Episode

5/2 Myths About Migrants; Why Israel ‘Pinkwashes’ w/ César García Hernández, Schyuler Mitchell

May 2, 2024

It’s an EmMajority Report Thursday! Emma speaks with César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at Ohio State University, to discuss his recent book Welcome the Wretched: In Defense of the “Criminal Alien”. Then, she speaks with Schuyler Mitchell, writer and fact checker based in Brooklyn, to discuss her recent piece in The Baffler entitled “Pinkwashing the Timeline”. First, Emma runs through updates on the violent crackdown by police (and Zionist mobs) on UCLA’s anti-war encampment, Blinken’s visit to Israel ahead of a likely invasion of Rafah, Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian aid, the House’s bogus antisemitism bill, South Dakota abortion rights, Trump’s response to encampment raids, the death of a SECOND Boeing whistleblower, Amazon labor violations, and devastating floods in Kenya, before parsing through the rage-inducing coverage of the violent attacks on anti-war peaceful demonstrations on college campuses, with some help from the poorly-executed propaganda of the NYPD. César García Hernández then joins, diving right into the evolution of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the US, with the Reagan administration’s campaign for the War on Drugs recentering the narrative around crime, a position that mainstream Democrats like Bill Clinton and then-Senator Joe Biden would quickly assimilate to. Expanding on this, Hernández looks to the Obama Administration’s continuation of this narrative, with a regime of deportation framed around ideas like “Felons not Families” as he and Emma tackle the Democrats’ constant race to the right on immigration in a supposed (but never successful) pitch to GOP voters. After parsing through the central role that migrant labor plays in this political battle, they step back to assess the era of anti-immigrant rhetoric that came before the War on Drugs, with serious penalties for illegal entry and reentry stemming from the racist immigration laws on the books from the start of the 20th Century. Schuyler Mitchell then walks Emma through the concept of “pinkwashing,” or the dressing up of violent ideology in socially accepted liberal values, looking at Israel’s insistence on presenting itself as a progressive haven – in juxtaposition to their narrative of the “savage” Palestinians. Mitchell and Emma then look at a little classic Israeli liberal TV as they parse through the obvious homophobia and transphobia of Eretz Nehederet’s parody of Columbia students as a pitch-perfect example of Israel’s hypocrisy, before wrapping up with the role pinkwashing plays in Israel’s simultaneous self-victimization and self-valorization.

And in the Fun Half: Emma is joined by Matt Binder and Brandon Sutton as they discuss the typical “savages” arguments being made against Gazans, the NYPD’s propaganda launch in the wake of their violent raid on Columbia students, and watch JD Vance fall for the most obvious bait from Kaitlan Collins. Krystal Ball unpacks her cohost’s obvious fascism, Pete Cresswell reflects on the tradition of campus occupations, and America from México discusses transphobia on the left. Josh from Virginia breaks down the crackdown on UNC’s anti-war protests, the MR Team breaks down the outrageous “outside agitators” narrative with some help from the GOP’s big guns, and Kristi Noam struggles to come back from boasting about the murder of a 14-month-old dog, plus, your calls and IMs!

Check out Cesar’s book here: https://thenewpress.com/books/welcome-wretched

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