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Anti-Immigrant Hate Crimes Rise with Hateful Political Speech
Racism
The federal trial of three Pennsylvania police officers accused of covering up the murder of an undocumented Mexican immigrant opened last week—reigniting critical discussion about the recent rise of anti-immigrant hate crimes. The officers—former Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor, Lt. William Moyer and Patrolman Jason Hayes—allegedly attempted to conceal the racially motivated nature of the 2008 murder of 25-year-old Luis Ramirez, who was brutally beaten to death in a park by a group of teenagers spouting racial slurs.
At the time, Ramirez’s murder underscored a growing trend of anti-Hispanic violence in the U.S., which some attribute to increasingly anti-immigrant political rhetoric.
By Catherine A. Traywick in AlterNet, Sourced from Media Consortium
In recent years, hate crimes against Latinos have increased by 52 percent, a steep rise that Alternet’s Arun Gupta attributes to incessant “right-wing vituperation” and “caustic rhetoric.” In Arizona, where anti-immigrant sentiment has fomented into a bevy of retrogressive and prejudicial state policies, the number of reported hate crimes rose from 161 in 2007 to 219 in 2009. Tellingly, the recent rise in anti-Latino hate crimes runs counter to an overall decrease in reported hate crimes nationwide.
Prevalence of I-Word on television coincides with anti-immigrant hate crimes
At ColorLines, Mónica Novoa points out that a dramatic spike in the use of the word “illegals” in television programming last year coincided with both the passage of Arizona’s SB 1070 and a number of subsequent racially motivated murders:
In June, Juan Varela—U.S. citizen and a third-generation Mexican American—was shot to death in Phoenix by a man shouting “You fucking Mexican, go back to Mexico!”
- In July, Sergio Zapata-Zurita’s family was accosted at gunpoint in Washington by a man apparently obsessed with “illegal immigration.
- In August, Martin Reyes—a Honduran immigrant and father of six—was stabbed to death in Baltimore by a crazed man who told police that he “hated Mexicans.”
The irony here is that, while heated discourse surrounding the measure may have contributed to a rash of anti-immigrant hate crimes last year, its implementation in Arizona has inhibited the local victims of those crimes contacting the police—for fear that, under the new law, they will be arrested for being undocumented.
Hate crimes report censored to conceal role of official’s hate speech
Some localities have taken important steps to counter the rise of anti-Latino hate crimes, but at least one of those well-meaning efforts has been undermined by the anti-immigrant Right. Change.org’s Alex DiBranco reports that, in Suffolk County, New York, one ranking official’s affinity for anti-immigrant rhetoric may have compelled him to censor a potentially damning hate crimes report. Suffolk County’s problem with anti-immigrant violence has been in the news since 2008, when the racially motivated murder of an Ecuadoran immigrant highlighted Long Island’s epidemic of racial violence. Following the incident, Suffolk County formed a Hate Crimes Task Force responsible for monitoring hate crimes in the area, and issuing reports of its findings.
But County Executive Steve Levy, who is locally notorious for his anti-immigrant rhetoric, has been accused of editing more than 50 pages from the task force’s most recent report—many of which contained substantial criticism of his administration’s handling of immigrant issues, according to Mike Clifford at the Public News Service. Noting that Levy’s critics have long attributed the rise in anti-immigrant hate crimes to his extreme position on immigration, DiBranco speculates that Levy’s drastic censorship of the report is an attempt to conceal his own role in fostering violence.
Bigotry accusations divide the Republican Party
Following the recent Tucson shooting, the tragic potential of hateful political rhetoric has come to the foreground. The issue has become so heated that it threatens to fracture the Republican Party itself. In the aftermath of the tragedy, and in light of the party’s increasingly extremist positions on immigration, certain party leaders have defected from the GOP, accusing the party of fostering racism for political ends,John Tomasic at the American Independent reports. Most recently, former Colorado Republican Muhammad Ali Hasan and former Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes have spoken out against party bigotry directed at Muslims and Latinos, prompting conservative Latino organization Somos Republicans to launch an anti-bigotry campaign against its own party.
It’s a step in the right direction. But even as a minority of Republicans takes it upon themselves to critically examine the role of the party’s extremist positions and rhetoric, the deadly impact of the party’s institutionalized bigotry nevertheless remains remarkably under-recognized—even as it continues to claim innocent lives.
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=74731
Posted by Veterans Today on Jan 21 2011, With 0 Reads, Filed under Corruption, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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[...] the original article at Veterans Today [...]
Yep, not good. Neither is the dramatic rise in American deaths and victims of crime from the increasing prescence of illegal immigrants.
T.V.
There is no such thing as hate speech or a hate crime. That’s just commie talk. This is an effort to criminalize speech the state hates and to create different levels of punishment depending upon who the state likes and dislikes. IN other words, it’s unconstitutional and illegal. Fuck these people.
