Back when Glenn Greenwald — arguably the most accomplished independent journalist this century and a man I admire greatly — co-founded The Intercept, it focused exclusively on exposing the national security state lies and abuses, and it was an admirable publication, its nominal leftist bent notwithstanding.
It’s since changed hands and has now largely gone the way of Drudge Report — unrecognizable from its initial form having clearly sold out to interests that don’t appreciate or care about its original ethos.
Related: WATCH: British State Media Hack Does Migrant Propaganda, Polish MEP Immediately Slaps Her Down
The publication recently disseminated a multi-thousand-word treatise on how “migrant” is allegedly racist.
Via The Intercept (emphasis added):
Consider the word “migrant.” Today, it’s the term of art from both the right and the left…
It used to be fairly rare to call human beings migrants. From the 16th to 19th centuries, the word mostly referred to birds and other animals that moved back and forth between different climates and terrains every year, not from desire or planning but from pure, immutable instinct…
Now, everyone who leaves a poor or troubled country and comes north to the United States is a “migrant.”…
The word “migrant” implies that they’re traveling around unsettled: rolling stones with no intention of gathering moss and no right to land in one place.
As one would expect — the only shocking part is that it took several paragraphs to get to — The Intercept exposes the little-known historical fact that Hitler invented the term “migrant” to smear gypsies (sorry, “Roma”) — or something to that effect. The details don’t matter.
Hitler!
Nazi!
Continuing:
As Al Jazeera has commented, “migrant” has “evolved from its dictionary definitions into a tool that dehumanizes and distances, a blunt pejorative.”…
The philologist Victor Klemperer wrote about these kinds of subtle language shifts under the Nazi regime. In his definitive study, “The Language of the Third Reich,” Klemperer, who himself narrowly avoided death at the hands of the Nazis, was less interested in the obvious language shifts — the kind of thing any antifascist would have recognized. Instead, he focused on the unnoticed changes, the ones that slipped by almost everyone; he called it “the language of hysteria” and “the language which writes and thinks for you.”
Here’s the craziest irony of this sordid affair: the multinational neoliberal NGO class literally invented the term “migrant” as applied to illegal aliens running rampant throughout the West.
Even Mamala Harris — who has allowed unprecedented millions of illegal aliens into the country as Border Czar — isn’t migrant-friendly enough.
Related: Irony? State Department Bigots Issue ‘Do Not Travel’ Haiti Advisory
How is Mamala racist against “migrants”?
The Intercept explains: her “earned pathway to citizenship” for illegal aliens who entered the country illegally might include a fine for violating the law!
The absolute horror.
The racism.
The genocide.
The literal violence.
Sanctions for violating American law are obviously reserved for Americans.
I got tossed in jail once for missing a probation payment for a misdemeanor traffic violation — but illegal aliens who knowingly break federal immigration law deserve a passport on the spot and an apology for making them wait.
Continuing:
[Kamala Harris’] speech at the Democratic National Convention repeated these dark saws and worse. She promised to bring back a bipartisan immigration legislation that gives immigrants nothing, and which Harris dubbed the “toughest border control bill in decades.” It calls for “more border security” when border security is nothing more than border security theater: a true Klemperer lexeme. As for her platform, the only thing Harris offers to immigrants is “an earned pathway to citizenship.”
That might sound hopeful at first glance, but a portent of what “earned pathway to citizenship” actually means comes from a bipartisan House bill co-sponsored by Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., and Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, who’s from the U.S.-Mexico border city El Paso and is a co-chair of the Harris campaign.
The bill would offer immigrants without documentation who have lived in the United States for at least five years a four-year, quasi-legal status possibly leading to a green card — but only if they accede to the implication that they’ve robbed Americans and should be fined for it. To enroll, applicants must pay $5,000. They must also agree to have 1.5 percent of their wages garnished for years. All that money would go to a fund to compensate American workers for the jobs they’ve supposedly lost to immigrants. The bill calls immigrants “aliens.” And “migrants.”
