September 26, 2017

Favela da Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Favela da Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Source: Bigstock

Leftist demagogues, maybe better called “ethnic entrepreneurs,” have always found this kind of situation ideal to practice their special talents. Anyone who’s lived in Brazil knows the way the poor are roused up with racial hatred and with ham-handed rhetoric about “colonialism.” This includes the famous and now-disgraced Lula da Silva, who blamed the 2008 financial crisis on “blue-eyed men.” In the late 1980s one such politician, Rio de Janeiro mayor Leonel Brizola, went so far as to forbid Brazilian police from making incursions into the favelas. In other words, he carried out Obama’s, Eric Holder’s, and the Democrats’ plans to neuter police in order to cater to his new base of voters. This resulted, predictably, in lawlessness and brutality that exceeded even that found in post-Bush Iraq. The degradation of public life and hygiene mostly wiped out what was left of the middle class.

It’s easy to understand why the Bush family pushes guacamole recipes and mass immigration when doing so means their descendants will live like their elite counterparts south of the border. Why does Mark Zuckerberg spend nights on his website arguing with your grandmother for the rights of DACA “dreamers”? Is he motivated by compassion, or by the prospect of an American serf class he could profitably exploit? California was formerly the worldwide picture of health and wealth. Today its middle class is mostly gone and it has South American levels of wealth disparity. Its dams and infrastructure are crumbling while public funds are diverted to services for illegals instead.

Zuckerberg and other oligarchs have an interest in lowering Americans’ wages. American politicians have a similar interest in using the same cheap labor pool for political support and, ultimately, for more power. Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti would be considered a criollo in Latin America, on top of the social hierarchy, but in the United States he role-plays as an oppressed minority. Along with others like Kamala Harris, he appeals to his voters’ ethnic resentments and paranoia.

The predictable alliance between oligarchs and opportunists like Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, or Eric Garcetti is old news in Latin America. What makes people believe a more “diverse” United States is going to be more free or egalitarian? Perhaps that was never the intention behind mass immigration in the first place.

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