With Record Numbers of Displaced People, Deterrence Policies to Stop Their Movement Are Mass Murder

…. At the time of Alan Kurdi’s death, the words of British-Somali poet Warsan Shire became a rallying cry in support of the million-plus migrants risking their lives to seek safety in Europe:

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land

….  Proponents of deterrence policies recognize that “no one puts their children in a boat, unless the water is safer than the land”; they just choose to make the water more perilous still. Consider President Donald Trump’s tweet in the wake of reports about horrific conditions at migrant detention centers, including those intended to hold children: “If Illegal Immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built or refitted detentions centers, just tell them not to come. All problems solved!”

… the Hague is not in the habit of holding contemporary Western powers accountable for crimes against humanity. But the assertion that migration deterrence policies are no less than murderous on a mass scale is a proposition that must be embraced and taken to its logical conclusion. The current immigration policies of the U.S. and the EU should already be understood as necropolitical; that is, they organize the lives of migrants in constant proximity to death, to bare life. Risk death by staying in a country destabilized by war, violence, economic and climate devastation, or risk death by fleeing to a purportedly more stable, prosperous state. There is no option which is not framed by exposure to death.

… In a world where the number of displaced people is inexorably rising from conflict and climate decimation, wealthy countries will have only one of two options when it comes to mass migration: acceptance and opening borders, or genocide through deterrence. In order to avoid the latter, the entire racist, nationalist logic behind migrant deterrence must be rejected.

… Mass migration cannot be stopped. As of last year, according to new statistics from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the population of people on Earth displaced by conflict or persecution reached 70.8 million — more than double the number recorded in 2012.... 

….. The rhetoric of the American and European far-right, too often parroted by the liberal center, might lead one to believe that the weight of this global migration crisis is bearing down on the EU and the U.S. It is not...….. Last year, the U.S., with a GDP of nearly $20 trillion, took the fewest number of refugees in 40 years in 2018: only 22,491 people. As a point of comparison, in 2015, Lebanon housed around 1.2 million Syrian refugees in its population of 4.5 million people; one in five People.

… It is fair and correct to blame far-right figures, parties, and media institutions for stoking fears of desperate migrants bringing terror and crime…… 

Far-right parties like France’s Front National, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, and the United States’ Republican Party used high-profile terror attacks that involved migrants, like the 2015 Paris massacres, to shutter borders and enforce migrant detention and deportations. People of conscience, however, must aggressively correct this false narrative: The vast majority of terrorist violence in the U.S. in recent years has been committed by far-right white nationalists. The same is true of terrorist attacks in Europe in recent decades, the vast majority of which have been committed not by immigrants or refugees, but by European citizens with ethno-nationalist or separatist motives.

…. When it comes to economic concerns, the far-right has been successful in establishing the myth that migrants are a burden on taxpayers, draining scant state resources. A recent major EU-funded study, however, found that “in the European countries which host the majority of EU migrants, these households are a net benefit to the public purse.” 

...… It is high time that the left vocally rejects the right-wing myth that immigration, even on a large scale, is incompatible with safety and prosperity. Wealthy countries can, and indeed must, accept and manage migration en masse, now and in the coming years. The alternative is intolerable.

full article on the intercept

Anti-racists outnumber far-right Proud Boys at DC rally

…. The Proud Boys are a self-described pro-Western, chauvinist "fraternity" who has been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.

Separated from the far-right rally by heavy metal barricades and police, hundreds of counterprotesters - largely DC residents, in contrast with their far-right counterparts - held a rally of their own in the adjacent Pershing Park.

…. "This is how you shut down Nazis," said counterprotester and DC resident Rachel Gregory. "They don't go away when you ignore them. As a white person, I can pass anywhere. That's why I need to use that privilege," she said.

…. Far-right political commentator and founder of the Proud Boys Gavin McInnes took the stage to predict the re-election of President Donald Trump and disparage his ideological opponents. 

…. Other right-wing personalities who had been advertised as speakers, including former Trump adviser Roger Stone and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, failed to turn up.

read in Detail on aljazeera

Explained: Who are the far-right Proud Boys

Reflections of a former White Supremacist

Opinion: Blaming European anti-Semitism on Palestinians and Muslims

The German and Austrian far right is incorporating Zionism into ultranationalism to whitewash its bloody past. 

In November 2018, a conference entitled Europe beyond anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism: Securing Jewish life in Europe, organised by Austria's right-wing government, was held in the Austrian capital, Vienna. The one-day event wrapped up with the issuing of a final communique which stressed that Austria is committed to "fighting every form of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism" and claimed that "anti-Semitism is nowadays oftentimes manifest in exaggerated and disproportionate criticism against Israel." 

Why white supremacists and Hindu nationalists are so alike

White supremacy and Hindu nationalism have common roots going back to the 19th-century idea of the 'Aryan race'.

Over the last few years, especially after Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 US presidential election, we have been witnessing the normalisation, and rise, of a white-supremacist, ultranationalist brand of right-wing politics across Europe and the United States. While the shift towards extreme right alarmed many across the world, far-right ideologues of the Trumpian era swiftly found support in a seemingly unlikely place: India. 

…… While an alliance between the Hindu far right and the Western alt-right may appear confounding on the surface, it actually has a long history, going all the way back to the construction of the Aryan race identity, one of the ideological roots of Nazism, in the early 20th century.

In the 1930s, German nationalists embraced the 19th-century theory that Europeans and the original Sanskrit speakers of India who had built the highly developed Sanskrit civilisation - which white supremacists wanted to claim as their own - come from a common Indo-European, or Aryan, ancestor. They subsequently built their racist ideology on the assumed superiority of this "pure" race.

…. However, the current connection between far-right groups in the West and Hindu nationalists is limited neither to Devi's teachings nor the old myth of the Aryan race. 

Today, the two groups share a common goal in eroding the secular character of their respective states and a common "enemy" in Muslim minorities. This is why they often act in coordination and openly support each other. 

…. Hindu nationalism and white supremacy are the two sides of the same coin. For the global movement against racism, white-supremacy and fascism to succeed, anti-fascists across the world need to acknowledge and stand up to the Hind nationalism threat.

Hindus themselves, both in India and abroad, also need to take action and raise their voices against the abuses that are being committed in their names…..

full article to read on aljazeera