Will Trump become the White Marcos in 2024?
As we close 2023 this holiday season, I am moved to extend to you the gift of history. President Joe Biden made me do it.
But first, consider the stark contrast in the recent immigration-speak from the two who will be vying for your attention in 2024.
There’s the aforementioned Biden, and then there’s that other guy, the twice-impeached, quadruple-indicted, former president who seems intent on driving the US into full-speed reverse mode.
That would be the desire of Donald Trump, who as Liz Cheney says has America sleepwalking into dictatorship. That is his ambition come November. He’s already vetting people for a Trump administration that would allow him to be a strongman autocrat. When he says he wants to be dictator for one day, he’s not kidding. According to reports, on day one of a new reign, Trump intends to invoke the insurrection act and establish an American martial law.
Just before Christmas, Donald Trump was on the campaign trail in Iowa denouncing immigrants: “They’re ruining our country. And it’s true, they are destroying the blood of our country.” FILE PHOTO
It reveals Trump’s main ambition—to become the White Marcos. (The senior Ferdinand, not Bong Bong).
That would truly be historic, where the colonizer goes retro and becomes more and more like the country it colonized.
Don’t think it can’t happen, not if we continue to the trend of the polls, where 70 percent of Republicans say despite Trump’s criminality, they would rather see the aging and morbidly obese Trump man return to power, according to a recent New York Times/Sienna College poll. Republicans have normalized the “badness,” and just want power.
Good for them, bad for America.
There’s still enough time to reverse the reversal before Trump actually debases American democracy.
If we don’t, that won’t look good for Filipino Americans, or Asian Americans in general.
Trump’s view on immigrants
Just before the Christmas holiday, Donald Trump was on the campaign trail in Iowa denouncing immigrants: “They’re ruining our country. And it’s true, they are destroying the blood of our country.”
Trump, the phlebotomist, was talking about the southern border, but the arrivals aren’t just from Mexico, or Central and South America. Increasingly, the border crossers have been Asian, particularly from China and India.
Trump was talking about our blood too.
Trump denies he was using Hitleresque rhetoric, boasting his illiteracy saying he’s never read “Mein Kampf.” Doesn’t matter. The thoughts are in his heart.
Compare Trump’s hate speech with the public statement of President Joe Biden on Dec. 17.
President Joe Biden honored all Chinese immigrants to America by remembering the 80th anniversary of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act. FILE PHOTO/REUTERS/Nathan Howard
On that day, President Biden honored all Chinese immigrants to America by remembering the 80th anniversary of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Did anyone (public figure, stranger, friend, or family member) even bother to mention that momentous occasion and what that means not just to Chinese Americans, but all Asian Americans?
Exclusion has been a fundamental theme for Asian Americans in US history.
America always wants us to come here to work, but they don’t want us for good. Not if it can be helped. And if we’re born here, ohmigoodness. As Trump would say, we’re poisoning the blood of America.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first and only major law that targeted a specific national group from immigrating to the US. Imagine a Chinese face, put a bar across it. With few exceptions, they weren’t allowed in the US. And, of course, the idea was first introduced by a threatened, pre-MAGA California Republican, Horace Page, and signed into law by Republican President Chester Arthur on May 6, 1882.
Even when the Exclusion Act was finally repealed in 1943, some restrictions remained. The Chinese may not have faced wholesale exclusion, but Chinese immigration was limited to just over 100 people a year. The racist quota was in place until the Hart-Cellar Act gave the US the immigration reform needed in 1965.
By recognizing the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, President Biden was acknowledging the original sin against all Asian America.
Other Asian ethnicities were also excluded in the US in the early 20th century, including Japanese, Indian and Filipino.
But the Chinese were the first. Their exclusion was a model for Asian hate in America.
“The Act, along with racism and xenophobia in other parts of American life, was part of the anti-Chinese “Driving Out” era, which included the Rock Springs and Hells Canyon Massacre,” Biden added for good measure.
How many Americans, let alone Asian Americans, even know of those two horrible events that capture the animus of the time? Biden mentioned them, but for most people, like me, they were just empty words.
Let me fill them for you.
Everyone needs to know them.
Chinese massacres of the exclusion
If you think all the mass shootings we’ve had in the US are bad, they’re nothing like the mass murder and riot in Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1882. That’s when angry white miners went after Chinese miners who worked for less and were accused of taking jobs away from white workers. At least 28 Chinese miners were killed and 15 were injured. Rioters also burned down nearly 80 Chinese homes in what was Rock Springs’ Chinatown. It was just the beginning of hate toward the wave of Chinese immigrants who had come to America to help build the railroad and mine for gold in the American West. Examples of the hot rhetoric were published in The North American Review, where Asian immigrants were referred to as “the Asiatic race, alien in blood, habits and civilization.”
Sound familiar?
The hate extended from Wyoming to Oregon’s Hells Canyon Massacre, also known as the Snake River Massacre in 1887. That’s when 30 laborers mining gold were gunned down by a white gang of horse thieves. The identity of the seven murderers was known, and a trial did take place in 1888. But only three stood trial and were acquitted.
According to History.com, a rancher who attended the trial commented, “I guess if they had killed 31 white men, something would have been done about it, but none of the jury knew the Chinamen or cared much about it, so they turned the men loose.”
No one cared about the Hells Canyon case again until 1995 when a Wallowa County (Ore.) clerk found some files in a local museum’s safe. The records of the trial, like the shameful history, were hidden. Once uncovered, a reporter from the Oregonian wrote a book on the massacre, which led to a memorial built on the Snake River to honor some of the Chinese who were killed.
Last Sunday, only President Biden cared enough to mention the importance of the events that signified the Asian hate in America during the era of Chinese Exclusion Act, officially repealed Dec. 17, 1943.
“Today, there are those who still demonize immigrants and fan the flames of intolerance,” Biden said in his statement. “It’s wrong. I ran for President to restore the soul of America. To bring people together and make sure we give hate no safe harbor. . .[and] to celebrate the diversity that is our great strength.”
Would it be too perfect to imagine that same weekend Trump in Iowa, talking about how immigrants’ blood poisons our country?
Trump’s already done plenty to poison our modern politics. In 2012, during President Obama’s term, a Republican-led House of Representatives passed unanimously a resolution to condemn the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Can you imagine that happening now with an anti-China, anti-immigrant Freedom Caucus?
That’s how close we are to an America in full reverse, led by a newly elected Trump.
History can repeat itself if we aren’t careful.
President Joe Biden remembered that the other day when honoring the repeal of an act some politicians wish still existed. Biden knew the importance of recognizing what Chinese Americans and all Asian Americans, including Filipinos, have had to overcome.
That is the gift of history. Putting the present into context always helps us to keep moving forward with undeniable clarity.
That’s the happy new year we need in 2024.
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He does a micro-talk show on YouTube.com/@emilamok1
