Your Border is Showing: From Kashmir to ICE

Welcome to episode five
of The Left Unsaid, where we peel back

the wallpaper of official history,
scrape off the propaganda

and see what kind of mold is growing
underneath.

I'm Patrick McElwee, and I'm joined,
as usual, by my son, Finn McElwee.

Hello.

And again on Mother's Day

by my amazing wife,
to the gratitude of all

the listeners out there who had to suffer
through last week without her.

Meg McElwee. Hi, all. It's
good to be back.

Nothing I'd rather be doing
on Mother's Day.

It's true. Nothing I'd rather be doing.

Not everybody gets to do a podcast
with the two men or two of the men

that they love the most in the world.
That's true.

Very grateful.

How’s it been going this week?

Yeah.

You know,
it just feels like there's a lot going on.

Always, always a lot going on.

There's a lot of people in the world.

Whoof! Billions. I think. Crazy.

And we just want to remind some of
those billions who are listening to us

right
now, that we could really use your help.

if you happen to have an account on
Spotify or you get your podcast from Apple

or really any podcasting platform, we
would love for you to leave us a review.

Five stars is always expected.

And if you want to put
some kind words in there,

we recently had a review from Karl Rove.

Meg, you want to
read out Karl Rove's review?

All right.

Here it is.

Karl Rove,
I think a jokester friend of ours

must have left this comment,
but Karl Rove says five stars.

Loving the insights
and dynamics of this podcast.

I'm learning a lot,

helping me get back into the news
in a way that feels productive.

Meg and Pat are great
and Finn is the coolest.

Can't wait for more episodes.

Thank you Karl. Thanks, Karl. Buddy.

You know, I actually was in a room
with Karl Rove once.

Yes, true.

And who else were you in a room with, Pat?

Joseph Biden.

That's right.

Did you actually touch your body?

He touched my butt.

This is family lore.

And now you all know.

I was sorry, I was a very young,

legislative slash press

outreach person at a think tank
in Washington, D.C., and I was preparing

for a press briefing that I was organizing
with some economists.

Left leaning, of course.

And Joe Biden happened to be in the room

that I had booked
with, like, three older women.

And he was just taking up that room.
He loved it.

He really is kind of an attention hound.

Or at least he used to be back
when he didn't have dementia.

Yeah.

And he was just living it up.

And I had to say, Senator,
because he was a senator than he was.

He hasn't always been president.
I don't know if you knew that Finn.

No, no, I had no idea. Yeah.

There was a time before he was president
and he was a senator.

And I said, Senator, I have the room.

Is it okay if I start setting up?

And he said, yeah, go ahead.

And he kept going.

And actually, I had a pretty good turnout.

So people started coming in to the room
and I'm still standing by the table,

like sorting things and sweating profusely
like I would do.

And also a little bit of background here.

So Patrick has a round
a little angelic Irish face.

And back
then he was mistaken for younger than 18,

like he would go out to a rated-r movie
with colleagues post-graduation,

post-college graduation,
and he would get carded,

because people didn't
think he was over 18.

So you you were.

I think 17, actually, because that's.

You were a baby.

That's the age for R-rated movies.

Yeah. So the room had filled up.

And Joe Biden, it was time for him
to make his grand exit,

but he couldn't really get past
very easily.

So he had to kind of squeeze
in right behind my rear.

And he kind of just scooped in
right behind me and made his way out.

Yeah, it's a brush.

Your brush with fame.

A brush with fame.
You know what could have been?

One is made sure to wash that spot
extra well.

So don't worry.

One shudders to think,

Yeah, well, that's not how we anticipated
starting this podcast.

That's you never know where
we're going to end up.

That's complete improv.

Why was I talking about that?

I don't know,
said you were in the room with Karl Rove.

But I was, I was, I was,
I was also in a room with Karl Rove.

He was very charming. I got to say.

Karl Rove had, like, these great stories.

Great for those for those who are new
to this world, like, For those of you

who are younger
listeners, who's Karl Rove?

