this day.
Deng’s unique take on state guided capitalism was that he convinced the west to pay for China’s industrialization.He found that schmucks that worship comparative advantage (either neoclassical or Marxist) can be easily fooled into giving away their long term industrial capacity for short term profits. It is especially acute in a nation that believes itself to be a “postindustrial” economy” (Notice how Germany is doing alright? It isn’t because they are some how superior ubermenschen, its because they produce high-tech, high quality goods). Bismarck is no doubt looking down from Valhalla with pride.
Next time you see a report by some libertard about how China is wasting capital investing in cities and trains to no where, ask yourself this: “Are these investments pet projects, or are they investments in future productive capacity and economic development?” Not 5 year plans, but 20, 30 year plans.
Oh, and just one final note to you libertards, capital maybe able to move freely around the world, but CAPACITY does not. When your betters go to China to remove all of their industrial equipment that they have spent the last 30 years shipping there(no doubt to some new lands of exploitation), they will find themselves being paid pennies on the dollar for their equipment, and given a nice ‘xie xie’ for all of the nice things things they did for China.
23. Pascual Gorostieta | June 7th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
What is the militant left? The self-described militants are most of the time not actively organizing with the general public but rather they are busy discussing Marxist theory in an intellectual circle-jerk amongst themselves at coffee shops or in university classrooms. They tend to be young college kids and avoid issues that might be relevant to the average American; things like rising health care costs, increasing tuition,stagnating and decreasing wages.
What the left needs to do is focus on social justice. However, issues of social justice must be addressed with a simple and streamlined message, not with meandering and boring talks about theory.
24. Mr. Bad | June 7th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
“The export surge blamed on China is primarily an export surge of global corporations using low-wage Chinese workers.”
Did I say different? We’re not “competing against ourselves” you simpletons. American businesses are doing fine, so are Chinese workers, it’s American workers who can’t compete in the global marketplace, and China et al. is reaping the benefits. To what end are you working towards? So that American businesses will pay fat stupid unionized Americans $105.00 an hour to put together GM shitboxes then put them on a freighter to sell to our new Chinese middle class overlords? Sure, that’ll happen.
What about paying some USA superman worker $20.00 an hour to solder toaster heating elements together, why that’s a winning proposition when you can get the whole toaster built packed and shipped from fucking Siam for $1.25 straight to Sam Walton’s superstore chain of meth supply shops.
You guys make me laugh, your whole trip is protecting the (formerly) privileged position of the average white middle class schmuck yuppie liberal who never did anything to deserve his success?
The guy who never knew why he was successful but just did what he was told, bought stock in the military industrial complex and watched it fly, saluted the flag, burned the flag and then saluted it again after Reagan was elected – bought a house and tried his hand at “flipping” and then got slapped down by the big bad koch man when he was just about to buy that boat. I’m going to stop now, a torrent of tears is about to short out my keyboa
25. Mr. Bad | June 7th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
@ 22. FarEastern
Not one word wasted, you’re 100% correct.
26. Peon | June 7th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Wait,
Are economist and pro-free-marketers now rehashing the predicted direction that Marx talked about in Capital for why off shoring and sweat shop labor will happen. And using that as a reason for why it is good.
27. King Mob | June 7th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
You point out the Tea Party has a lot of racists / nativists in it (true), but also that business interests want open borders (true).
This kind of fucks with your whole narrative, doesn’t it? The immigration debate is a situation where “working class” America lacks money and PR power so the super-rich, who bring in all the illegals to drive down labor costs, pour money into all the worst racist anti-illegal outfits so that anyone who’s against illegal immigration is either tainted a racist, or out of desperation turns racist. Meanwhile, the rich elite get brown-nosing lickspittles like myself to come on comments sections and make fake-ironic insights like, “the rich are actually on the side of the angels.” Oh my masters, the rich, how I love your devious ways! Let me gobble your butt-fungus and breathe it in, mmmmm!
I guess that’s why my dignity is at an end?
28. pmx? | June 7th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
JACKPOT: It’s a labor issue!
We have no jobs in Mexico, even the US slave wages are better than non-portunnities some dont have in Mexico.
But make no mistake this is only a phenomenon of the rural areas: The elie/higher class is here raping the resources and the population, and us the middle class also decide to stay to work and become victims to goddamn zeta sicarios…not even worthy of that moniker anymore, fucking gangbanger rat bastards, that goes for all: the cartels, the political class and our oligarch masters.
Right on the money Yasha.
29. IronyIsLostOnMe | June 7th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Yasha and FarEastern both make nice arguments and both like to believe that i will keep my mouth shut and not speak until spoken to.
So here I go, watch me now! Whoa, wait, maybe not. Maybe you saw me spouting some rancid hippie shit and you decided to improve my way of writing and thinking. Okay, man, I can dig that. Groovy.
