Coulter, Horowitz, and the suddenly no-longer-verboten immigration issue

David Horowitz, America’s most famous anti-leftist political warrior, wrote a secret e-mail to a leftist in May of 2006 banishing me from FrontPage Magazine for unspecified positions of mine which he said were “racist and offensive.” After Horowitz’s letter was published by that same leftist at the leftist website Huffington Post in May 2007, Horowitz refused to tell me what were the racist positions of mine that disqualified me from being published at FrontPage. However, we can reasonably assume that my positions that he found racist had something to do with my themes that there are racial differences that matter, and that it is important to preserve America as a white majority country. (Of course, Horowitz has known all along that I have those views, and it never prevented him from publishing me before, but that is another story.)

Today David Horowitz published at FrontPage Magazine Ann Coulter’s article about America’s post 1965 immigration policy: “Bush’s America: Roach Motel.” The article is basically a crude re-hash of the theme of my 1990 booklet, The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism, which attacked the 1965 Immigration Act for admitting immigrants equally from all counties in the world and so turning America into a non-white country. The phrase “Roach Motel” is used in both the text and the title of the article, and the title is Coulter’s her own, as indicated by the original version of the article posted at her website. (The title, “Bush’s America: Roach Motel,” is also used in the versions of Coutler’s article at WorldNetDaily and at TownHall.) Evidently Horowitz did not consider the idea that the open immigration of Mexicans and other Hispanics is turning America into a “Roach Motel” to be racist and offensive. I’ve never in my life used language like that about any group, yet Horowitz publicly smeared me as a racist and banished me from his website. Coulter uses language like that, and he publishes her.

And here’s another interesting angle on this. My first contact with David Horowitz was when I submitted to him in February 2002 an article about how immigration is changing American culture and why conservatives are silent about this problem. He declined to publish it, because he rejected my idea that immigration itself is the problem rather than “multiculturalism.” His position was that he would not publish an article suggesting that certain immigrant groups in certain numbers would inevitably change American culture. The only aspect of America’s cultural transformation that he would allow me to criticize at FP was the leftist ideology of multiculturalism, not the mass Third-World immigration that feeds multiculturalism. Horowitz later commenced publishing other articles of mine, while consistently refusing to publish anything by me saying that mass non-European immigration in and of itself transforms America in negative ways. Yet now, having banished me from his magazine for my “racist” positions, he publishes Coulter’s article which attacks the 1965 Immigration Act for initiating the immigration policies that are turning America into a non-white country.

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Gintas J. writes:

I think Horowitz isn’t publishing Ann Coulter’s ideas on immigration, he’s publishing Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter is a celebrity of the right, you aren’t. Once Ann Coulter notices something, by golly it’s important! You, not being a celebrity, must be nit-picked to perfection, because all you have is content. Ann Coulter trades on her celebrity and gets a lot of leeway on her content.

LA replies:

But that only adds to my condemnation of Coulter. If she can call the shots on what is acceptable to say, then she is without excuse for not raising this issue before now.

Gintas replies:

Right, I was viewing things from Horowitz’s point of view. If Auster brings up immigration, he’s a crank or a racist. If Coulter brings up something, my, you are so right, Ann!

That Coulter has been MIA is not in doubt.

Matthew H, writes:

Ann Coulter’s characterization of America as a “Roach Motel” was not to call Hispanics “roaches,” but was in reference to that product’s slogan, “Roaches check in, but they don’t check out.” This was her way of describing this nation’s policy of requiring those who renounce their American citizenship to still pay income tax for ten years. To that extent, we cannot just “check out” even as this nation becomes increasingly uninhabitable.

Of course the image of cockroaches calls to mind anti-Mexican slurs about “cucarachas” but it was not expressly so used in Coulter’s column. But the association of cockroaches (i.e., filth and squalor) with unchecked illegal immigration is not entirely inapt, either, as a glance over the fence into any adjacent part of Mexico will confirm. Nothing that I have ever learned about any other part of Latin America would suggest that conditions elsewhere in that part of the world are much better….

My point is that simply to state (or, as in Coulter’s case, to hint at) the obvious truth that one nation is filthy and corrupt while another is less so is not, by itself, racist/bigoted/phobic/what-have-you. Yes, the ethnic make-up of a nation has a huge impact on the quality of that nation’s culture (as you have been saying all along). The more Mexicans come here the more like Mexico this nation will become. As Mexico is squalid so will America be more squalid, that is, filthier, more corrupt and, yes, likely to have more cock roaches. Should we attribute this glaringly obvious failure of Mexican culture to the legacy of Spanish misrule or to Mestizo genes or to some other source? Who cares? We do not want it here.

To associate this failed society with the image of a cockroach is, in our leftist-dominated culture, perhaps a rhetorical and tactical error. But to condemn Coulter for it would seem to move you in the direction of doing to her what David Horowitz has done to you, morally, if not editorially. Neither you nor Coulter deserve it. Frankly, I am a little surprised to see you pull out the “racist” card on this one.

This in no way mitigates Horowitz’s unseemly kow-tow to a leftist, but I think Coulter deserves a pass.

LA replies:

Oh please, she was saying that mass Hispanic immigration would turn America into a residence of the lowest form of life. Don’t insult my intelligence by saying this was not about Hispanics.

Distinctions must be made. For example, to say that there are lots of cockroaches where certain Hispanic groups live, i.e. the Dominicans in New York City, is true and can be said. I have written about the fact, reported in the New York Times, that the extremely high level of asthma among Hispanics in New York City is due to their breathing cockroach body parts and feces in their apartments. Those are facts. But calling Hispanics as a whole cockroaches, which is what Coulter plainly did, is wrong and is not the way to conduct public debate in this country.

I don’t use language like that, and I don’t think other people should either. Unlike many on the right, I don’t say that there’s no such thing as racism. I say that if you’re going to call someone racist, you need to explain what you mean by racism and prove that the person did or said something that was racist. I have a consistent position on this for many years. For example, about ten years ago when Virginia Postrel, the editor of the libertarian magazine Reason, called me a racist, I didn’t say, “How dare you call me a racist!” I wrote a letter to the editor in which I defined racism and showed that what I had said was not racist.

I don’t whine about the racism charge and say that it should never, ever be made, the way paleocons do. I didn’t whine about the racism charge directed at me by Horowitz, a fact that apparently you didn’t notice. To the contrary, I said to Horowitz, repeatedly, if you’re going to call my positions racist, tell me which positions they are so that I can reply and explain myself. Don’t just smear me.

Also, my remarks about Coulter are part and parcel of my standing criticism of her for her intolerable vulgarity, as in her “faggot” remark about Edwards.

Also, I had a particular right to bring out the “racism” angle on this given Horowitz’s treatment of me. The point is, by what standards am I excludable (without any explanation), while Coulter is publishable?

Of course, the fact that race and immigration are being discussed in mainstream conservative sites is great, as Jeremy G. points out in the thread on Coulter’s article.

Gintas writes:

Matthew H. says, “I think Coulter deserves a pass.”

She always does, doesn’t she? Note the long paragraph needed to defend and explain Coulter. She never clarifies her use of “Roach Motel” as “Roaches check in but they never check out” but we have plenty of gentlemen around to help Ann out. Can you tell I’m not a fan of hers?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 07, 2007 11:20 AM | Send