Karl Rove was like, well,
he was sort of the whisperer

in the ear of George W Bush,
the guy everybody thought was in power.

The little devil on his shoulder.

Except maybe Dick Cheney.

Everybody thought Dick
Cheney might be in power, too.

But Karl Rove was. Yeah,
he was the whisperer.

He was what Steve Bannon was to the
first Trump administration.

With and
Stephen Miller is perhaps to Trump.

Perhaps in the
in the second administration,

maybe Elon Musk at times
although he seems to be kind of fading.

I would say Karl Rove was less
overtly fascist than Steve Bannon.

Things have changed a little bit in
the consigliere of the Republican Party.

So thanks, Karl.

We appreciate your review
and everybody else out therem

I hope you're inspired
to write a review of your own.

You don't have to use Karl Rove's words,
although you can.

Just run em through ChatGPT and say,
could you change these a little bit,

but make them equally,
if not more flattering?

Well, this is Sunday,

where we're recording this
on Sunday afternoon on Mother's Day.

And it looks like the cease fire
between India and Pakistan is holding.

And so we've all got our fingers
crossed. Yes.

It's been a harrowing week
between two nuclear

armed powers in South Asia,
India and Pakistan.

They've been trading more than just
limited fire across their borders.

It's been pretty extensive.

Yeah.

And, into each other's administrative

regions of Kashmir,
which is disputed territory between them.

Poor Kashmir,
I mean, sounds like such a lovely place.

And it's constantly the fight of this
battle between two regional powers.

And I think some of the strikes have been
not just in Kashmir, but

within other parts of India and Pakistan.

I saw, for example,
that the Indian government

had taken out the air defenses in Lahore,
a city inside Pakistan.

And that's a particularly dangerous thing,
because if you take out the air defenses

in one corridor,
it means you've got a place

that your planes can fly through
and they can bomb deeper into the country.

So it's definitely the kind of thing that,

like military observers were worried
could lead to a lot of escalation,

obviously worrying
since both countries have nuclear weapons.

Do you know some historical truths
of this region?

It's hard when you, say,
are just opening up the New York Times and

and things are fairly simplistic
in their telling of of the situation.

It seems that
there were some terrorist attacks

and there retaliation
for terrorist attacks.

But but let's go a little deeper
than that.

The trigger for the current back and forth
between India and Pakistan was this

terrorist attack against tourists,

mostly tourists from India, in Kashmir.

Now, we should talk about where Kashmir is
and the whole thing.

Right?

And to understand that we have to go back
a little bit in history, but just to say:

Kashmir is a disputed territory
between India and Pakistan,

and there were militants
who are opposed to the way that India is

ruling the part of Kashmir it controls,
ruling with a whole lot of repression,

because Kashmir is a Muslim majority
region.

And militants
who are presumed to be Muslim.

I think that actually very little
is known about

who exactly carried out these attacks.

But they had lots of guns
and they killed 20 something tourists.

Mostly Indian or Hindu tourists

although I think so, also
some other foreign nationals.

Yeah.

And India, immediately
blamed Pakistan for the attacks.

They said that Pakistan
had facilitated the attacks,

which they've provided
absolutely no evidence for.

And that's kind of,
what set off this round of conflicts.

Yeah. And

I think that Pakistan has asked for there
to be an international investigation.

And India has said no,
they won't agree to that.

They don't need to.
They said they know who it is.

And we should point out

who India is currently ruled
by what's going on in India.

Right. So we've got Modi.

he's, you know, a politician
And he's been bringing back

a particularly virulent form

of Hindu nationalism within India.

India, previous to this.

if you look back under Nehru, for example,

who was a previous leader of India
under the Cold War.

India at the time sought to be
a secular state, sought to be the leader

of what they called the Third World,
affiliated neither with the United States

nor the Soviet Union, and that secularism
has been under steady attack since.

And now we just see India sort of ruled
by this very strong nationalist Hinduism.

I loved seeing that you sent me
that video of that young Indian kid.

That was amazing. Oh, that was great.
Did you watch that, Finn?

