Combating the Nativist Narrative
Week of February 12, 2023
In NY-03 the GOP’s Nativist Electoral Strategy Failed Spectacularly:
It’s unlikely that the GOP will find better conditions for their nativist electoral strategy than in the special election for NY-03. This district was a GOP-held battleground district that expelled former Congressman George Santos had won by 7.5 points in 2022. There have been significant issues dealing with the increase of migrants arriving in New York City exacerbated in part by Republicans like Texas Governor Greg Abbott sending buses to the city. The Murdoch media empire, led by the New York Post, has bolstered this effort, building a drumbeat of fearmongering narratives about migrants for the last two years. Meanwhile, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams validated the GOP talking points. Republicans made immigration their top issue, spending $9.5 million on anti-immigrant ads, according to data compiled from AdImpact. Republicans spent four times as much on the issue than any other issue. They believed it was what would drive their voters to the polls. They still lost. If they can’t win there, where do they expect to win with this strategy? Check out our full analysis HERE.
COMBATING THE NARRATIVE: Despite this loss, the GOP will drive full steam ahead with the nativist strategy straight through November because Donald Trump is still leading the GOP, and while this strategy has not delivered for them for the last 7 years, they only keep doubling down. As Republicans killed the border bill they negotiated, followed by an electoral loss where their strategic xenophobia failed to deliver at the box, they should be constantly reminded of their embarrassing failures resending the nativist political attacks that will continue throughout the year hollow.
The Consequences of Normalizing the White Nationalist Invasion Conspiracy:
In September of 2021, shortly after winning a Republican leadership post in the House, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) began running replacement conspiracy ads on Facebook. Despite being called out for employing a white nationalist conspiracy that had inspired multiple deadly terrorist attacks in recent years, Stefanik repeatedly doubled down. Several years later, Stefanik is defending the deadly conspiracy as a legal theory, and the white nationalist replacement and invasion conspiracy has been mainstreamed in the GOP despite inspiring multiple deadly terrorist attacks and being an active threat to both public safety and democracy. Making a similar point to one we have been arguing around the impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, USA Today’s Will Carless noted, “If you’re in any doubt about actual fascist creep in the United States, know that the Great Replacement was — until a couple years ago — considered an absurd & deeply racist conspiracy theory. A sitting US cabinet member was just impeached based on essentially the same notion.” As Philip Bump noted in the Washington Post how Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a former proponent of immigration reform and a son of Cuban immigrants, was making a “great-replacement-theory-adjacent argument” on X this week. Rubio is not alone: we have also identified dozens of examples from other Republican electeds employing the bigoted conspiratorial rhetoric this week, including a post for the official Senate GOP account that read, “Biden’s border invasion is destroying communities across America”. The right also continues to spend truckloads of cash to put this deadly dangerous conspiracy in front of their supporters. New research from Media Matters found that Meta raked in over $390,000 in three months from ads peddling the racist invasion conspiracy. These are not just fringe accounts, but the House Republicans' top superPAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is currently running invasion conspiracy ads in support of Texas’ standoff with the federal government. This normalization has downstream consequences courting political violence like the three men the FBI recently arrested who were plotting to use explosives and sniper rifles to attack both migrants and federal agents along the border, hoping their actions would cause a “domino effect,” setting off more violent confrontations with federal officials “starting a war.” The normalization of these conspiracies not only feed election deniers, but new reporting also reveals Russia disinformation efforts are targeting these views hoping to exacerbate civil conflict.
COMBATING THE NARRATIVE: The normalization of these bigoted conspiracies sets in when we collectively shrug our shoulders with a ‘Oh well, here they go again.’ We all must be unequivocal in our condemnation of this rhetoric and clear-eyed about its violent and anti-democratic consequences. Additionally, we must demand political consequences like the ones for disgraced former Rep. Steve King (R-IA) in 2019 or this week in the Michigan state legislature. As Gabe Ortíz noted, “Michigan Democrats have stripped a GOP lawmaker of his committee assignments and authority over his staff after he platformed bigoted and antisemitic conspiracy theory shared by a notorious far-right troll. Democratic leadership took action after GOP state Rep. Josh Schriver shared a tweet with the text ‘The great replacement!’”
