The Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney was, until very recently, a bit of a pariah in establishment GOP circles thanks to his obsessive quest to prove the Islamist infiltration of not only the Obama administration but also the Republican Party. But, as Brian noted yesterday, that has changed dramatically in recent months as Republican presidential candidates have flocked to his primary campaign events, Donald Trump cited his group’s shoddy research in his call to ban Muslims from the country, and, most recently, Ted Cruz named him as a top national security adviser to his campaign.
Despite all the new attention, Gaffney is still his same old self, pushing variations on his favorite theory that a “red-green axis” of progressives and Islamists are conspiring to destroy America with the enthusiastic support of a treasonous President Obama.
Gaffney returned to that theme in an interview earlier this month with Robert Vandervoort of the English-only group ProEnglish, in which he wondered if progressives are conspiring with Islamists to use government programs for people who aren’t proficient in English in order to “take us down.”
Vandervoort took over at ProEnglish after a stint running a white nationalist group in Illinois; ProEnglish itself is part of the network of anti-immigration organizations linked to John Tanton, who also espoused some white nationalist views. Earlier this year, Gaffney interviewed infamous white nationalist writer Jared Taylor — of whom Vandervoort is a fan — before unconvincingly pleading ignorance of Taylor’s views when he was called out for it.
One of ProEnglish’s policy goals is to rescind an executive order signed by Bill Clinton that instructs federal agencies to implement systems to help people who are not fluent in English interact with government programs, which Vandervoort told Gaffney presents not just fiscal concerns but a “cultural concern” about the “kind of message we’re sending” by translating government documents.
Gaffney agreed that help for people who aren’t proficient in English undermines the nation’s “identity” and is probably part of a liberal plot to “take us down.”
“The character of a nation, the identity of a nation is obviously, to some extent at least, defined by those shared attributes like language,” he said. “So to the extent that we’ve essentially thrown that over the side, do you see this as part of a larger endeavor, my guess most especially by the left, to do away with the national identity of the United States and in the process sort of take us down?”
Vandervoort agreed that “it is part of the left’s agenda to drive us apart linguistically,” prompting Gaffney to note that the whole thing also ties into the “red-green axis” because the “Islamists who are seeking to balkanize and otherwise bring us down and would obviously be among the beneficiaries” of such translation services.
