Posts on Michelle Malkin

The idea that undocumented immigrants are causing a crime wave in the U.S.—while not supported by evidence—has been a mainstay of anti-immigrant activists for decades. For example, in instituting ordinances against hiring or renting to immigrants, Hazleton, Pennsylvania Mayor Lou Barletta claimed that immigrants were “terroriz[ing]” the city. But defending the ordinances in court, Barletta could not back this claim up. “The people in my city don’t need numbers,” the frustrated mayor declared when confronted with the city’s own statistics showing the opposite.

Similarly, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist have been touting phony numbers on immigrants and crime.

But if statistics don’t back up their claims, anti-immigrant activists can always latch on to anecdotes. A recent multiple-homocide in Newark, New Jersey has implicated illegal immigrants, and national activists quickly descended upon the city, claiming that the crime was linked to local police not questioning suspects’ immigration status.

Somehow, over the course of the last several years, loud voices on the Right have managed to convince huge numbers of Christians in thriving congregations that they are somehow under attack by all things secular -- from progressives, feminists and the culture in general to the government and the courts.

A key technique in this bogus "us-against-them" rabble-rousing is planting the idea that Christians are victimized on every front. Right-wing activists, pundits, and leaders seek to spin any and all developments in a manner that suggests they and all Christians in America are being constantly discriminated against and harassed.

At Vision America’s “The War on Christians and Values Voters” conference in 2006, right-wing activists spent two days telling one another horror stories about how people were supposedly being arrested simply for sharing their faith or losing their jobs for standing up to a government hostile to Christianity, citing ousted Ten Commandments judge Roy Moore and ousted Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt as the two most high-profile examples – Klingenschmitt ever went so far as to compare himself to Abdul Rahman, the man who faced a potential death sentence for converting to Christianity in Afghanistan.

Since then, the idea that Christians are under attack has been a standard rallying cry for the Right, cropping up most recently in their opposition to hate crimes legislation which they claim will lead to “open persecution” of Christians and pastors being dragged from the pulpit and thrown in jail.

So ingrained has this idea become on the Right that they are always on the look-out for new evidence that Christians are being victimized – and columnist, pundit, and blogger Michelle Malkin claims to have found the latest example in the group of South Korean Christians being held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan:  

Across Asia, media coverage is 24/7. Strangers have held nightly prayer vigils. But the human rights crowd in America has been largely AWOL. And so has most of our mainstream media. Among some of the secular elite, no doubt, is a blame-the-victim apathy: The missionaries deserved what they got. What were they thinking bringing their message of faith to a war zone? Didn't they know they were sitting ducks for Muslim head-choppers whose idea of evangelism is "convert or die"?

I noted the media shoulder-shrugging about jihadist targeting of Christian missionaries five years ago during the kidnapping and murder of American Christian missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham in the Philippines. The silence is rooted in viewing committed Christians as alien others. At best, there is a collective callousness. At worst, there is outright contempt -- from Ted Turner's reference to Catholics as "Jesus freaks" to CBS producer Roxanne Russell's casual insult of former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer as "the little nut from the Christian group" to the mockery of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Mormon faith.

So the fact that media coverage has been round-the-clock in Asian nations but not round-the-clock here in the US has less to do with the fact the victims are, you know, from South Korea than it does with the fact that US media is openly hostile to Christians? 

You really have to marvel at the Right’s ability to use the kidnapping and murder of South Korean Christians in Afghanistan in order to suggest that it is really Christians here in America that are under attack.  

According to the right-wing news website, WorldNetDaily, Fred Thompson has finally and “candidly” confirmed his membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, which WND says is sometimes referred to as the “‘shadow government’ organization of elites with a global agenda.” Earlier this week, Thompson was confronted and questioned by an activist during a campaign stop regarding his association with the Council, long a bete noir of activists who suspect the United Nations and other elites of scheming to destroy U.S. sovereignty.  The activist who confronted Thompson, and was eventually forcibly removed from the event, mentioned the Council’s supposed efforts to bring about the North American Union, the latest nightmare for Phyllis Schlafly and the black-helicopter crowd.

Thompson seemingly tried to defuse the situation with polite mush:

“I didn't know they were up to that… There are several conservatives over the years who have been members of the Council on Foreign Relations. I try to learn as much as I can from all viewpoints. I have been a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the conservative thinks tanks in town, and enjoy having intellectual exercise and discussions whether I agree or not with anyone on any particular issue.”

But his association with the Council may fuel the suspicions of anti-immigrant activists who have also latched onto the North American Union as a plot to dissolve the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.  Thompson has previously been condemned by VDARE, an anti-immigration group that has been accused of publishing white nationalist authors, but is also associated with notable commentators such as Pat Buchanan and Michelle Malkin. WorldNetDaily columnist Jerome Corsi, of Swift Boat fame and co-author, along with Jim Gilchrist, of Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America’s Borders, has been perhaps the most outspoken in attacking Thompson. Corsi, calls Thompson a “red herring” being peddled to conservatives even though, asserts Corsi, he is “not a conservative.”

FAIR, Heritage, WorldNetDaily, Malkin.

Right-wing columnist Michelle Malkin blames Democrats for “grandstanding” and Republicans for blowing “monumental opportunity to show liberals how to end disaster socialism.&rdquo

Michelle Malkin, a frequent guest on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor,” told host Bill O’Reilly last night that Mexican-Americans and immigrants in the Los Angeles area were unlike Cuban-Americans and immigrants in the Miami area because they have “no appreciation for this country” and could not assimilate. Furthermore, Malkin asserted that millions of immigrants from Mexico, in addition to the Mexican government itself, are actively plotting a militant takeover of the American Southwest.

Watch the video: Broadband or Dial-Up.

O’REILLY: So I know that there's an undercurrent of militancy that says hey, this is our territory. You stole it from us in the Mexican-American War. We're going to take it back now by illegal immigration. But I think that's a fringe nutty group, not the mass of millions that we have.

MALKIN: Well, I guess I disagree with you there, Bill, because I mean, we saw in April and May of this year that supposed fringe come out into the mainstream. And it wasn't just a dozen folks who are ensconced in the ivory tower who believe that the southwest is “Aztlan” and it belongs to them. You had people from Wisconsin, to Phoenix, to California, to Seattle carrying those signs saying that by sheer demographic force, they have reclaimed Los Angeles. They reclaim Phoenix.

O'REILLY: So you agree with Buchanan, then. You think that this massive immigration to the United States, 15 million strong, is a part of a plan to bring back territory to Mexico?

MALKIN: Well, I take the Mexican government at its word when it says that is exactly its plan. If you look at the Mexican consulate that are active, political lobbyists who have entrenched themselves in the American mainstream, and who have succeeded in blurring the lines between illegal and legal immigration, yes, there's a plan.