ISIS and Security Along the U.S.Mexico Border
In this piece, Ian Haney López, author of Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (2014), critcizes conservative attempts to link ISIS and security along the U.S./Mexico border:
“Using severe orthodoxy to justify barbarous violence, the Islamic State in Syria is a major destructive force in the Middle East that demands the attention of the United States, prompting political leaders from President Obama on down to warn the American polity of the danger posed by ISIS. Strikingly, though, many Republicans have been depicting ISIS not primarily as a foreign concern, but as a domestic threat that may portend the invasion, and even the potential collapse, of our country. Especially in the repeated linkage of ISIS to security on the Mexican border, conservative warnings on ISIS seem to constitute a new form of dog whistle politics, the dark art of using coded terms to stir racial anxiety among voters.”
Since the events of September 11, 2001 (and before), national security fears have been invoked by political leaders advocating restricting immigration, increased border enforcement, and otherwise limiting migration from Mexico. For further analysis, click here.
KJ