The Astonishing Bigotry and Paranoia of Russell Pearce
Former Arizona state Senate President Russell Pearce, the author of his state’s draconian anti-immigrant law, S.B. 1070, is notorious for making outrageous claims about the supposed dangers posed by immigrants – both documented and not.
In major speeches at least, Pearce usually tries to maintain some modicum of decency. In private (or at least semi-private), his taste has long been known to run even more extreme than he lets on. That’s likely one reason he became, last November, the first sitting state senate president in the U.S. and the first ever Arizona state legislator to be defeated in a recall election.
Now, a series of E-mails – released to a coalition of civil rights organizations that filed a public records request with the state of Arizona – shows just how deep his loathing of immigrants runs.
The documents contain evidence of deep-seated bigotry and paranoia – and an affinity for numerous racist organizations. The E-mails are replete with “facts” drawn from Rense, a racist and anti-Semitic website that bemoans the alleged “Jewish dominance of America”; myths promulgated by immigrant-bashing former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, a birther who resigned after years of being called out by progressive organizations (including the SPLC) for promulgating debunked nativist conspiracy propaganda; and statistics produced by the National Policy Institute, a racist “think tank” whose mission statement says it aims “to elevate the consciousness of whites, ensure our biological and cultural continuity, and protect our civil rights.”
The E-mails include articles by xenophobes like Pat Buchanan and Frosty Wooldridge; and talking points produced by NumbersUSA, the grassroots arm of a network of organizations conceived by John Tanton, racist architect of the modern anti-immigration movement. In several instances, Pearce endorsed anti-immigrant conspiracy theories popular among nativists and border vigilantes.
To those who have followed Pearce’s many gaffes and outright demonstrations of bigotry over the years, none of this should be a surprise. He once sent supporters an article from the neo-Nazi National Alliance website. And he maintained a close friendship with J.T. Ready for more than a year after the latter was outed as a prominent member of the National Socialist Movement, the country’s largest neo-Nazi group. Ready killed himself in May, but not before fatally shooting his girlfriend, her daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend and 15-month-old baby girl.
The following is a sample of the E-Mails Pearce sent. He appears to have quoted heavily and sometimes without attribution from various sources. Hatewatch has made a careful effort to separate his own comments from those of others, but it is possible that some comments attributed to Pearce were plagiarized from other sources.
April 6, 2006
“Today, conditions are probably as bad or worse than they ever have been on the border. What we find is a mass invasion of historic proportions: individuals running through backyards, breaking down fences, slaughtering cattle, cutting their dogs’ throats if they bark, and terrifying people. Men and women who live on the border walk around armed. Women accompany their children to the bus stop with a gun in their purse in the heaviest cross-corridors.”
June 20, 2006
“Lies and more lies as [people who oppose Pearce’s anti-immigration initiatives] attempt to turn this country over to law breakers. They continue to invent arguments, while the whole issue is about ‘illegal’ aliens and giving them rights they don’t deserve and reserved for U.S. Citizens and the trying to give the left political power, it is complete political corruption.”
Dec. 14, 2006:
“Factual is not racial. Realism is not racism. The new definition of a racist is anyone winning an argument with a liberal, minority, pacifist, bible banger, or moron.”
Jan 29, 2007:
“The United States faces the greatest internal threat to its existence since the Civil War. It faces disintegration of its culture; of its language; of its cohesiveness as a nation of free people. It faces massive infusion of unrelenting poverty; of crime; of diseases; of civil violence; of corruption at all levels; and worst of all, the United States faces balkanization that will destroy the fabric of its ability to function as a peaceful nation.”
“One look at Los Angles with its Mexican-American mayor shows you [former Mexican President] Vicente Fox’s general Varigossa [the correct spelling of the Los Angeles mayor’s name is Antonio Villaraigosa] commanding an American city.”
“Can we maintain our social fabric as a nation with Spanish fighting English for dominance? It’s like injecting yourself with cancer cells to see what will happen. It’s like importing leper colonies and hope we don’t catch leprosy. It’s like importing thousands of Islamic jihadists and hope they adapt to the American Dream.”
“Tough, nasty illegals and their advocates grow in such numbers that law and order will not subdue them. They run us out of our cities and states. They conquer our language and our schools. They render havoc and chaos in our schools. I’m stunned at the speed of this invasion. I’m further stunned that most American don’t see it or deny it or ignore it. We are much like the Titanic as we inbreed millions of Mexico’s poor, the world’s poor and we watch our country sink.”
June 30, 2009
“NO JOBS!! NO FREE STUFF!! NO SANCTUARY POLICIES!! NO MORE IGNORING THE DAMAGE, THE COST, THE CRIME, THE DEATHS, THE JOBS TAKEN, THE WAGES LOWERED, THE HEALTHCARE CRISIS, THE EDUCATIONAL IMPACT OF OVER 20% OF K – 12 ARE NON-ENGLISH SPEAKERS, AND MOST WILL LEAVE ON THEIR OWN. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. INSTEAD OF BLAMING THE FEDS CLEAN UP OUR ACT AND TAKE THE HANDCUFFS OFF FROM LAW ENFORCEMENT. WHEN ARE WE GOING TO DO OUR JOB???”
May 16, 2011
“IF YOU CROSS THE U.S. BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET: A JOB, A DRIVER’S LICENSE, SOCIAL SECURITY CARD, WELFARE, FOOD STAMPS, CREDIT CARDS, SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE, FREE EDUCATION, FREE HEALTH CARE, A LOBBYIST IN WASHINGTON, BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE, THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRYS [sic] FLAG WHILE YOU PROTEST THAT YOU DONT GET ENOUGH RESPECT.”