I have.

sent this reel along to Finn.

I was like, hey, Finn, it's your friend.

This little guy must have been your age,
Finn.

Maybe a little younger even.

He's being interviewed by,
the Indian press.

Just a rabidly nationalistic Indian press.

And he keeps on saying like, well,
I don't want anybody to die.

We're all people. We're all human.

and the woman was like, well,
who taught you this?

Who taught you this?

And they it's like.

I have a brain, man.
And he like, walks off.

And they keep saying like,
do you say, long live India?

He says, yes.

And they say,
do you say long live Pakistan?

And he says, yes. And they're like,
how can you say both?

He says,
everybody should live in their own place.

Yeah, I love that
everybody should live in their own place.

I mean that I think

is the wisdom of international law
as it exists between nation states.

that's one of the reasons that Kashmir
so dangerous because it's It's a zone

on the map through which there's no
settled lines between India and Pakistan.

And like to really understand it.

And I'm not saying
that I really understand it,

but I do think it's worth
knowing some of the basics

of where India and Pakistan
even come from, right?

Because they were both part
of the British Raj.

The British colony in India included

a much larger area
than what is currently India today.

And after World
War two, when the British just couldn't

keep it up anymore, when it was clear
that the Empire was over.

And that was true in Palestine,
as we've talked about before.

But at the same time, that was all going
down in Palestine, over in India,

you also had the British in retreat,
leaving chaos and violence in their wake.

And the way that they retreated from India
was to break the region down roughly,

according to sort of a Hindu

majority area,
which became India and a muslim

majority area, which became
Pakistan and later Pakistan broke again.

So you had Pakistan and Bangladesh,
but we call that the Partition.

And there was just a massive
outpouring of sectarian

violence afterward that some people call
a genocide on both sides.

We're talking about millions of people
moving to go

toward the other side of the line,
as well as many people who didn't make it.

terrible kinds of violence.

This has been studied like crazy
and there's all kinds of writing,

but it seems to a lot of people that this,
this extreme sectarianism that led to

this kind of violence was itself
a product of the British colonialism

and in particular, just the last
sort of 20 years leading up to partition.

That before
then, you had had hundreds of years

of coexistence between these communities,
in fact, so much coexistence that,

like a lot of times in the folk religions,
you couldn't really tell the difference

between a Hindu practice

and a muslim practice because they kind of
would bleed into each other.

You know, where you might have a Hindu
shrine to the locals, to a

you might have a Hindu shrine
to a muslim sultan or something.

Well, and even just in modern day,
my good friend is,

her parents are from Pakistan,
and she was raised here,

but we we took our daughters
to this dance festival,

which is where I was last week
when you all recorded without me.

But, the girls had this, Bollywood
dance class,

and my friend was like,
oh, I love all this music.

You know, this is the music.

So this is Indian music.

But they played it at her, her wedding.

And because it's all, you know, yeah,

we listen to it,
you know, we listen to each other's music.

There's less separation of culture

than certain parts of society
there would like to believe.

As it should be.

I mean, what we wish for the whole world,
right? Right.

Yeah.

For example,
they they both, do have, a caste system,

obviously, India is famous for their very,
rigid, caste system.

But, you know, Pakistan
also has, an unofficial caste system.

Most of that area of the world
has some sort of caste system.

So these cultures are really, not
as far apart as many in the West believe.

And so what about the caste system cuz
I have sometimes I,

you know, not being an expert in this area
at all, I've sometimes thought, well, am

I being ignorant
to think that India has a caste system?

But I'm not right. It it does.

Can you say more about it? Yeah,
absolutely.

the Brahmins, which are the highest caste
in India, occupy

the vast
majority of positions of power in India.

You know, they're federal judges,
they're elected officials,

they occupy these positions of power
in much higher

numbers,
than they should in an equal society.

Sounds, sounds,
it sounds slightly familiar, like we have

a sort of racial caste system,
but it would be wrong. Right.

To think it's exactly, you know,
translatable over to, to how the Indian

caste system works and do you know, like,
did colonialism create the caste system?

