In the 1980s, conventional wisdom began to hold that 'Marxism is dead everywhere except on American college campuses.' Like much that passes for conventional wisdom, the claim was not exactly true, but by the end of the decade, with the overthrow of communist governments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the American university seemed to stand out as just about the only institution north of Havana and west of Pyongyang where you could easily locate anyone who openly admitted being a Marxist.
On American campuses, Marxism continued to flourish at the same time it was withering away in most other places. The cults of 'political correctness,' 'multiculturalism,' 'Afrocentrism,' feminism, 'gay and lesbian studies,' and similar ideologies and movements often harbored Marxist premises in one form or another, though they combined and tried to buttress those premises with a body of scholarship so shoddy it would have humiliated the original Bolsheviks themselves, not to speak of those dead white males who were responsible for so much tyranny in the modern world, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
While most of the cults and movements gained notoriety in the 1980s as they threatened professional standards of serious learning and even the careers of students and teachers who fell afoul of their dogmas, there was another, similar cult that seemed to escape attention. All through the 1970s and 1980s, almost from the time when the Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the 'national origins' standard for immigration into the United States, a small band of Marxists and left-leaning radicals was working to exploit the new law, and the new masses of immigrants that soon began to arrive in its wake, as political weapons against the United States.
Now at last, William R. Hawkins has exposed and documented their work - who they were, how they operated, and (most important) who paid for it. His answers ought to give a lot of Americans pause as they start considering what has been going on while their attentions were directed elsewhere.
The constant theme of Mr. Hawkins in this thoroughly researched monograph is the conjunction of two seemingly contradictory and hostile forces - the Marxist socialism of the 'immigration lobby,' which includes not only the political activists among the immigrants themselves but also their army of lawyers and propagandists, and the financial power accumulated by American capitalism that has been stashed away in large tax-exempt foundations.
Specifically, Mr. Hawkins shows how leftists, Marxists, and anti-Americans in the immigration lobby were supported and encouraged by one of the largest and wealthiest philanthropic institutions in the world, the Ford Foundation. Virtually from the beginnings of the political side of the immigration movement, Ford has devoted immense sums to it to assist its legal, 'educational,' and policy-influencing activities, and at almost every node and juncture of Ford's philanthropy, the recipients have been partisans of the far left.
Thus, Mr. Hawkins shows that MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, was established with grants of $2.2 million from the Ford Foundation in 1968 and that Ford awarded more than $5,500,000 to MALDEF from 1983 through 1988. In 1986, Ford trustee Harriet Schaffer Rabb joined the board of MALDEF, thus wedding the two organizations in a marriage that could spawn only more mischievous offspring. If MALDEF were simply a 'humanitarian' effort, this level of support might be unremarkable, but the fact is that from its very origins, as Mr. Hawkins also shows, MALDEF's legal work has been under the control of members of the radical-left National Lawyers Guild and like-minded organizations.
Thus, he writes, 'MALDEF's principal immigration policy advisor during the 1980s was Linda Wong, also a prominent member of the NLG [National Lawyers Guild] National Immigration Project.' Wong was also supportive of the so-called 'Sanctuary' movement, which in the early 1980s devoted itself to smuggling illegal aliens into the United States, ostensibly for humanitarian purposes but really for the goal of subverting U.S. anti-communist policies in Central America. Sanctuary itself may originally have been conceived by Guild activists in 1980, and certainly it received their support throughout its history. Here too the money trail leads to the doors of the Ford Foundation, which between 1984 and 1989 gave $2.6 million to organizations involved in Sanctuary activities.
The financial links between Ford, MALDEF, and Sanctuary are merely a few examples of the connections Mr. Hawkins uncovers, and it is impossible to reflect on the pattern he has exposed without thinking of the famous (though probably apocryphal) remark attributed to Lenin to the effect that when the communists got around to hanging the capitalists, the capitalists themselves would sell them the rope. What even Lenin never fully anticipated, perhaps, is that the capitalists would forego the hope of profiting from their own execution and actually donate the rope and endow research toward constructing a better noose. That, in a word, is what the Ford Foundation has done with its money.
