Here in the USA, Trumpists are very hostile towards immigrants coming from the Mexican border to the point where they infamously proposed to build a wall. The Biden administration is better in-name only, and has kept the concentration camps at the border.
Why is there so much hatred toward these immigrants? What is the material cause of this?
It’s a lot easier to blame immigrants for issues like unemployment and poverty, than it is to gain class consciousness and understand that it’s the bourgeois class who’re at fault.
the bourgeois class knows this, so they push the narrative that immigrants, minorities, etc. are the source of the nation’s problems. doing this keeps proletarians from simply banding together to exact real change, because we’re too busy with infighting for that.
The material basis is that the bourgeoisie benefits from enforcing strong borders. If there were no borders, then workers could move freely, and that would give them more power.
Nobody really wants to shut down immigration entirely, but they want to maintain strict control of it in order to maintain discipline in the labor force.
Tell that to europe
It sometimes happens that that the workers themselves give themselves over to racism. This happens when, threatened with massive unemployment, they attempt to concentrate it on certain groups: Italians, Poles or other “filthy foreigners,” “dirty Arabs,” “[insert slur here],” etc. But in the proletariat these impulses only occur at the worst moments of demoralization, and don’t last. As soon as he enters into struggle the proletariat clearly and concretely sees its enemy: it is a homogeneous class with an historical perspective and mission.
On the contrary, the petit bourgeois is a class condemned. At the same time it is also condemned to be unable to understand anything, to be incapable of fighting: it can do nothing but […] flail about in the vice that crushes it. Racism is not an aberration of the spirit: it is and will be the petit bourgeois reaction to the pressures of big capital. The choice of a “race,” that is of the group upon whom the destruction will be concentrated, obviously depends on the circumstances.
Trump supporters are generally virulently racist. The working class ones blame their problems on oppressed groups like immigrants and the powerful ones stoke hatred against oppressed groups like immigrants to distract from the part that they play in deteriorating the material conditions for the working class. The rhetoric used against undocumented immigrants involves them competing with the white working class for lower skilled jobs and driving down the wages, them taking advantage of public services without paying taxes and so on.
Ironic because immigrants are generally doing the jobs that no one wants. Like backbreaking crop picking, raising livestock, and most farm work, really. When there’s a shortage of immigrants this work doesn’t get done because white people will not take these jobs, period. There’s no competition happening there.
Undocumented immigrants also DO pay taxes. Even though they can’t use most of what they’re paying for. So they’re not taking advantage of public services, they’re subsidizing them for everyone else.
Americans that are racist against Latin people know that they benefit from their oppression despite what they say. The wall is a symbolic gesture, an announcement for immigrants to know their place, but it’s never going to actually be built. Because keeping them around as second-class not-citizens makes the lives of whities so much cheaper.
“Illegal” immigrants are just being used as scapegoats for the frustration of working class people with a system that doesn’t even benefit them. You see, if you frame both the bourgeois gran blanc and proletarian petit blanc as inherently the same class and more deserving of rights, dignity or even power, then the small white will serve as the foot soldier to the property holder.
This has been a tried and true technique of the ruling class ever since the beginnings of colonialism, just now racial theories are no longer as attractive (but still popular), so they fall back on the legalistic sense that immigrants are “illegal” and “stealing jobs” or “bringing crime/drugs,” because in fact not even the white proletarian life is particularly easy or privileged. It is just slightly better than that of the non-white (or non-cishet boyish) proletarian, and only getting worse with time, so keeping people addicted to those tiny privileges and hostile to positive change maintains a good buffer between the most oppressed and the actual most wealthy.
If you really look into the reasoning of the MAGA people, you’ll see that they are in part motivated by a twisted notion of the material reality, be it jobs, crime, housing, but fail to find the actual culprit for those things and fall back on the same backwards Yankee notions they’ve been taught since young (race realism, Yankee exceptionalism, co-opted Christian values, hard work pays off, anti-communism). On the other hand, Democrat followers have to outright deny the material reality because to do otherwise they’d quickly lose faith in their own party. I think that’s why they’re so scared of people “Just Asking Questions,” because they don’t have answers, or how Clinton had to go “America is Already Great.”
But the actual Democratic party is well aware of the material conditions:
The Biden administration is better in-name only, and has kept the concentration camps at the border.
They have, because those border camps serve as more than just racist arbitrariness. They not only serve as an incentive to keep the immigrants already in the USA in line and scared, but also have forced labour with barely any compensation and terrible living conditions. By shutting down those, Biden would be hurting the same class that put him and his party “in power,” so they have no real reason to stop that. They’ll just complain about it, like they did with other things like abortion, but shake their hands in the air and pretend there’s nothing they could’ve done. They’re not stupid, really, they know what they’re doing most of the time.
For the individual miffed liberals it’s often just racism. That’s why white illegal and legal immigrants are expats.
Same as why jews were targeted during nazi germany. Capitalists have to divert the american working class attention off themselves and what better candidate than the working class of other countries.
it’s pretty simple: they idolize capitalists and they defend capitalism, but they don’t like the natural consequences of capitalism. they hate migrants conforming to lower wages, but they don’t like to go against the capitalists that want lower wages
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I think some people just attack the weakest or least protected, illegal imigrants are in that role right now. For a long time it was gay people or black people, but now that it is frowned upon they have found new victim.
You can see some of them pretending to be on the left, liberal or progresive, but they are still angry and agressive.
i find this an interesting question. just spend time with bigots and it generally is obvious… they are poorly miseducated (not even a class issue imo) and do not understand how societies work at all so basically psychologically feel feelings of fear and lash out against what is unfamiliar to justify feeling mediocre and scared
Do you want an actual answer from someone who actually voted Trump and supports the wall and deportation, or do you wantbto circlejerk?
OP asked for a material explanation.
If you voted for Trump and support the wall and deportation, and you have a material explanation for that, then just post it.
This comment is correct in general. https://lemmy.ml/comment/2780243
As for why the “far-right” is “raging” about “immigration,” you’d have to ask them. The far-right is a conveniently nebulous grouping of people that you can easily incorporate plain racists, any given trump supporter, anyone who doesn’t agree with your views of immigration, Most Israelies, and a good part of our current Political Overlords, as well as any other straw-man you wish to construct. So I’d say that “they” are currently raging about immigration because the date is August 18th. But I fail to see what value the question has as phrased.