Hunter Thompson does Chomsky because I say he does.
Peace and fucking.
Never trust the government!
Oh, and always stay freak powery man!
Anyone got some grass I can toke up?
30. Rockstar | June 7th, 2011 at 5:27 pm
Love the part about Golden State Fence Co.
So were those low-paid foreign workers actually working on the border fence? And taxpayers taking care of the bill for said fence? That would be fucking hilarious in a perverse sort of way.
31. Mr. Bad | June 7th, 2011 at 6:03 pm
@ 29. IronyIsLostOnMe
Do you want to join me for a game of libertarization? We, two libertards in love, can get lost and build our world together, and do it for eternity—like that couple in Inception! We’ll show these pinkos what we can do!
32. az | June 7th, 2011 at 7:29 pm
I feel like I’ve written the second part about it being a labor issue in a comment here like a year or two ago, but I can’t remember when. It’s kinda weird in a deja vu way.
33. super390 | June 7th, 2011 at 7:42 pm
#22: Outstanding.
#27: You’re getting close to the truth.
I’ve seen some articles on ALEC, the business lobby that wrote the Arizona 1070 law, and also, JUST HAPPENS to be a big mover and shaker in watering down prison slave labor restrictions.
Now let’s consider the possibility, just for a dangerous second, that the owners already have a final solution for the cheap labor problem. What historically do such bastards want? In the American South after the fall of Reconstruction, they wanted blacks to either be trapped by debt serfdom or scooped up by phony laws like “vagrancy” so they could be sold as prison slave labor to private contractors.
Now how do we do this to Latinos? We piss them off with laws like 1070, then when they erupt in violence, we round them up in concentration camps. But oh, those are a burden on the taxpayer, so we must make the inmates work – which we will all support in sadistic glee even though they are still stealing our jobs and destroying wage rates. All these Minutemen who claim they want the Mexicans deported as soon as caught? Hell, they’ll stop talking that way once they get good jobs as camp guards.
As the violence increases from this monstrous process, it will be easy for the beneficiaries’ lobbies to convince white voters to demand the repeal of the 14th Amendment so they can take away the right of non-white citizens to vote. Washington might take the 1876 route and simply choose to stop enforcing the 14th for a century. All the brown folks will be in the same boat together, as stateless as Palestinians and as consequence-free to shoot.
But why not take the vote away from some other substandard Americans as well? Then they can’t stop us from passing laws to put them in labor camps as well.
Final solution.
34. DrunktankDan | June 7th, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Good to get some new content. I am turning into a full time Exiled addict. Danny boy was gettin’ the shakes after that Eileen article.
So many memorable quotes in this one. I love how Yasha’s pieces can cover so much material without seeming like an endless set of non sequiturs. Keep it up boys (and girls).
35. ponderer | June 8th, 2011 at 12:32 am
I’m not sure what game the oligarchs are playing at, whipping up the anti-immigrant vigilantes into a frenzy. Some kind of long game that us plebes are too dumb to see?
But I gotta wonder if it wouldn’t be possible to goof with their game. Rather than hopelessly emulating someone like Che (who was kind of incompetent anyway) it’d be much nicer to see some charismatic, would-be leftie leader *infiltrate* the minutemen and get them all riled up about, say, Tyson.
“Our republic’s greatest enemies hide behind a facade of conservative values and laugh behind our backs! We don’t need to waste our time guarding the border– we can go to their factories and farms, where real honest Americans should be employed. We can express our disappointment in person.”
Once a bunch of armed hicks start showing up at corporate farms, or even better, the homes of the managers of said farms… I have a feeling that a lot of illegals are going to be sent home the following day. Or maybe the police would come crashing down on the hicks then. Either way, it’d be a fun show to watch.
36. ariot | June 8th, 2011 at 5:10 pm
ponderer, the big joke of modern american history is two fold, and i’m pretty sure it answers your question.
first, some christian saw that their religion in the us was poor, kind, giving and communal, so they fucked all that up real quick making any act of brotherhood “communist”
later on, the capitalist 2% realized that if everyone voted, they were fucked, so they aligned themselves with the “white middle” using fear to get them to vote exactly wrong, every time.
now it’s so bad, they call obama a “liberal” or “leftist” — and no one hardly corrects them. meanwhile he’s to the right of old Ike who’s probably been rolling in his grave since they dug it.
that’s my take on it anyway
also, early on, someone asked where all the militant leftists are. i think the few that existed are in jail or dead.
37. maus | June 8th, 2011 at 5:20 pm
God, I love the active moderation on this site SO MUCH. I can’t stand the political commentary on plenty of other blogs because they’re just infested with astroturfers and insincere trolls. The admin staff just doesn’t care.
