Over the past decade, the bogus and racist claim that migrants entering the United States in search of a better life are conducting an “invasion” of the country has moved from the fringes of right-wing media to its core. Conservative media figures, across the entire spectrum of the media ecosphere, warn that faceless brown masses are threatening the personal safety of and national identity of Americans.
This kind of language was once limited to far-right figures like Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, Steve King, and the Minutemen militia. Over time, it was picked up by right-wing stars like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson. Republican Party leaders, up to and including Donald Trump, have followed in their wake. And along the way, armed white nationalists spouting the same talking point conducted a series of massacres.
This racist and dangerous rhetoric is now the pretext of a looming constitutional crisis. Texas and the U.S. government are in a standoff over whether the state’s government can defy orders from federal officials by constructing and maintaining razor-wire barriers along the border with Mexico. Despite a recent Supreme Court ruling, Texas officials are still preventing federal agents from entering the area.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is contending that his state is suffering an “invasion.” Despite the fact that legal experts have skewered Abbott’s claim, every Republican governor but one and numerous Republican members of Congress are supporting Abbott.
As Media Matters’ Matt Gertz writes:
“It’s impossible to disaggregate the Republican Party’s full-throated adoption of the bogus ‘invasion’ analogy as a constitutional argument from the right-wing media’s use of that rhetoric.”
