From the lunatic fringe

I looked, so you wouldn’t have to (you’re welcome).

In the American Thinker, buried in all the blah-blah-blah about “Venezuela” and “Mexican nationals and their descendants in the U.S. who glorify La Raza” (right-wingers have a real hang-up about La Raza), columnist Colin Flaherty manages to drop in the “oh, by the way” comment that

The newly elected president, Andrés López-Obrador, was gleeful during the election when he told his compadres they should all move to America, illegally.  His encouragement along with his pro-poverty policies will set the stage for another tsunami of illegal immigration.

The “gleeful” statement is fleshed out by Lloyd Billingsley in Front Page Mag that “Immigrants, he [AMLO] said, “must leave their towns and find a life in the United States” and this was “a human right we will defend.” So the new Mexican president wants to dictate policy for the United States, no surprise given the dynamics driving illegal immigration. Billingsley’s article is a hot mess … among other things, leaving the reader with the impression that José Vasconcelos is a contemporary Mexican politician (he died in 1959), before veering into something about California politics, the cost of serial killer Juan Corona’s incarceration, Venezuelan weight loss, a recent primary victory in New York State, some insensitive remarks by the boorish Vicente Fox about the 43 missing students, and God knows what else.

The constant on the far right — both by their “pundits”, and from the usual suspects you read in the “comments” section of any U.S. news aggregator — has been the claim that AMLO is planning to “invade” the United States, by forcing, or encouraging, or cheering on, migration across the border. I was pretty sure I knew where it came from, but confirmation came from a surprising source: a writer I’ve never understood … a guy who lived in Mexico, has Mexican children and for at least the last 18 years, has had a column in a white supremacist site (which I’m certainly not going to provide a link to). The guy at least gave the original quote, and the full translation, which would make sense. It’s not that “Immigrants must leave their towns”, but “Immigrants WHO FROM NECESSITY must leave…”. The full context was that if people want to go see the world, they have the right to do so, but they shouldn’t live in situations where emigration is their only choice, and that Mexico supported the rights of those who had to emigrate, or to cross its territory in search of a safe haven. You’d think the white-wing would cheer… but, then they’d have to support the “communist” … or Venezuelan, or whatever. Not that rightists ever make sense anyway.