Nativist Narrative Machine at Work but Xenophobic Panic About “Migrant Crime Wave” is Predictably False:
Ahead of the special election in NY-03, the right-wing nativist narrative machine hummed with the production of a familiar product – sensationalizing individual crimes into a moral panic about crime and safety. Validating this nativist narrative, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams donned a bulletproof vest and a designer scarf for a photo op on a police raid. Feeding the nativist machine, Police Commissioner Edward Caban asserted there was “a migrant crime wave is washing over our city,” shortly after the photo op raid with the Mayor. There have been a few high-profile incidents of migrants committing crimes in New York City over the last few weeks. However, the overall data shows a decrease in crime in the city overall. As a New York Times headline reads, “‘Migrant Crime Wave’ Not Supported by Data, Despite High-Profile Cases”. But it was in pushing this disinformation narrative about the alleged “migrant crime wave” that Curtis Sliwa’s right-wing street gang, the Guardian Angels, assaulted a man on live TV, falsely claiming he was a migrant who was shoplifting.
COMBATING THE NARRATIVE: Immigrants are not correlated with crime. In study after study, and study, and study, and more study the facts are clear: immigrants have lower crime rates than the rest of the population. The disinformation is predictable following any individual crime by a migrant that the right can spin into a high-profile example. Of course, there should be fitting consequences for those convicted of crimes, but turning those crimes into xenophobic political fearmongering risks encouraging the sort of racist violence we saw from Sliwa’s Guardian Angels live on Sean Hannity’s show last week.
POLITICS UPDATES
NY-03: As noted above, the GOP’s nativist strategy lost big, but there are also lessons to glean from Democratic candidate Tom Suozzi. The Suozzi campaign took a “both/and” approach to immigration, which is essential to understand as the race is analyzed. He didn’t just run as a border hawk, but importantly, he repeatedly talked about the need for legalization and legal immigration. He also called out GOP gamesmanship and hypocrisy on the issue and their lack of any solutions. Suozzi’s candidacy was also bolstered by a massive ground game with strong support from Rep. Grace Meng and AAPI, Latino, and naturalized immigrant voters. However, Suozzi did fall into several of the GOP’s traps and reinforced their “open borders” disinformation, a point others should avoid. His campaign also missed an opportunity to define the extremism of the Republicans on the issue, which can help Democrats further own the vast reasonable middle on the issue.
AZ Sen: This week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) endorsed failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in the GOP primary for Senate. The other leading candidate is Sheriff Mark Lamb. Lake, a very close ally of Donald Trump, is certainly in the running to be one of the leading purveyors of conspiracy theories in politics today, including the anti-semitic, xenophobic replacement theory. Like Trump, she wants to start a massive deportation regime that would have crippling consequences, likely ensnaring many citizens in the process. She also opposed the bipartisan border bill that was crafted by among others, Arizona’s Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema. No word yet on whether Sinema plans to run again, but she was really mad at the Republicans who killed her bill.
MT-Sen: U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale entered the GOP primary for Senate last week - and he left the race this week. The NRSC and Donald Trump had already endorsed Tim Sheehy. But, there’s an odd and illuminating intra-GOP immigration squabble to this escapade. Shortly before Rosendale's announcement, right-wing Montana Policy Action ran an ad attacking him on the border. The bizarre part is that they attacked Rosendale because he “abandoned the deal from top conservatives to secure the border.” The “deal” was the Senate bipartisan bill. That bill failed because almost every Republican opposed it because Donald Trump told them to oppose it. Only four Senate Republicans voted to move the bill forward, while 44 GOP Senators voted to block it. One of the NO votes was the other GOP Senator from Montana, Steve Daines, who also chairs the NRSC. So the Montana Policy Institute, whose “custodian” is Montana Governor Gianforte’s former political director, is attacking Rosendale for opposing legislation that was blocked by Republicans at the behest of Donald Trump. The ad seems to indicate that Republicans are now a bit discombobulated, confused, and vulnerable on their favorite issue. All in service of Donald Trump.
WEEKLY STATS OF NATIVIST NARRATIVE
Of the 525 GOP Twitter accounts we track, this week, they sent:
784 original tweets peddling anti-immigrant attacks mentioning “border”
139 original tweets about “open borders,” with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweet having the most reach with 3.4M Views, 19K Retweets, and 66K Likes.
37 original tweets that used “Biden Border Crisis” with Sen. John Cornyn tweet having the most reach with 26.5K Views, 42 Retweets, and 134 Likes.
15 original tweets that mentioned both “fentanyl” and “border” with Gov. Kristi Noem tweet having the most reach with 19.4K views, 206 Retweets and 1.1K Likes.
Top Articles on social of the week: (Right-wing media still dominating the conversation online)
The Post Millennial: “REVEALED: Biden admin diverts Veterans Affairs resources to illegal immigrants” - Facebook: 2.4k interactions Twitter: 6.9k shares
Fox News: “Illegal immigration could have major impact on House seats, Electoral College: experts” - Facebook: 6.5k and Twitter: 200 shares
AP News: “GOP-led House impeaches Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas — by one vote — over border management” - Facebook: 1.7k and Twitter: 3.9k Shares