Did they find the caste system?

I'm sure it affected the caste system
and maybe made it more rigid.

Yeah, absolutely.

When the, British came into India,
a lot of the people they went to for help

with advising them on on
how to run their colony and how to do

all these things were the Brahmins,
these higher caste people.

So, you know, a lot of historians
think that these Brahmins

used, these positions of power
within, British administered, India

to really impose rules
that were beneficial to them.

For example,
the implementation of Hindu law,

really helped the Brahmin class
at the expense of the lower classes.

And actually they created two law systems
one Hindu and one Muslim,

which kind of forced people
to separate out

more rather than, you know,
mixing cultures like they had before.

Now they're under two different
legal systems under the British.

Interesting.

And, you know, I think feel like it feels
like a recurrent theme within history

when you have colonial occupations
or other kinds of occupations.

I'm thinking right now
of the occupation of Iraq after

the United States invaded in 2003, where

the occupying regime ends up inflaming
sectarian tensions, maybe in large part

because they end up allying with certain

identity groups, which that are maybe
sort of legible to them.

They can sort of understand it.

Like, for example, everybody here was
talking about Sunnis versus Shia in Iraq.

We could understand that distinction,
even if we didn't really know anything

about what it meant and didn't understand
how intertwined these groups

were until the occupation
by the United States

sort of forced, forced them into this
terrible sectarian violence.

Yeah.

And I think it has
it does have largely to do

with class recognizes class right
across cultures.

I'm thinking particularly
so when we studied at Notre Dame,

there were a lot of really upper class
Latin American students there.

and yeah,
you know, they fit right in in many ways.

Right.

Spoke English super.

Well, but they were clearly there
because they were getting an education

and their intent
was to go back and rule their countries,

all right, like they were they were going
to be in the administrations.

They were going to be at the top.

You know, the top of the top. And,
and be doing all these things.

So yeah. Especially
if they were from a smaller country.

Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

And definitely this thing
that you're talking about existed heavily

and British India as well.

there was kind of this cultural Darwinism

that emerged
that traced specifically higher, caste

Indians to an Aryan

race that was all descended from Europe.

So seriously. Yeah.

The British used this to say, oh, look,
we're not like colonially occupying you.

We're just, like, helping,
a brother race.

We're both descended from the same people.

And the Brahmins also use this to kind of
shut the lower castes out there.

They're, you know, barbarians.

They're descended from someone else.

We’re the true descendants
of these Aryan people.

Yeah.

It makes you shudder to think about,
you know, now it's in the news

that some people in the white House
are floating this idea

that the United States would become
a kind of provisional authority in Gaza,

in a way
that would be modeled on what they did

with the provisional authority
in Iraq, that.

That worked out so well. Right.

And worked so terribly

that then just brought a descent into hell
for many, many years in Iraq,

ended up leading to ISIS,
which conquered vast swaths of Iraq

and Syria for a while,
was kind of a militant terrorist group.

So I hope hopefully, hopefully that gets
that that kind of horrific idea goes away.

But, you know, there's just just one
horrific idea after another in Gaza.

Yeah.

Israel's cabinet recently

passed a resolution,
calling for an expansion of their war.

And with that, they made comments
like, we're doing this, in accordance

with President Trump's plan

for Gaza, which, you know,
it's it's really horrific that that

this looks to be even a possibility for,
what the future holds.

So if you haven't yet,
you really need to find the documentary.

The Settlers and and watch that
and get a sense of this on the BBC.

BBC is that where it is?

Yeah.
Also just copied all over the internet.

I watched it on X, just some random
account had posted the whole thing.

So yes.

So we hope not.

We hope
not for this future occupation of Gaza.

But we're talking now still about

the British occupation of India and,
just the vast

mélange of resentments

and Identities and violence
that it brought forth.

As soon as the British pulled back,
we had the partition, we had the violence.

but Kashmir
was a sort of independent entity.

The local ruler, a couple of years

after partition, decided
that he actually wanted to join India,

despite being a muslim majority area,
because they were getting invasions

from the Pakistan side of the border
from like tribesmen in Pakistan.

