Texas Republican Representative Chip Roy may have stirred up disunity in the GOP earlier this year with his threats to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson, but he’s in lockstep with the rest of his party on one thing: Democrats want to “end Western civilization” with open borders.
In an interview with Fox News’s Harris Faulkner on Tuesday, Roy was asked about the Senate’s passage of a $95 billion foreign aid package, which dedicates assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
The Freedom Caucus member accused Democrats of not “[having] any interest in sitting down at the table” to discuss border security—less than a week after Republicans killed a bipartisan bill that included border funding alongside the foreign aid package, at the urging of Donald Trump.
Roy went on to baselessly claim that Democrats, who he snidely called “colonizers,” “want to flood the zone” with “the chaos created by wide-open borders.”
“It’s not just political,” said Roy. “They want to remake America. They want to end Western civilization.”
Roy also complained about the number of “foreign-born” people in the United States.
The demographic conspiracy espoused by Roy, a variant of the explicitly white supremacist “great replacement theory,” is becoming an increasingly popular talking point in the GOP. What was once confined to the hinterlands of white nationalist message boards has been adopted whole cloth by the Republican mainstream and is now repeated by lawmakers like Roy on television.
Roy also took the opportunity to take a potshot at same-sex marriage, accusing Democrats of “trying to force their beliefs” on “countries in Africa who dare to say that marriage is between one man and one woman.”
Roy’s was not the only mention of the threat to Western civilization by the global right this week; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his own Fox News interview, called the bombardment of Rafah part of a “battle of the forces of civilization against the worst forces of barbarism on the planet.”
Roy’s and Netanyahu’s comments are emblematic of a global right obsessed with conspiratorial ideations of civilizational decline and collapse. For Fox, it makes for a good segment.
link: https://newrepublic.com/post/178981/republican-congressman-chip-roy-western-civilization-migrants
archive: https://archive.ph/mUXbi
Now open borders can mean from anywhere, but this is largely about Mexico. Them’s the people that cross our borders. It’s so incredibly strange to me that western civilization is in such peril from immigration from a *check’s notes Catholic country that speaks a European language. The realization I had that Latin America isn’t actually considered part of “The west” was the last piece that clicked into place on just how meaningless that term is. They are geographically western, the primary religions are European, and the primary languages are European. For fuck’s sake, it’s called Latin America, and it’s not because they were the site of the former Roman Empire
When you realize that Latin America is not part of Western civilization, you can see how plainly there isn’t even an iota of thought behind the idea of a common collective European heritage; It is only race; It is only white
And even “white” is a very vague term. My GF from Latin America is blonde and if it weren’t for her brown eyes, she could easily pass as a local in Europe. In fact she does pass as a local often enough. Plenty of people in Latin America are perfectly “white”, so immigrants from Latin American countries to the US can assimilate within a generation, easily. I know plenty of “white” Americans speaking perfectly fine American English, but with a last name like Garcia. So yeah, it’s ridiculous to die on the hill of “non-white” immigration from the south.
In fact, all of US wealth and power is built upon (involuntary/undocumented) immigration in different aspects, but pretty much every way. There’s a reason why your electronics are cheap and your food is so affordable.
This is me. I’m a latina, and even my first name is white-passing, and not a single person would know until I explicitly tell them or they meet my parents or something. It really goes to show how arbitrary race is, and how much of our perceptions based on race is also built on a base of ignorance
You know what I’ve noticed? Back in the 70s, traveling between the US and Canada meant saying “nothing to declare” and waving at the crossing guard when hopping across the border.
Now it’s “papers please”, a potential TSA frisk, metal detectors and vehicle scans, selective “let’s take the vehicle apart” sessions, and the requirement to have a passport, planned itinerary with names, addresses and times that they’ll be checking on when you return to the border.
So the lack of thought isn’t even limited to race; it’s an entire false narrative built to say whatever they want whenever they want. It just seems racist because THEY are racist.
I crossed back and forth into Canada in the 90’s with just a state ID and telling the border guard I was visiting friends. Only one time did I get stopped, and then my car was full of friends who wouldn’t shut up (drinking age was 19 in Ontario).
9/11 changed all that.
I know it’s fiction, but there’s much history baked into Cormac McCarthy’s The Border Trilogy books. Mexicans came up to work a bit, wandered back. Americans wandered down, fucked around, wandered back. Pretty much just a cop in a toll booth saying, “Aight. Go on.” Both ways.
The drug war fucked it all up. And I’m well aware these desperate migrants aren’t drug mules, I get that. But still, the drug war is the genesis of all this shit. Gods, that’s a whole 10 conversations…
There are real concerns, and yes, illegal immigration is spiking. Lemmy doesn’t want to look at numbers because the GOP is using (some) facts for once. Trying to look at the current issue: “tHaT’s RaciSt!” (Not baggin’ on you OP!)
Nah. We’re staring at a humanitarian crisis. We have to talk about how we’re handling this influx. Look at the government chart above (first link), we have to figure out what to do with all these extra souls. If Democrats ignore it, the issue gets worse and the GOP gains ammo.
Conservatives play the issue for votes, liberals downplay the issue as mere racism. Meanwhile, real human families are caught in the middle. FFS, I’m screaming here, this isn’t a mere political issue, people are suffering. And yes, that includes Americans.
My wife is Pilipino, trying to get her youngest over here. She has a permanent Green Card and is married to an American. The paperwork is still like rocket science and takes years. Imagine what these South Americans are going through. My step-son merely wants a better life. These people are running from hell. And there’s a LOT of them.
tl;dr: We gotta talk about this. Downplaying it is backfiring.