White nationalist podcasts predictably spent the weekend commenting on news reports exposing the Trump administration’s inhumane treatment of immigrant children in child detention centers, who are being separated from their parents at the border and kept in cages. But what is surprising is the way that the mainstream conservative press has echoed white nationalists almost verbatim in order to defend the Trump administration from criticism over its child separation policy.
Comparing the ways right-wing media has been defending the administration with yesterday’s episode of one of the most popular alt-right podcasts, “The Daily Shoah,” the alarming parallels in the way conservatives discuss immigration on the southern border become impossible to ignore. Of course, none of the rhetoric these alt-right podcast hosts used in reaction to child separation is unique to this news cycle as this is the standard sort of commentary that one would hear when tuning in to any random episode of an alt-right podcast like The Daily Shoah.
When Donald Trump was elected president on a campaign heavily emphasizing punitive punishment of immigrants and xenophobic rhetoric, right-wing media followed suit and anti-immigrant voices among conservatives grew louder than ever before as many right-wing politicians and pundits abandoned all restraint and lifted their defenses of Trump straight out of the white nationalist playbook.
On yesterday’s episode of the The Daily Shoah, the flagship podcast for Mike “Enoch” Peinovich’s network The Right Stuff, Peinovich and his co-hosts weighed in on news reports and growing outcries about child separation. Early on, a consensus was reached among hosts that the separations could be a successful deterrent for immigrants seeking to enter the United States, which is something white nationalists have fantasized about for years.
Attorney General “Jeff Sessions just said now that we are literally—everybody that crosses the border goes to jail. We do not do catch-and-release,” Peinovich said. “You cross the border, you go to fucking jail if you’re crossing illegally. And he didn’t say it like it’s a new policy. He said, ‘Yes, if you have children with you, those children will have to be separated from you.’ So stay home. Stay home.”
He added, “How about the parents be fucking humane and stay home?”
This deterrent line of argument has been argued by administration officials themselves and many right-wing media figures have also argued that the immigrating parents are to blame for the inhumane treatment of their children, not the U.S. government. CRTV host and hate group leader Gavin McInnes said he wished Trump was separating even more families.
Peinovich told listeners, “Look, I don’t want these kids separated from the parents any more than anybody else does for long periods of time. Put them back in their mom’s arms and send them— just fucking literally turn them around. The line is here. You know what, you step over that line, the kid goes in that place, you go to that place, but no, how about you can right now turn around and just start walking back to Guadalajara or wherever the fuck you’re from and just keep fucking walking.”
The podcast hosts also claimed that people are attempting to immigrate into the United States under false pretenses by seeking asylum, which was also argued on Fox News by Tucker Carlson, who has established himself as that alt-right’s favorite television host.
“It’s basically another way all these fucking beaners that are border jumper are suddenly legitimate, right? That’s the idea. They’re not just illegal, they’re not just border-jumpers, they’re not just coming here to get, like, under-the-table low-paid work to send back to Mexico—they’re asylum seekers,” Peinovich said.
Peinovich advised that alt-right activists and Trump officials ignore all questions from press about the child separations until those outraged “run out of steam.” That’s also exactly what right-wing media have been advising the administration to do–and it seems to be listening.
“Just stick it out. Just ignore it. Tell them to shut up. Don’t answer their questions. They’re going to run out of steam on it. How long can you bitch and kvetch and whine about this shit, right? But if you give them oxygen by going on talk shows and allowing yourself to be grilled on this, whether you’re Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Lady DACA, Kirstjen Nielsen, or fucking Kellyanne Conway, and you let your feels as a woman get the better of you and people are hitting you with this stuff, just don’t do it.”
One host, Jesse Dunstan, known as “Sven,” delivered an uncomfortable truth about the fact that many people who elected Trump voted for him based on immigration policies such as child separation.
“You’re not going to shame normie America out of deporting illegal immigrants,” that host said. “You’re not going to get them to feel bad. They do not care. This is what the president was elected for. In fact, there’s impatience that stuff like this wasn’t happening sooner.”