That resulted in a war
between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

India asked the United Nations
to get involved in one of the early United

Nations resolutions was that
there should be elections inside Kashmir

to decide
whether it would join India or Pakistan.

And like the UN resolutions on Palestine,
that resolution, despite

being in international law, has never come
into play, has never been fulfilled.

And so we have it. When was that?

When did that happen?

That was, in the late 1940s.

Okay.

And so we have Kashmir left
as this festering sore between

India and Pakistan
that erupts into violence periodically.

And India has been trying to assert

more and more control
over its section of Kashmir.

So we've had all this repression.

We don't know
what motivated the militants,

but we had - it’s
generating militant activity

and nearly led to a nuclear exchange
between these two powers.

You know, I it makes me think like,
what's going to happen

if Trump gets his way
and we throw away the United Nations,

we throw away all of the international law

that was created after World War two
to make sure that kind of thing

didn't happen again,
especially now that the world

saw the use of nuclear weapons
for the first time.

What's going to happen
if that's all thrown away

and we go back to this sort of nations
as spheres of influence,

where the United States has
its sphere of influence and Russia has its

and it's just kind of might makes right
if there's nuclear weapons. Now.

Because I'll tell you what new

I think I think that Trump's
plan is pretty simple. I,

I think he wants to get the Nobel Peace
Prize.

What?

Please say more.

Him and Henry Kissinger.

How so?

Did you hear that Daniella Weiss,
the settle, the woman in the settlers,

the, Daniela Weiss, the sort of godmother
of of Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

Now, she's been nominated
to get Nobel Peace Prize by her.

I don't know.

Can anybody be nominated?

I don't know, like.

Who can nominate? Can like, could I just
write a letter, nominate somebody?

I don't know. Anyway.

Trump. Trump.

Actually I read it today. That's.

Yes he wants the world to see him as
the peace president which is interesting.

Is it - what’s he thinking about? Ukraine?

Is he thinking about that?

he's trying to claim that he was the one
who instigated

the cease fire between India and Pakistan.

He's, he's kind of shunning Netanyahu
a little bit in his upcoming

trip to the Middle East, you know, I think
perhaps he wants the war to be over.

I don't know what.

I don't know what his deal is, but, yes,
someone in his cabinet was quoted

as saying, well, if he doesn't get it,
then what is it even for?

So this is. What. The Nobel Peace Prize.

So this
sort of like, again, a megalomaniac,

like he goes around and he makes his own
little personal deals.

He's the art of the deal guy.

He he needs validation. If only he does.

If only his father had loved him.

And imagine.

Yeah. What are we to make of this?

This news that maybe there's some rift

between President Trump and Prime Minister
Netanyahu of Israel?

I mean, some people have suggested
that's a smokescreen.

That's just like the initial cease fire
that went into place

right after Trump came into office,
where it seemed like

maybe the Trump administration was going
to bring some pressure to bear on Israel.

But now, obviously,
we are - how many days?

We’re
like 65 plus days into a complete blockade

of all international aid,
all food going in to Gaza,

which is a, you know,
just a horrific development when

and now they're saying they're
going to they're going to be

doing a ground invasion of Gaza.

This is worse than the blockades
that we were talking about

under the Biden administration.

I'm not sure the Biden administration

would have been able to or been willing
to tolerate a complete blockade like this.

But the Trump administration has.

So some people were saying that this idea
that there's daylight between Trump

and Netanyahu is just sort of public
relations.

Yeah, I for one am highly skeptical

of any actual rift
between Trump and Netanyahu.

You know, it
may have something to do with Trump's ego.

It's probably,
a combination of multiple factors.

But at the end of the day,
the arms shipments are still going out.

Right.

And he's saying nothing about there's
no, no, not a mention of

Israel needs to lighten up here,
let some food through.

Yeah.

You know, even Biden said that, well,
you know, while still sending the arms.

But. Well, they had the whole thing

where they built a little bridge
that didn't work.