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Get the facts:
The Color of Crime:
http://www.colorofcrime.com/
****
It’s beside the point anyway, if Americans don’t want those immigrants, then those immigrants shouldn’t be in America to be attacked. The ex-Americans (ex because they have opted out of the national contract by siding with aliens over citizens on the issue of American sovereignty) should have their citizenship withdrawn too. Let ‘em continue to live in America, though, no-one else deserves to have such weirdos forced upon them.
Okie said: That’s just commie talk.
It’s exactly that. Trotsky and his followers popularised the neologism ‘racist’ expressly to undermine national feeling the better to impose their poison worldwide. This site’s Anti-American double standards are galling. Palestinians are hereoes for resisting demographic displacement by Zionists, Americans are haters and bigots if they much more meekly resist dispossession by Mexicans.
That’s hateful political speech!
So we are to believe that poor migrant-worker Mexicans desperately seeking to make some money to feed their families are commensurate with armed Zionist ideologues who, with extensive bankster and Zionist Agency funding, invaded Palestine and forcibly (via overt militarism and covert terrorist acts) drove nearly 1 million Palestinians off their land and into the deplorable conditions they have experienced for decades?
Wow, what sort of convoluted rationalization did it take to arrive at that conclusion?
Last I checked, it was principal banking (“lending” institutions and the network of ancillary financial enterprises) establishments together with Federal level deregulatory complicity which has led to the “dispossession” of sweeping segments of the US population (including far more “of color” than amongst “whites”). By the same token, last I checked it was the major corporate players who eliminated “our jobs” to ship them overseas where labor could be far more cheaply exploited.
To my knowledge, and I could be wrong, none of the decision-makers in either the banks nor the major corporations who have “dispossessed” us, are Mexican immigrants of media infamy.
Let’s put the spotlight on those with the real power to destroy this nation, the same who are also behind the destabilization of Mexico which has created the desperation driving most Mexican immigrants North of the border to survive, shall we?
There you will find your true “Anti-Americans”, not those who simply repudiate your classic corporate-exonerating Fox News-indoctrinated nonsense.
“That’s just commie talk.” You’ve got that right! The left (liberalism) IS Communist…they ARE the ground troops/social engineers of the Communist New World Order. Veterans Today IS a dissemination tool for liberal/Communist propaganda…with the exception of JB Campbell, who is the only contributor to VT that isn’t a covert-Commie!
The White Nationalist/Aryan Movements are well-funded PsyOp projects of the ADL and the SPLC.
BTW, Catherine A. Traywick is Jewish. No surprise there.
NAFTA destroyed the ability of poor indian and mestizo farmers in Mexico to survive against US agriculture multinationals like Monsanto. During the economic bubble driven booms of the 80s, 90s and early 00s we (business and state – local governments) with the full support of the Federal government encouraged these people to come here and work their asses off for slave wages. At the same time, US multinationals have taken over ownership of Mexico.
Now that we are in a Depression that is going to last many more years it has become the ideal time to demonize these defenseless people? Well we know that the MSM has played a key role in demonizing these folks. These cops should have the book thrown at them for covering up the murder of an American of Hispanic descent (no, he was not an illegal).
There are no easy answer to the benefits and problems brought on by economic Union with Mexico (NAFTA). Globalization has helped the top 1% of US and Mexico, but for the rest of us it has awful. These illegals are as much victims as we are. I am for strong borders but not lynchings. The next step is full political Union with Mexico by 2020.
As for Steve Levy of Long Island, what can one say but that he is a typical two face bigoted Jew. If the victims were Russian mobsters we would never stop hearing about the poor victims on the MSM and the evil anti-semites that harmed them.
Since the Hispanic vote is going to determine the 2012 presidential election, rest assure that illegals will become the MSM’s victim for a short period of time in order to siphon votes away from the GOP.
The MSM is a cancer to this country.
Penumbra, there are plenty of poor Americans – are they entitled to break into your house and steal your savings and investments, food, health care access etc? Of course not. They are precisely as entitled to aggress against you and yours as are bankers or terrorists. If we do not respect in principle the right of a native population to control its territory in its own interest — including keeping out all other people as accords with their wishes — then we license colonialism and ethnic cleansing and ultimately genocide. And the aggression against you I began with.
When we would make excuses for cross border aggression of one type we justify all of them. It’s a principle widely held, that peoples have the right to live unmolested by aliens in their own countries. It doesn’t bind tptb because they are able to create narratives to justify aggression against Arabs and White people, their historic enemies, but normal, decent people rarely come out against it.
You’re not normal or decent, Penumbra. You’re no better than the propagandists for Zionist ethnic cleansing you claim to oppose.