What much of Mr. Hawkins research points toward is the existence for some years of a coordinated strategy on the part of the Marxist left and its cohorts to use immigration as an instrument of national subversion. As he notes, there is a close affinity between what some proponents of large-scale Mexican and Latin American immigration say and what classic Marxist-Leninists have written about American 'imperialism,' and some of the former have actually worked for the disintegration of the United States as a unified nation-state.
One such activist intones that 'today the movement is toward separatism, with the goal of increasing awareness in a small but unified Chicano community that is inner-directed instead of being directed from without. ... The Chicano people seek self-determination in what were formerly and rightfully their lands, not those of 'Anglo-America.'' Some years ago, surveying similar trends in a monograph for the London-based Institute for the Study of Conflict,1 I suggested the term 'demographic warfare' to denote the concept of instigating and exploiting mass population movements from one nation to another (e.g, the Mariel Boatlift of 1980) for the purposes of political and social destabilization, and information discussed here by Mr. Hawkins appears to be consistent with that interpretation of the Mariel phenomenon. If Fidel Castro can understand it, there's no reason others couldn't think of it all by themselves, and indeed, it is not unusual for one or another of the illuminati of immigration to betray such plans in their more unguarded moments.
'I suggested the term 'demographic
warfare' to denote the concept of
instigating and exploiting mass
population movements from one
nation to another ... for the
purposes of political and social
destabilization...'
Destabilization need not be carried out with violence or under the control of hostile foreign powers. Thus, one of the quotations culled by Mr. Hawkins directly illustrates this tactic of ethnic mobilization for political purposes 'If current immigration and birth rates continue, by the year 2000, Latinos will be the largest minority group in the United States. Since 85 percent of all Spanish-speaking people are concentrated in nine states and twenty cities that control 193 (or 71 percent) of the electoral votes needed to win the Presidency, they constitute a critical swing vote in future elections.'
This sentiment was not expressed by a foe of immigration fearful of the nation's being swamped by swarthy hordes of Hispanics in alliance with liberal Democrats, but by Sheila Collins, national coordinator of The Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, and Mr. Jackson's Operation PUSH also just happened to be well-endowed by the Ford Foundation. In short, the massive immigration into the United States in the last two decades serves the interests of radical political agendas that most Americans find abhorrent, and elements of the extreme left have pushed and supported it for precisely that purpose.
These agendas include not only the actual destabilization and dismemberment of the United States, as evidenced by the remarks quoted above, but also possible terrorist and criminal activities directed toward that end, as well as peaceful (more or less) mobilization of immigrant constituencies for political purposes and Sanctuary's manipulation of immigrants to subvert U.S. foreign policy. But they also include another dimension of cultural subversion, to be implemented through schools, universities, and religious organizations. The advantage of this approach is that it is non-violent and legal and indeed relies to a large extent on American pluralism and liberalism to carry out its goals.
Thus, Jim Corbett, often called the 'father of the Sanctuary movement,' discussed this strategy expli-citly some years ago. 'With respect to this kind of strategic advantage,' Mr. Corbett said of Sanctuary's ulterior goals, 'non-violent insurgency is actually far superior to guerrilla insurgency because it requires no arms supply - just government reaction - in order to maintain momentum and establish the leverage needed for social jujitsu.' The concept of 'social jujitsu,' indeed, is crucial for an understanding of the long-term strategy of the modern left, which no longer depends on bomb-throwing and KGB subsi-dies as much as it does on Antonio Gramsci's designs for a 'long march through the institutions' for the purpose of acquiring 'cultural hegemony.'