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“April 6, 2006
“Today, conditions are probably as bad or worse than they ever have been on the border. What we find is a mass invasion of historic proportions: individuals running through backyards, breaking down fences, slaughtering cattle, cutting their dogs’ throats if they bark, and terrifying people.”
Sounds like what Black Americans experienced when racist mobs of Whites went on bloodbath lynching rampages:
“Jan 29, 2007:
“The United States faces the greatest internal threat to its existence since the Civil War. It faces disintegration of its culture; of its language; of its cohesiveness as a nation of free people. It faces massive infusion of unrelenting poverty; of crime; of diseases; of civil violence; of corruption at all levels. . . .”
America already has its “cohesiveness as a nation of free people” assailed and nearly annihilated, when after the Civil war the Ku Klux Klan and other racist Whites all across America attacked the newly freed Blacks both in and outside of the South:
The “unrelenting poverty” that occurred as a result of white supremacy. Poverty that affected both Blacks and poor Whites, because so many poor Whites saw themselves up there with the rich White man and woman–both of whom exploited the fears and racist venom of the poor Whites who were suffering from degradation right along with their fellow Black citizens. Poor Whites who took their rage out on defenseless Blacks, because those poor Whites had not the guts or backbone to challenge the ruling class of Whites:
Diseases that ran rampant because of racist policies: pellagra, hookworm infestation, and syphilis.
The “civil violence” this nation committed against her Black citizens:
-gerrymandering; restrictive racial covenants; Jane Crow segregation; “separate but unequal schools”; trampling on the 13TH, 14Th, and 15TH Amendments. Murdering Black citizens who exercised their civic duty to vote.
The “corruption at all levels” evident in returning Black GIs who could not get a loan to buy a home anywhere they wanted to, but White GIs had no problem obtaining loans to buy homes and move to the suburbs.
And “crime” which manifested itself in the double standard of sexualized gendered racism where a Black man who looked at a White woman was lynched or received death in the electric chair, but a White man who raped a nine-year-old Black girl received no prison sentence nor was he lynched for committing such a heinous crime.
“. . . .the United States faces balkanization that will destroy the fabric of its ability to function as a peaceful nation.”
Heads up, Pearce. America has already experienced “Balkanization”. Ask the Native Americans how it feels to have their cultures, language and traditions decimated when Europeans came to this country to conquer and destroy:
“Kill the Indian, save the man.” Captain R.H. Pratt
“Tough, nasty illegals and their advocates grow in such numbers that law and order will not subdue them. They run us out of our cities and states. They conquer our language and our schools. They render havoc and chaos in our schools. I’m stunned at the speed of this invasion.”
Back to the Native Americans. I’m sure they can recite volumes of “nasty illegals and their advocates” who grew with such overwhelming numbers bringing with them guns, germs, and steel to annihilate the original people of this hemisphere. Ask the original people how they feel when their cultures, language and traditions were decimated when Europeans came to this country to conquer and destroy:
“Smallpox epidemic ravages Native Americans on the northwest coast of North America in the 1770s.
During the 1770s, smallpox (variola major) eradicates at least 30 percent of the native population on the Northwest coast of North America, including numerous members of Puget Sound tribes. This apparent first smallpox epidemic on the northwest coast coincides with the first direct European contact, and is the most virulent of the deadly European diseases that swept over the region during the next 80 to 100 years. In his seminal work, The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence, historian Robert Boyd estimates that the 1770s smallpox epidemic killed more than 11,000 Western Washington Indians, reducing the population from about 37,000 to 26,000.
By the 1850s, when the first EuroAmerican settlers arrived at Alki Point and along the Duwamish River, diseases had already taken a devastating toll on native peoples and their cultures. During the 80 year period from the 1770s to 1850, smallpox, measles, influenza, and other diseases had killed an estimated 28,000 Native Americans in Western Washington, leaving about 9,000 survivors. The Indian population continued to decline, although at a slower rate, till the beginning of the twentieth century when it reached its low point.”
The sad thing is that people like Pearce are nothing new. People like Pearce never went away.
They simply morphed themselves into those who speak as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal, for those who silently believe in their ravings.
America has been dishing out hate, venom, and cruelty for centuries.
How she could ever think that she would get off scot-free in the long run was delusion at its worst.
The chickens most certainly are coming home to roost, and they are mad and angry birds of prey.
As for illegal aliens–businesses that do everything they can to hire undocumented workers are the real monsters who are destroying this nation.
They would rather pay an undocumented laborer $2-$3 a day for the same work they would pay an American citizen for pay commensurate with their skills.
They would rather pit undocumented workers, poor and working class Blacks and Whites against each other, and throw out lies that all of the mentioned groups have it in for the shrinking middle class, all the while through the decades tearing apart and undermining unions.
It is the rich elite, big businesses and prime and some subcontractors who have added to this problem of undocumented workers who come to this country. The rich elite that fights tooth and nail against organized workers who want to better life for themselves. The rich and elite who benefit from the use of divide and conquer.
Ann
The hanging photos are incredibly disturbing & appalling…and that’s putting it mildly. I like what you wrote about the Native Americans; technically, we (actually I don’t know if you’re white, but I am) white Europeans were the original illegal immigrants. I have a t-shirt somewhere with an old black & white photograph of some Native Americans holding guns that says “Border Patrol: Protecting America From Illegal Immigrants Since ____” (can’t remember what year it says; I’ll have to dig the shirt out). Those people were so f*cking screwed over that there’s just no words to describe it.
People like pearce refuse to accept that much of the wrong done in this country was done by the original illegal aliens.
But that is a fact he and his followers will never face up to.
Outstanding post.