The global far-right are desperate to de-link the refugee issue from its causes

Farage’s plans for mass deportations under a policy called Operation Restoring Justice echo what is happening in the US. In fact, Trump’s repeated ‘law and order’ deployments of the military against migrants might help us understand what’s coming down the pipe here in Britain.

Journalist Ken Klippenstein recently wrote a three part investigation. Parts one and two are here. But part three may signpost to how Farage’s new policy will develop.

The US political right, like Britain’s, has spent years developing a conspiratorial framework. In it, the country is being taken over.

Klippenstein asks:

What explains the preparations for American military attacks in Mexico, troop deployments at the southern border, National Guard on the streets of D.C.  plus other major cities, and most recently, American warships off the coast of Venezuela?

The answer?

It’s the invasion of America.

The idea of “weaponised migration” is central to Trump’s thinking. This isn’t exactly what’s being widely argued here in the UK – not yet, at least. But other key elements of this  argument are.

Trump’s “weaponised immigration”

Klippenstein also makes comparisons with the Bush era and Iraq. By the way, here is our recent piece on the connections between what’s happening in the UK today and the War on Terror.

The US-based reporter says:

This is the WMD of our era, a misreading of the facts and the embrace of some unknown unknown that incorporates Russia and China, terrorist groups, cartels, and even American friends as all being behind the secretly orchestrated migrant invasion.

According to Trump’s new ‘anti-invasion’ czar Joseph Humire this is a “national security crisis, perhaps the greatest in our lifetime”.

Here’s the important part. Humire claims:

Far from a problem of ‘root causes’ derived from socio-economic hardship, natural disasters, or high-levels of insecurity, the center of gravity of the U.S. border and immigration crisis … is Weaponized Migration.

He’s disconnecting refugees and migrants from the actual material reality which forces them to travel here. Cynical and self-serving, for sure. But, it turns out, quite effective for distracting people, shoring up elite power and forcing through repressive policies.

As Klippenstein has it:

In other words, people are not coming to America to escape poverty or repression or for opportunity, they are foot soldiers of an orchestrated attack on the country.

National security?

Trump’s argument is essentially that Mexico, in this case, is “actively and intentionally” using migration as a weapon.

In that, it is no longer a human, sociological, or economic problem. It’s National Security.

Here in the UK, we’ve seen ‘national security’ grounds used to attack journalism, to expand policing powers, undermine on the right to protest, and used to justify government refusal to be held accountable over Gaza. the ‘national security grounds’ argument is so intentionally vague, it can be wielded against anything.

And what the far-right call for today, the Labour government may well enact tomorrow as it endlessly doom loops through different ineffective triangulations.

Militarised conspiracism from Trump and Farage

In both countries, words like ‘operation’ have powerful connotations. They give a sense of urgency and emergency. They add a feeling of crisis.

In the US and UK, militarised language is a key element of an anti-migrant vocabulary. In both countries, we’re told we’re being ‘invaded’. Commonly here, it’s by ‘military-age men.’

This clearly military-inspired language works alongside wild conspiracies to engage anger. Anger that should be directed at actual causes like war overseas and wild inequality at home.

Add to this chaotic mess Farage’s suggestion that this is all about ‘protecting women’ from, for example, culturally and sexually deviant outsiders.

Facts wrong, feelings right

Some people tend to focus on an evident lack of media literacy and critical thinking skills. That’s not wrong, but it doesn’t go far enough. It avoids looking at systemic causes. It can make the problem appear individual.

And it totally is inadequate to challenge the hold far-right conspiracy fantasies like these can have on people. This stuff appeals because the conspiracy giving them something beyond rationality, something emotional and compelling.

In her recent book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein said conspiracy theories get the facts wrong, but the emotions right. The point is, this often fact-free propaganda sets people’s heart alight in a way that factual liberal and left counter-arguments currently do not. That needs to be fixed.

There are key differences between Trump and Farage. Most obviously, Trump is in power and Farage isn’t. But we need to understand how the right is making it’s case to the population. so that we can make our own.

Featured image via the Canary