Oh, we're supposed

to, you know, they remember
they were air dropping, aid for a while.

Yeah.

So I do think that there was some pressure
under the Biden administration.

I don't want to, like,

I'm not going to say
which side I come down on in this

ongoing debate about who's worse
for the Palestinians, Biden or Trump.

I mean, they're both freaking so awful.

It's how can you pick?

But I think in this regard,
the Biden administration was better.

Yeah, but definitely not good.

I mean, The Intercept recently reported
that there was no pressure

from the Biden administration
behind doors at all for a ceasefire.

The Intercept is

a good place to look for news
if you're kind of new to this left world.

The intercept I'd also say if you
if you're looking,

if you don't want a subscription to say,
some of these places

do require subscriptions,
but Democracy Now!

You can always find daily news
episodes on YouTube for free.

It's a great place to go
if you don't want to be

in the liberal, news
bubble of the New York Times. So.

And all the all the other newspapers

that are just derivatives
of the New York Times, right.

All right. Well,
I don’t want to pretend like

everything bad is happening
far away from here.

We've also seen some pretty disturbing
scenes locally here in the United States.

Very disturbing.

I could hardly sleep after I watched
that video out of, Massachusetts.

Worcester.

Why is it said Worcester?

But it's spelled Worchester just easier.

Where?

English is.

It's one less syllable. What? Worcester,
I don't know. No.

No one's ever explained that to me.

But but yeah, we so we saw this video
of an abduction of a mother.

A 16 year old.

Well, a 16 year old was arrested
trying to defend her mother.

Right.

And her face
was also slammed to the ground.

So what was really striking to me
about this footage ICE

going after this woman and her baby,
she had a baby, too.

So so they're violently going after these.

This family from Brazil, I believe.

what almost also brought me to
tears were all the people

in that neighborhood who came out
and were like, screaming

at the police officers who were trying
to put their bodies between ICE

and this family who once they once ICE
got them into the car, I,

you know,
you hear people calling the local 911

calling the local police,
which is not supposed to collaborate

with ICE to come and help
And you see, just regular everyday

citizens like putting their themselves
on the front of the ICE

car and like, you know, their fingers
having to be pried away by these.

you know, and I've seen several videos
like this where people will create a wall,

a human wall to prevent ICE
from coming in

and taking people away,
or at least try, yeah.

Made me think of Denmark
after the Nazis took over Denmark

and after they announced the pogrom,

that every day Danish citizens mobilized,

you know, they didn't
have these networks already in place.

They just mobilized
and saved 90% of the Jewish population.

and it makes you think like
is it time for us to as, as U.S.

citizens is, is it, you know,

like should we be hiding people like
why do you know what is.

Yeah. Providing sanctuary. Right, right.

I mean we've had the sanctuary movement
sort of sprung up and it's been ...

it's there.

People have been doing the sanctuary
movement for quite a while now.

But maybe it's time to scale that. Scale
that up, is that what you're saying?

Yeah. Yeah.

And you also have these, these dystopian

messages and threats
really coming from the Trump White House.

Stephen Miller, for example,
whose Trump's border czar.

when asked a question,

if he plans to suspend habeas corpus,
which is the right of people

to have a trial for something
that they're charged with, it's, The right

that means
you can't just be thrown into prison.

You can't just be thrown in a dungeon
and just left there.

Yeah, it's a fundamental tenet
of American democracy.

And he
he answers this question with, quote,

that's an option
we're actively looking at, unquote.

So the option being suspending
habeas corpus. Yes.

And he also says a lot of it
depends on whether the courts do

the right thing or not, which is a clear
intimidation of the courts.

You know, if
if the courts do the right thing, great.

If they rule in a way
we don't like, snap fascism.

And they're just and, you know,
the fact that they're deporting people

to this prison in El Salvador.

CECOT. Right? CECOT.

I mean, it looks like

something out of a futuristic right
wing dystopia.

And just run by this guy, Bukele,
the leader of El Salvador,

who just styles himself as like,
no law avenger, no law enforcer

against any kind of gang violence,
you know, suitably, broadly interpreted.

