Roger Marshall’s migrant ‘invasion’ rhetoric: straight out of domestic terrorist mouths | Opinion
May 14 marks two years to the day when a white nationalist drove to a Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, where he murdered 10 Black people. The shooter left behind a racist screed that repeatedly cited the alleged “invasion” by immigrants and the larger ”great replacement theory” as his motivation. This bigoted and antisemitic replacement conspiracy theory, originally popular among the white nationalist movement, claims there is an intentional plot by liberal elites to facilitate an invasion of nonwhite people to replace the white population in Western countries.
Many Americans were first introduced to this vile conspiracy theory at the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia, “Unite the Right” hate rally, where a collection of neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched with torches while chanting, “You will not replace us! Jews will not replace us!” The next day, one of their ranks murdered a peaceful protester and injured 19 others.
Along with the related “invasion” conspiracy, these insidious beliefs have inspired other deadly terrorist attacks in El Paso, Texas; Poway, California and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as well as other foiled plots in recent years.
Unfortunately, while these conspiracies used to be limited to the white nationalist fringes of the internet, they have spread and been mainstreamed in recent years by numerous elected officials, including Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall. Marshall has repeatedly and falsely asserted that migrants seeking safety in the United States constitute an armed military-style invasion — echoing the racist screeds of multiple domestic terrorists.
Less than three months after the mass murder in Buffalo, Marshall introduced Senate Resolution 741, “to express the sense of the Senate regarding the constitutional right of State Governors to repel the dangerous ongoing invasion across the United States southern border.”
Marshall’s resolution is wrong in his constitutional interpretation. Even some of the staunchest advocates of restricting immigration disagree with the senator’s framing of the issue. He is not just wrong — his rhetoric is extremely dangerous.
The Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Justice Department have testified that the threat from racially motivated domestic extremists is the leading threat to the homeland. Last summer, Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson asked DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a congressional hearing: “When elected officials repeat great replacement rhetoric, including the language of invasion, are they putting a target on the backs of immigrants and people of color?” Mayorkas responded: “It certainly fuels the threat landscape that we encounter.”
Marshall and others mainstreaming these ideas and rhetoric continue to fuel that threat landscape. In February of this year, Marshall reintroduced his resolution invoking the white nationalist invasion conspiracy. In March, he introduced the End Aerial Invasion Act, picking up on some easily debunked disinformation to further launder the conspiracy theory. He has also consistently promoted this rhetoric on the Senate floor, in Senate press conferences, Senate committee hearings and all over his social media and TV appearances.
His language is not “tough talk.” Marshall’s repeated references to an “invasion” are already associated with a significant body count. Promoting this language and codifying it in official congressional action normalize the white nationalist conspiracy. The more this rhetoric is normalized, the more the threats to public safety increase.
The violent threat from antisemites and white nationalists is not abstract to Kansas. Last month marked a decade from when an antisemite and white supremacist carried out a mass murder at a Jewish community center in Overland Park. Two years later in 2016, we narrowly avoided a horrific attack in Garden City, Kansas, after the FBI disrupted a bomb plot that sought to target the Somali immigrant community there.
Reasonable Kansans can disagree about how to reform our immigration system, but we all must start to agree that dehumanizing language, like “invasion,” pollutes the debate by courting bigoted political violence. It must once and for all be dumped from our mainstream political discourse.
Zachary Mueller is senior research director at America’s Voice, a pro-immigrant advocacy 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit. He lives in Kansas City, Kansas.
