Mexico: Is America going to go fascist?

Editorial

La Jornada

If Herman Cain gets his way, it’ll be open season on Mexicans in the U.S., said La Jornada. The Republican presidential hopeful has proposed building along the length of the U.S.-Mexican border a wall “topped with a fatal electric charge” to prevent undocumented workers from entering the U.S. In case any manage to make it past this fence of death, Cain also wants to station troops armed with “real guns and real bullets” to shoot them down. Sickeningly, that line won applause from Cain’s listeners at a campaign stop in Tennessee. Such rhetoric is not merely irresponsible—it has real repercussions.

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The prevalence of “anti-immigrant demagoguery” increases the likelihood that Mexicans will be discriminated against, exploited, or abused. And it could presage something even worse. “It is a known historical fact” that the Nazis used “the momentum of xenophobia and racism” to fuel their rise to power. At that time, just like now, the world was in an economic crisis, and the Nazis found a convenient scapegoat in the Jews. “Financial disasters often end at a crossroads between civilization and barbarism.” Last time, the U.S. created the New Deal. This time, will it choose barbarism?