It is precisely by using the institutions of American society against themselves that the left's 'social jujitsu' operates to acquire 'cultural hegemony,' just as real jujitsu works by using the strength, size, and power of an opponent against him. The great advantage that cultural dominance has for whoever obtains it is that it allows them to determine the agenda, to define issues and the terms of public discussion, so that debates are won before they are even engaged. As the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu noted in a famous remark, 'To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.'2
Immigration offers a bottomless pit of opportunities for just this kind of cultural subversion because Americans of all political convictions, right and left, find it difficult to discuss immigration apart from slogans about being 'a nation of immigrants,' taking in the teeming masses, and so forth. As long as these are the terms that frame the immigration debate, it will remain a battle lost before it is even fought, and indeed this is one reason it has not been fought before now. In order to cut through and redefine the terms of the debate, there will have to be some fresh thinking about immigration and its effects on American culture and political life.
There are indeed groups and individuals that are guilty of fresh thinking on the subject - The Rockford Institute's Chronicles, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the American Immigration Control Foundation, the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, experts and authors like Lawrence Auster, Peter Brimelow of Forbes, Wayne Lutton, and Mr. Hawkins himself - but the predictable response, from left as well as right, to most of their labors has been to mutter about 'xenophobia,' 'nativism,' and 'racism.' Since these labels usually mean nothing, it is seldom possible to respond to such charges definitively, and indeed the main purpose of making the charges in the first place is to make certain that no debate takes place.
'Immigration offers a bottomless
pit of opportunities for just this kind
of cultural subversion because
Americans of all political
convictions, right and left, find it
difficult to discuss immigration
apart from slogans...'
One piece of evidence of the meaninglessness of such labels comes from a recent opinion survey of attitudes toward immigration among Hispanics conducted by the Latino National Political Survey. Among non-Hispanic whites who are U.S. citizens, 74 percent agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, 'There are too many immigrants.' Among Mexican-American U.S. citizens, 75 percent agreed or strongly agreed, while 66 percent of Cubans and 79 percent of Puerto Ricans agreed or strongly agreed. Among non-U.S. citizens, 73 percent of Cubans and 84 percent of Mexicans agreed or strongly agreed. The point is that Hispanics themselves are opposed to more immigration, at least as strongly and maybe even more than non-Hispanic whites.3
A debate that has taken place is the one over 'multiculturalism' and curricula based on it in schools and universities, and both liberals like Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and conservatives of all kinds have generally agreed on the dangers to serious education it represents. What few have noticed, however, is that multiculturalism is a problem at all only because of the long-term effects of massive immigration from non-Western societies in the last two decades, and that the apologists for multiculturalism have themselves insisted on the importance of immigration as a principal reason for the imposition of multiculturalist curricula. Thus, the now-notorious 'Curriculum of Inclusion' proposed in 1989 for the New York state school system explicitly invoked the cultural changes in New York life that massive immigration is causing
The fact is that in New York the presence of a heterogeneous student body is a state-wide condition, not just an urban condition. One half of the counties of New York state have at least one school district with over 10 percent non-European American enrollment; furthermore, over 22 percent of all school districts in the state have over 10 percent non-European American enrollment.
and a similar New York multiculturalist curriculum proposal in 1991, 'One Nation, Many Peoples,' made much the same argument.
Since the 1960s, however, a profound reorientation of the self-image of Americans has been under way. Before this time the dominant model of the typical American had been conditioned primarily by the need to shape a unified nation out of a variety of contrasting and often conflicting European immigrant communities. But following the struggles for civil rights, the unprecedented increase in non-European immigration over the last two decades and the increasing recognition of our nation's indigenous heritage, there has been a fundamental change in the image of what a resident of the United States is.
With this change, which necessarily highlights the racial and ethnic pluralism of the nation, previous ideals of assimilation to an Anglo-American model have been put in question and are now slowly and painfully being set aside.
Immigration, in other words, is held to be incompatible with retention of the traditional 'Anglo-American' model or identity of the United States, and there is little doubt that this argument is valid. Indeed, the cultural homogeneity of the American people at the time of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution was held by John Jay and other Framers to be an indispensable condition of national political unity. In Federalist No. 2, Jay wrote that
Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general Liberty and Independence.
