How racism is behind Newsom’s recall election in California

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In the summer of 2019, as early efforts to recall Governor Gavin Newsom collapsed, right-wing commentators launched a smear campaign against California to discredit its progressive policies and stir up anger against its leaders.

They co-opted a myth popularized by white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and border vigilantes in the 1990s in San Diego and Orange counties, and which conservative organizations such as the Claremont Institute have spent years peddling : California is a decaying third world state due to racial diversity.

By generalizing the racial bait story, media figures have added the threat of the homeless to the dark-skinned migrants’ munchies.

Months after Newsoms began his tenure, Fox News figures claimed zombies were swarming the streets of California and aired dozens of segments about the disproportionately dark and black homeless population. In the National Review, Victor Davis Hanson, a senior researcher at the Hoover Institution, called California Americas First Third-World State, a place filled with burgeoning populations of flea, lice and rat plagues.

Even then President Trump intervened. Look at what they’re doing in California, he said. They don’t treat their people as well as they treat illegal immigrants. He added: We may need an election to stop it.

Two years and a pandemic later, following sustained anti-California propaganda, a recall election has finally gained ground to stop it. Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson called the recall a last chance to save the state after showing video clips of people stealing a San Francisco Walgreens and homeless people in Venice Beach. He attributed the situation to the villainous wave of equity initiatives and gave California a new nickname: Zimbabwe on the Pacific.

Never mind that crime in California is plummeting and the recent increase in homicides reflects a national increase linked to the challenges of the pandemic. It doesn’t matter that California is the world’s fifth-largest economy, attracts half of the country’s venture capital, and ranks in the top 10 states for GDP growth. It doesn’t matter whether the state is a leader in the fight against climate change or whether it has made significant strides in immigrant rights and racial justice, making it one of the most welcoming places for people. people of color.

It is true that California has a roaming problem, which is linked to the high costs of housing. But while conservatives blame progressive policies, its insufficiently progressive residents thwart affordable housing. If you want to blame Democrats for anything, it’s for basically giving in to a core, mostly conservative, made up of homeowner groups and people who don’t want poor people in their neighborhoods, Gary Blasi, law professor at the ‘UCLA, which studies homelessness, told me.

Reminder supporters cartoonish California as a place controlled by its most progressive residents, when in fact efforts to reduce inequality and improve fairness are not easily embraced and face strong political resistance from the community. moderates and conservatives.

At the same time, white supremacy, which runs through California’s history from anti-China laws in the 1800s to eugenic-era sterilizations in the last century, continues to find fertile ground here. The Southern Poverty Law Center shows that California has 72 hate groups, more than any other state.

For white residents who hate sharing the state with browns and blacks, demographic change in California is an existential threat. This barely new tale was on protest panels in the ’90s complaining of a Third World cesspool and is now on pro-recall T-shirts stating: I’m liberal shit. These people may be a minority in California, but they have strong allies in the conservative media.

Eric Ward, executive director of the Western States Center, compared the dystopian narrative behind the recall effort to a narrative from The Camp of the Saints, a French white supremacist novel. The book, a far-right favorite promoted by Trump advisers Stephen K. Bannon and Stephen Miller, deals with the destruction of the white world by brown refugees described as monsters and swarming ants.

Ward said the anti-California fear mongering reflects a desire to convince people that racially inclusive policies will end the world. You have to show that a multicultural, multiracial society cannot work, because if you show that it has actually worked, this is the society most people choose, he told me.

Joanna Mendelson, associate director of the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism, agrees that pro-recall propaganda is a parrot of white nationalist ideology, with her idea that liberalism has injected deviant values ​​into the system, primarily the value of multiculturalism, which is presented as a mortal danger to whites.

Matthew Gertz, senior member of Media Matters for America, told me that demagoguery on homelessness is supposed to trigger racism in the same way demagoguery on immigration is. It’s not about root causes, it’s not about possible solutions, it’s about showing video footage of people living on the streets and commenting on how disgusting they are, he said. declared.

In Trump’s day, when the United States experienced demographic shifting anti-immigrant hysteria like California did in the 1990s, many saw the Golden State as a beacon of hope, demonstrating that ‘it was possible to overcome periods of xenophobia and racism.

In his book State of Resistance, Manuel Pastor, a sociologist at USC, described California as America in rapid advance. While conservatives saw the state as a cautionary tale, others saw it ultimately as the place to take risks and succeed. Pastor wrote: Recognizing that immigrants settle, that economic shocks subside, that environmental action does not kill jobs and that raising taxes on the rich does not dampen growth is the key to appeasing national concerns about the challenges ahead.

Californians who believe in the state’s potential must not cede control to those who desperately want it to fail. The recall election was made possible by many things, but at its root is a desire to redefine California and preserve the illusion of white supremacy.

@jeanguerre

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