The anti-immigration drumbeat that has been led by nativist gangs and neo-nazi vigilante-type groups is contributing to the building of a fascist culture that criminalizes a whole people and renders their lives as practically worthless. We are now seeing the codification of that culture in anti-immigrant laws that make the targeting of immigrants legal. In turn the legalization of fascist laws accelerates the building of a fascist culture whose real target is all workers, and is designed to impede and disrupt the political formation of the new class of workers.
Particularly in the South as well as in Arizona, Latino workers have a bullseye on their backs. Legislation passed in Alabama and Georgia especially made it practically illegal for an undocumented immigrant to even exist. Under these laws the undocumented are being denied employment, it is illegal for them to attend the schools, to receive health care or any other service provided by government. It is even illegal for anyone to provide housing to an undocumented resident. Roadblocks are routinely set up in immigrant neighborhoods to target, detain and deport undocumented workers en masse. Deportations are taking place on such a scale that there are now more immigrants being deported than are coming across the border. And almost every week we hear of deaths of immigrants attempting to cross a militarized border.
On June 25, the Supreme Court upheld the onerous Arizona state SB 1070 law called “show me your papers.” This measure requires local police to determine the legal status of anyone they apprehend, no matter how minor the infraction. Though it struck down three other repressive provisions of the Arizona state law, the door is now open for reintroducing them, or for other states to do copy cat laws.
As with Trayvon Martin, the targeting of Latino immigrants and the devaluation of their lives arises out of American history which includes the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of African Americans and an imperialism that colonized peoples of color throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. A racial ideology is being employed that advantages only the ruling class. In this time of crisis all workers are seeing their standard of living under attack, and it is in this environment of extreme instability that the fear is instilled against all immigrants, who are blamed for everything that is wrong in society. This blaming of the immigrant for all of capitalism’s ills has nothing to do with ethnicity, or race, and everything to do with the capitalist class achieving its own economic and political goals.
So we see that the real battle is directed not against the fascist gangs or in “fighting the right,” but in mobilizing the workers as a whole to unite in the fight for the program of all the dispossessed – for jobs, education, health care and housing for all, including the immigrant worker. The working class as a whole must come to the defense of the immigrant worker, embracing its struggle as its own. But we have to also see that the aim of the fascist movement is to destroy any vestige of democracy, and to put in place the direct, brutal dictatorship of the corporate state. Fascism always comes in the guise of legality. The solution for our class is clear: either the corporations will take over the state and put in place its own fascist agenda, or the people, that is, the workers will fight to gain the political power to reorganize society in their own interest.
July/August 2012.Vol22.Ed4
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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