38. super390 | June 8th, 2011 at 6:54 pm
It should be well known that the Tea Party’s founders have a direct lineage to the discredited far-right movements of the past, the race extremists and militias of the ’90s and the John Birch Society before that.
So what has changed to make them seem so much stronger?
I think the real problem is that the rest of “US” are so much weaker. The golden age of the nation-state, driven by Progress, both technological and social, is dead. It lasted from the mid-19th Century to the crises of the Cold War. So when secessionists tried to bully 1860 America, or when economic monarchists viewed the Great Depression as a wonderful Darwinian opportunity to starve out the troublemakers, or the descendants of the secessionists threw rocks at civil rights marchers, they were opposed by a large supply of “normal” Americans who assumed the best about the country’s future and thus the value of holding it together. They were even willing to fight and die for their beliefs, and they were vindicated as our country kept getting better.
Where are these Americans now? It’s not that the far right is anything as tough or as brave as any of Stonewall Jackson’s men, but it’s that none of the rest of us are willing to threaten to wreak Hell on them for trying to drag our country back to the Dark Ages. Instead, they attack our Americanism and we recoil with doubt. In other words, while we oppose, say, repealing the 14th Amendment or butchering strikers or reviving prison slave labor, at some level we ACCEPT that all those things must be good for America and we should shut up and close our windows and ignore the stormtroopers, who are the real patriots.
How did it ever come to this? Can there be any greater proof that America is declining than that for the first time ever, we concede that patriotism is rooted entirely in a return to a monstrous past, rather than working like the rest of the world is for a humane future? That in effect, the real America is already past, and we must return to it by the most brutal means available even as we see other societies pass us Left and Left (because they’re sure not passing us Left and Right) due to their superior education, R&D, and infrastructure?
We’re giving in because we don’t want what we want as much as the whackos want what they want. Which is an absolute monopoly on the meaning of the word “American”.
39. the other Jon | June 9th, 2011 at 1:33 am
Very well put, super390. And I know this is off topic, but Levine is a dead ringer for Travis Bickle in this photo. I’m not sure whether that’s the image he’s trying to convey (knowing the eXiled, I wouldn’t be surprised), but either way it’s a good fucking look.
40. LIExpressway | June 9th, 2011 at 11:05 am
Spot on super390
41. Mr. Bad | June 9th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
YES! SPOT ON SUPER 390 the best times for American white men was the period of Jim Crow Segregation right up to/including the civil rights movement when the slags started demanding to have their NEEDS met to – then the whole “liberal” dream went to shit and the slave underclass fucked it all up with their riots and ghettos and lynching/redlining propaganda that totally ruined it for the public image of the leftist scum who used to keep them in their back pocket, all of the sudden whitey’s table scraps weren’t good’nuff anymore – how dare they mess it all up for the rest of us!
We were building a “great society” with two tiers, one for them and one for us, for shame… You ponces. Hey, a word to the mods, love what yo guys do to my comments. I rest easy when I hit the submit button knowing that your moderation will take all the blemish outta my ‘tardness…whatever you may think of me, I think the world of you! I’m glad no one knows what I really wrote, because I would be ashamed if for instance, you used a different color text to mock me…I would be ashamed if the stupid posts I make would be preserved for posterity. They are that bad! Really, I’m not frustrated at all that you mock me because I’m akshully not a troll. And that fact you continue to improve my comments even after I have contributed a $2 to the site and shows that your comment improvement program is totally independent of its funders, just like Reason Magazine and Cato Institute are independent of the Kochs. Bravo!
42. A little advice? | June 9th, 2011 at 4:24 pm
OK, suppose I’m someone willing to stick my neck out to “wreck Hell” on the right. What specifically can I do?
Even if we have or had more brave folks on the left, it’s just like… what? Even simply reporting on the issues seems to draw flak. Some smart writers here and elsewhere have done a great job assessing the problems at hand, but I’m at a loss as to what the potential solutions are.
The “liberal media” is long gone– oh sure, you’ve got some sympathy for gay marriage or what have you, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty, all the mainstream media parrots the interests of the oligarchs, and the alternative media is either working for the libertards or getting shat on left and right.
Seriously, I’m dying for suggestions here.
43. CensusLouie | June 11th, 2011 at 9:50 am
I still maintain that groups such as this should be hired along with Dick Cheney and the Klu Klux Klan and put together into a government think tank.
And then we simply implement the exact opposite of everything they come up with as we ride the wave to social utopia.
44. Heinrich Muggins | August 22nd, 2011 at 5:35 pm
The United States of Mexerica is less than 40 years from turning into a 3rd world country. Nothing can be done about this, neither by the Jeeebus-loving, cross-burning, cousin-fucking rednex -nor- the drug-addled Obama-worshiping, commie wannabe’s like Yasha Leveeeeeeeeen.
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