Despite The Star Of David, Palin's In The Mainstream Of Republican Party Thought On Immigrants

Palin's no bumpkin. So what if she thinks it's the "Statute of Liberty?" She eats pizza with a knife and fork (and Trump) and removes the usual Christian iconography and dons a Jewish star necklace when in NYC.

On Ellis Island, gateway to America for so many millions of immigrants from Europe who had to contend with the fear-mongers and Know Nothings (teabaggers of their day) who prophesied the end of America because of them, Palin recited her line: “It’s one of the symbols of course of our country, and it’s a reminder too that immigrants built this country." She then proceeded, predictably, to tear down the DREAM Act.

"The immigrants of the past, they had to literally and figuratively stand in line to become U.S. citizens. I'd like to see that continue," Palin said. "And unfortunately, the DREAM Act kind of usurps that-- the system that is a legal system to make sure that immigrants who want to be here legally, working hard, producing and supplying revenue and resources for their families, that they're able to do that right and legally. Unfortunately, the DREAM Act doesn't accomplish that."

The Palin wing of the Republican Party has always hated immigrants and has hysterically, and often violently, protested the entry of successive waves that have helped build America. Right-wingers were enthusiastic about embracing Nazi war criminals after the war and welcomed them with open arms-- Nixon even hoping they would balance out his "Jewish problem" in key states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where tens of thousands of Eastern European Nazi collaborators were encouraged to settle. But regular immigrants looking for a better life in America? Palin-like Republicans have always objected. Back in the '20s the GOP turned to Washington Congressman Albert Johnson, chairman of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, who was responsible for the Republican anti-immigrant legislation of the 1920s. Johnson, a vehement racist and nativist, was the chief author of the Immigration Act of 1924, which he justified as a bulwark against "a stream of alien blood, with all its inherited misconceptions respecting the relationships of the governing power to the governed." Apparently he was as muddleheaded then as like-thinking Republicans like Palin and Bachmann are today. He was also head of the Eugenics Research Association which campaigned for forced sterilization. Back in those days Republicans didn't see Jews the way they do today-- as necessary for Armageddon-- so Johnson didn't wear Jewish stars but referred to Jews as "filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits." He did his best to refuse Jews entry into this country... Italians too.

In Glen Yeadon's Nazi Hydra In America there was a description of Johnson that sounds like something Steve King, Tom Tancredo and Elton Gallegly modeled themselves after.

A key figure in the success of the eugenicists in changing immigration policy was Albert Johnson. Johnson had been raised at the northern edge of the Mason Dixon line in Illinois during the turbulent Reconstruction period. He later became a big city newspaperman before moving to the small town of Hoquiam, Washington. It was from here that Johnson ran for congress and was elected to the House in 1912. Johnson was a fanatic racist and eugenicist. In 1919, he began a twelve-year tenure as chairman of the Immigration and Naturalization subcommittee in the House.

While there had been restrictions in immigration prior to Johnson’s chairmanship, the restrictions were reactionary in nature and not eugenically motivated. Johnson viewed any immigration as a negative factor. One of his first actions was to appoint [deranged Missouri fascist and racist Harry] Laughlin as his eugenic expert before his committee. Laughlin and other eugenicists had long urged the classification of immigrants along strict biological and racial lines, as well as advocating intelligence testing of immigrants before they left Europe. Their goal was to restrict immigration based on quotas before the mass arrivals started in 1890. ... [Laughlin's] American Breeders and the Eugenic Society were not content with just sterilization and segregation methods as a means to eliminate the defective. By 1910, they were also proposing euthanasia using a lethal chamber... the forerunner of the modern gas chamber.

Much of the money that funded all the eugenics "research" in the U.S. and Germany-- including the Mengele "experiments" in Auschwitz-- came from the Rockefeller family, as well as from other prominent Republican Party fascists. So, Star of David or not, eating pizza with a knife and fork not withstanding, Palin comes from a long line of right-wing Know Nothings and ideologues in the mainstream of deeply ingrained Republican Party traditions.