Insofar as the immigration into the United States of culturally disparate peoples removes the cultural unity that is the foundation of national political unity, immigration must be seen as a threat to the United States as a coherent and sovereign nation, and since the unity of which Jay wrote and which has obtained ever since has been essentially an Anglo- and Euro-American one, the immigration of large numbers of non-European peoples must be seen as incompatible with the fundamental cultural and political identity of the United States.
Any nation or politically and culturally unified society must define itself in large part through a shared past and a determination to preserve and continue the achievements of its ancestors, and the introduction of large numbers of people who do not have the same ancestors must necessarily dilute its sense of a common past and of national unity. How indeed would it be possible today for Lincoln to speak of 'our forefathers,' as he did at Gettysburg, without being condemned for ignoring or belittling the contributions of more recent Americans whose forefathers had nothing to do with what the forefathers of Americans in 1863 had accomplished?
Why, indeed, should a West or an America that defines itself exclusively in terms of 'pluralism,' 'diversity,' 'tolerance,' 'the open society,' and 'equality' expect masses of immigrants to abandon their native cultures and adopt those of the West or America? Non-Western immigrants may find the affluence of American capitalism, the gratification and entertainment of American pop culture, and the glamour of political power in American mass democracy preferable to those of their own cultures, but why should Americans expect Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans to identify with the deeper symbols, institutions, and achievements of the West, from the wars of the Greeks against the Persians to the conquest of the American Plains or from the Ptolemaic system of astronomy to the Big Bang theory of modern astrophysics?
'...in order to curb immigration,
it is necessary first to assert
the existence, integrity, and
legitimacy of the Western and
American way of life...'
Since a good deal of Western and American civilization revolves around the political and military conquest or defeat of non-Western enemies, it is hard to see how these triumphs of the West can be retained as positive accomplishments in the midst of a student population composed of large non-Western fragments. There can be little question that the multiculturalists are logically right in drawing from the premise of massive non-Western immigration into the United States the conclusion that traditional Western and American self-images and models must be at least qualified if not abandoned. The proper response to their argument, if Western culture is to be preserved as the main part of the school curriculum, is not to challenge their logic but to challenge the premise - that is, to halt or severely curtail the immigration that is at the root of much of the anti-Western multiculturalist strategy and which provides a never-ending stream of constituents for multiculturalist energies and anti-American agendas.
But in order to curb immigration, it is necessary first to assert the existence, integrity, and legitimacy of the Western and American way of life - to assert, in other words, the legitimacy of a 'we' against the demands of a 'they.' Liberal and neo-conservative bleatings about 'pluralism' and 'diversity' will do nothing to identify a core of Western and American values, habits, and institutions that distinguish us from the non-Western and non-American cultural fragments that suddenly appear at our door demanding that we change the architecture of the whole house. Until Americans, left and right, are more willing to assert their own cultural identity and distinctiveness as a people and a nation, they will be unable to mount any effective or persuasive argument why 'our' way of life should prevail over others that are proposed as alternatives or even to claim that 'we' have a way of life at all.
What William Hawkins has accomplished in this meticulous study of the political exploitation of immigration and immigrants as well as exploitation of the vulnerabilities of American society by the far left is to show that many of the forces pressing for more immigration, more legal rights for immigrants, and more social services and political power for immigrants are not well disposed to the American way of life in any sense, that in fact they are and have been intent on subverting it and are enemies of it. His study is therefore a critical step in informing Americans that we and our way of life do indeed have enemies, and once we learn that, we may be able someday to get around to figuring out how and why those enemies should be defeated and how and why we the American People should survive and flourish. ;
NOTES
1 Samuel T. Francis, 'Illegal Immigration - A Threat to U.S. Security,' Conflict Studies, No. 192 (October, 1986), pp. 16-17.
2 Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 77.
3 Roberto Suro, 'Hispanic Pragmatism Seen in Survey,' New York Times, December 15, 1992, p. A20.
[Copies of Importing Revolution by William R. Hawkins are available from the American Immigration Control Foundation, Box 525, Monterey, VA 24465. The cost is $10.00 which includes postage and handling.]