In Defense of Institutional Racism by Michelle & Jesse Malkin
Is That Legal?: "Citizenship . . . Bears No Relationship To . . . Loyalty."
[Update: For those looking for "Michelle and Jesse [Malkin]," please see a post from April, 2005 entitled Ghost Blogging. Thanks.]
Remember Eric Muller of Is That Legal? He's one of the authorities on the US' internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and he is well known for, among other things, his tireless refutations of Michelle and Jesse Malkin's yellow-peril screed, "In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in WW2 and the War on Terror."
Part of the Malkins' argument "in defense of" internment and racial profiling has been that the US' motivation for internment was legitimate concern over Japanese epionage and not racism. Those of us who have friends who were interned (and frankly the vast majority of sane people who have examined the subject) know that this is simply not the case. Anti-Japanese racist hysteria ran rampant in the United States during the war. In fact, most Japanese-Americans would likely tell you that it still exists to some extent. One friend of my family who was removed from college during the war and forcibly detained went out to his car on the morning of December 7, 2001 - the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor - only to find all four of his car's tires slashed.
Muller's post that I am linking to here has to do with language in a US military training material from 1943 given to personnel who were about to be sent out to investigate the loyalty of interned Japanese Americans.
Here's an excerpt:
You have been admonished that, in this class of cases, [U.S.] citizenship bears no relationship to the Subject's loyalty. . . .
In conducting investigations of Japanese, you may rest assured that you are dealing with one member of a race which has on many occasions demonstrated its capacity for deceit. You can also be assured that far too great a number of the members of that race present in this country are admittedly, and in many cases, actively disloyal.
Are you paying attention, Michelle and Jesse [Malkin]? With this sort of rhetoric being part of the training for the very people investigating Japanese-American loyalty, how could anyone not consider the entire operation tainted by racism. It was institutional racism and given its degree of depravity, it's a miracle that Japanese-Americans weren't being pulled from their homes and being strung up or shot during the war.
The mission behind the Malkins' book is twofold.
First, it is part of the conservative revisionist effort to excise the naughty bits from our nation's history. It will be much more difficult to implement Pax Americana if the kids realize that not everything in America's past has been pure, heroic and god-like. Hawaii begged us to become a territory and later a state. We won the American southwest fair and square. McCarthyism was a noble fight to rid our country of dangerous communism. The French have been our most dangerous enemy from the very beginning.
Second, the more sinister reason is that the Malkins and their overlords are racing at the bit to place restrictions on Arabs and other swarthy people in America. Swarthy people crashed planes into the WTC and the Pentagon and the country is lousy with swarthy people who are poised and ready to strike out again at The United States, Jesus, George W. Bush, mom, the Republican Party and apple pie.
It's easy to imagine how implementing their master plan would go down. First it's young Arab males at the boarding gate - next it's all Arabs at the entrances to airport terminals and parking garages. Indians are swarthy and they get uppity at times - especially Sikhs - they wear turbans and they killed Indira Ghandi. Since we've already got the infrastructure in place, we might as well check them, too. Ditto for swarthy Latin Americans who are generally up to no good. They are probably here illegally anyway, right?
But why stop at the airport? We know "they" targeted the trains in Madrid. Shouldn't our train and subway stations be as safe from the swarthy-threat as the airport? What about bus stations? Movie theaters? Malls? Schools?
It's MalkinTopia!
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