* Of course it never really was “White”. Whatever “white” means. There is no such thing as race, and our most cherished American ideals, what makes America great, including freedom of religion and individual liberty, are partly inherited from American Indians.
Many here and across the country have been trying to understand the Trump administration’s immigration policy. For example, the restrictions on travel by permanent residents (green card holders) were believed by many to be the result of the Trump administration’s ignorance of the law. That is not the case.
The driving force behind the Bannon-sponsored immigration orders is a desire to reverse the demographic trends that have turned America into a more diverse nation.
This is about making America White Again. Very literally. A related objective is to Make America Christian Again. To do that, they intend to reverse the projected demographics illustrated on the right. They want it to look like a sharp V, with the proportion of brown and black people in the US falling dramatically.
No other goal is as important to the Bannon/Trump administration as reversing the declining proportion of White Americans. Every one of their policies is directly related to stopping brown and black people from landing in America, and getting rid of as many who are already here as possible.
Bannon and Trump both view brown and black citizens in the USA as a threat to “western culture”. They do not outwardly espouse racial superiority as the KKK or Nazis of old. Instead, they present “western culture” as a high achievement that is threatened by a browner and blacker America. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone since it is discussed quite openly by Bannon/Trump’s closest allies.
[...] the rise of Donald Trump, perhaps the first truly cultural candidate for President since Buchanan, suggests grassroots appetite for more robust protection of the western European and American way of life. [...]
Halting, or drastically slowing, immigration is a major priority for the alt-right. While eschewing bigotry on a personal level, the movement is frightened by the prospect of demographic displacement represented by immigration. [...]
The alt-right’s intellectuals would also argue that culture is inseparable from race. The alt-right believe that some degree of separation between peoples is necessary for a culture to be preserved. A Mosque next to an English street full of houses bearing the flag of St. George, according to alt-righters, is neither an English street nor a Muslim street — separation is necessary for distinctiveness. — Breitbart
Their goal, to “halt, or drastically slow” immigration and bend our current demographic trend requires overturning the LBJ administration’s landmark 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act. Prior to this act, immigration to the USA was controlled by either thinly-veiled or blatantly racial quotas.
Race-based immigration quotas were instituted within years of this nation’s founding. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited immigration to "free white persons of good character" (Southern or Eastern Europeans need not apply). The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 largely accomplished its stated intent. The National Origins Formula of 1921 mandated immigration be based on the existing ethnic makeup of the US. The Immigration Act of 1924, was passed to stop immigration from Africa and southern/eastern Europe. It was also known (correctly) as the Asian Exclusion Act. It changed the basis for racial quotas on the census of 1890 (rather than more recent ones). That skewed the quotas towards Northern Europe. Perhaps most damingly, this country systematically denied American Indians the rights and privileges of US citizenship till the Snyder Act in 1924.
The alt-right wants a separation of races and religions, that cannot be achieved while non-white people continue to immigrate to the US. From their perspective, both documented and undocumented immigrants are as unwanted. They have consumed Bannon’s films, which contain this message:
Western Civilization as we know it is under attack by forces that are demonic or foreign—the difference between those is blurry—and people in far-distant power centers are looking to screw you. What’s worse, Christianity and freedom are on the wane.
Their solution is to take away the “demonic or foreign” people among them and have found their champions in Bannon and Trump. Their most cherished goal is to gut the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Everything else is secondary.
In a sense, their vision is derived from Jim Crow, “separate an equal”, except it takes a global form where all races are separated by national borders. To assuage the queasy, they won’t claim racial superiority. But all of them believe western “culture” is superior. Since culture equals race in their view, this is a distinction without a difference. They are both cultural and racial supremacists, but will dance around race, fully aware of how unacceptable naked racism is in America today.
This is difficult for many American progressives to fathom since we are more familiar with a form of racism that posits a racial hierarchy. Bannon/Trump racism does not lean primarily on eugenics. It’s more akin to the fears and ethno-nationalism that led to several episodes of ethnic cleansing across Europe and Asia in the inter-war and post-war years as the diverse/multi-cultural Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and British empires collapsed.
Last week, a security pretext was used to halt all inbound immigration and travel from seven countries. The White House has claimed that the president has absolute power to control the entry of persons at our borders. This is similar to their claim during the campaign, that the president can ban any class of persons. This is their opening salvo in their attempt to destroy the 1965 immigration act.
That these security “concerns” are a fig-leaf that apply only to non-whites is abundantly clear. If there was any question, the Bannon/Trump administration’s announcement that white supremacist groups cannot be considered terrorists, even when they commit murderous acts of terrorism should erase it. Incidentally, this implies foreign white-supremacists will not be branded as terrorist groups either. They are welcome to visit America.
Nor does the Bannon-Trump administration worry unduly about the impact their policies will have on our safety. Counter-terrorism officials have argued the alienation of immigrants can make these communities less inclined to cooperate with law enforcement. This argument will carry no weight with the Bannon-Trump administration. If an attack does occur, it will be used as a pretext to extend the ban to additional countries. Of course, this would apply only to non-whites. White-supremacist Canadians or Norwegians who murder multiple people should not worry their actions will lead to travel bans under the Bannon-Trump administration.
To achieve their ethno-nationalist dream of a “purer”, whiter America, the Bannon-Trump administration will push the envelope at every opportunity. The next time we have an infectious disease scare, expect to see inbound travel severely curtailed and immigration halted. During the campaign, Bannon-Trump advocated refusing American citizens exposed to Ebola entry. There is no reason to believe a self-confessed germaphobe President Bannon-Trump will not institute such a policy if SARS (for example) resurges. The Bannon-Trump administration is willing to use every form of scare-mongering to curtail the entry of non-whites into this country. This includes drumming up fears of terrorism, sexual assault, crime and disease. Behind all of them is their unstated view that non-whites do not belong in a white, christian nation, a bulwark of “western culture”.
Needless to say, the smug forecast of “permanent Democratic majorities” is worth less than nothing if they succeed.