If you want to turn a blind eye to xenophobic fearmongering, of the exact type that people always spout when there are immigrants, you are allowed to do that. But I wonât.
Here are some examples of xenophobic fearmongering through history that hopefully let you all see youâre falling for the same old bigotry used against a new target.
The Stranger at Our Gate by Frank Beard - letting in these poor, diseased, anarchic people will ruin America!
âTHIS IS NOT A DUMPING GROUNDâ, Fiery Cross - Could be posted on facebook and do numbers with modern day xenophobes because itâs exactly the same argument wrt e.g. syrian/ukrainian refugees or south asian immigrants in Portugal.
The High Tide of Immigration - A National Menace - essentially what many of you are afraid of. While Americaâs institutions are in trouble now, itâs certainly not because of immigrants undermining them. Natural born Americans are plenty dangerous there.
The Mortar of Assimilation - cartoon thatâs arguing some people just arenât built for equal rights and would ruin the culture. Where have we heard that one?
The Most Recently Discovered Wild Beast (Anti-Irish) - Iâll quote the article in case you donât want to click through
Native-born Americans criticized Irish immigrants for their poverty and manners, their supposed laziness and lack of discipline, their public drinking style, their catholic religion, and their capacity for criminality and collective violence. in both words and pictures, critics of the Irish measured character by perceived physical appearance.
Sound familiar?
Irish and Chinese immigrants consuming Uncle Sam
Exactly the fear people spread about âmuslimizationâ or whatever of europe, or of south asian immigrants overwhelming Portugal, etc.
âWeâre letting in anarchists and socialists with open borders!â - exact same fears are spread today
âBritain is dumping their impoverished Irish on the US!â
The Unrestricted Dumping Ground - a boat load of (suspiciously dark skinned) italian immigrants being dumped âdirect from the slums of europeâ onto American docks. You could change a handful of words and replace Uncle Sam with whatever the European/Portuguese personification is and it matches Chegaâs rhetoric directly.
Kultur-Terror - Norwegian Nazi propaganda, Iâll copy the explanation because itâs better than what I could write
The monster destroying a European city in this cartoon is made out of symbols of America as interpreted through the prism of Nazism. The word Seelenlosigkeit, or âsoullessness,â was a German word that described an affliction that the Nazis attributed to America as a consequence of its âdegenerationâ and âcultural malaise.â This cartoon was made as a Nazi propaganda poster.
At the bottom, amid the ruins of European civilization, a man holds a sign that says, âThe USA shall save European culture from destruction.â Next to it, the text reads: âWith what right?â
The Anti-Irish stereotypes are well worth reading up on, because again you can swap in Arab/Islamic/Indian for Irish and itâs a near perfect fit for modern propaganda. Donât fall for it again
Benjamin Franklin himself decried German immigration to Pennsylvania!
Franklin was alarmed by the influx of German immigrants to Pennsylvania. The German immigrants were lacking in a liberal political tradition, the English language, and Anglo-American culture. In Paragraph 23 of the essay, Franklin wrote "why should the Palatine boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their languages and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion?
He was worried that they would not adapt to the local culture. Imagine PA without german influence, or America as a whole! Insane.
Page 9 of this PDF goes over anti-immigration attitudes in the mid 1800s -
The invasion by this so-called immigrant ârabbleâ in the 1840s and 1850s inflamed the prejudices of American ânativists.â They feared that these foreign hordes would outbreed, outvote, and overwhelm the old ânativeâ stock
Literally Goebbels gave a speech which is emblematic of Nazi antisemitic propaganda -
Richard Wagner once called the Jews the âplastic demon of decompositionâ and Theodor Mommsen meant the same when he saw them as the âferment of decomposition.â In contrast, the Aryan sees himself as a creative creature. There may be a certain tragedy inherent in the nature of the Jews, but is it our fault that this race works destructively among the peoples and is a constant danger to their domestic and international security?
The fundamental differences between the two races were responsible for the repeated explosions during the November years [1918-1933]. As long as the Jews remain anonymous, they are secure. The moment they lose their anonymity, the racial problem became acute and required a suitable solution. We certainly do not hold the Jews solely to blame for the German spiritual and economic catastrophe. We all know the other causes that led to the decline of our people. However, we have the courage to recognize their role in the process and to name them by name.
And a bonus, he complains about (heavily paraphrasing here) âJews trying to cancel usâ
It was difficult for a time to persuade the people of this, for public opinion was entirely in Jewish hands.
I could go on but if the above doesnât show you youâre parroting xenophobic ideas that have always been wrong and are wrong today, youâre beyond my help
And, to be very clear - you can criticize cities being dirty, poor policing, poorly maintained infrastructure, and any number of other things. But notably, those are not caused by immigrants!