Yeah.

And also an investigation found that 70

to 90% of the people
that have been sent to this

dystopian prison have no criminal record
whatsoever.

Sick.

So when did immigration become so central
to the Republican Party's politics?

I mean, it’s
clearly tied to the rise of MAGA?

Well, it goes way, way back.
It goes way back.

But I, you know, I was in DC in 2003 back
when I met Joe Biden.

And in that time, George
W Bush was president.

And as I might have pointed out before
in this podcast,

I really don't like George
W Bush in a lot of ways,

but this.

Is an understatement.

On immigration, George W Bush was in favor

of something that everybody called
comprehensive immigration reform.

And one of my first tasks, again,
as this little 15 year old

looking guy was to go to the office
of Senator Ted Kennedy.

And I would sit there
while labor unions on the one side

and the Chamber of Commerce
and other business groups

on the other side would just negotiate
about immigration reform

in front of the Senate staff

and us immigrant advocates.

I worked for the Catholic bishops
and Catholic Bishops are pretty good

in promoting the dignity of immigrants
in this country.

And so they would sit there
and the idea was that

if you could bring labor
plus business, plus the government to bear

and have a compromise that you could solve
some of these immigration problems.

Well, turns out,
no, there was a huge backlash

and it became core to the rise
of what we all call MAGA now.

Because there were a few loonies.

in The government at that time.

They were extreme,
and now they're in charge.

Yeah.

I mean, they were there was like a handful
of representatives

in the House of Representatives

who would get themselves named to be like
the chair of some subcommittee.

And, yeah, they would pursue these,
like, loony bringing these lunatics.

I mean, that just so racist.

I got, I'd say Republican back then.

Republicans, general Republicans,
general Democrats you know, still racist,

but at least didn't say it overtly,
but these folks did.

Yeah.

The idea that these people are illegal
first rather than human

first, was a huge part
of what they'd like to say.

They only call them illegals.

You know, the words undocumented or human.

They you know, don't come up.

I saw I

saw one clip, in fact,
where I think it was Stephen

Miller again, was talking about someone
they had deported.

And he starts to say, you know, this,
this father did this,

but then he corrects himself,
and I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Illegal alien.

It's it's clearly a dehumanizing term.

And, you know, if you look to history,

you have to be very critical
of these dehumanizing terms

because they can be used
and have been used to justify a lot.

I mean, in 1986, Ronald Reagan

was the president who signed an amnesty

that legalized the status of 3 million

people who were in the United States
without documents.

And when he left office in 1989,
he was still citing it

as one of his greatest achievements.

Yeah, but, you know,
this goes back to the early 1900s.

Right?

And really the basis,
the founding principle of,

of our current
immigration law is eugenics.

And I
don't think most people think about that

when they think about immigration law,
but it's it's very much.

Eugenics being the purported science
of racial superiority.

Right. Yeah.

and I'm reading this book, Bad Law by Elie
Mystal and, there were in the early

1900s, racial quotas,

who they would let in to the U.S..

In the early when? Early 1900s.

Yeah.

I mean, I think there were
the first immigration laws

where the, Chinese Exclusion
Act for the late 1800s.

Yeah.

That was aimed,
like solely at the Chinese because,

man, were we angry
they helped us build the railroads.

Right? Right.

And you had quotas on Italians

and whoever else, you know, Irish
and whatnot to come in.

But the one group back in the 20s didn't

have this quota were the Mexicans
and Latin Americans.

The Mexicans by essentially like
the Americas were considered sort of,

an open zone.

And the reason why it wasn't wasn't
because they weren't racist.

It's because they're even back then.

And there continues to be now,
a lobby, business lobby.

Because people want to be able
to bring people in

and exploit them for cheap labor
and then send them back.

So the way they got around
this was by passing the Undesirable Aliens

Act of 1929.

And what that did was
it made illegal reentry a crime.

So it particularly affected guest workers,
right?

Workers who are coming
in, seasonal workers,

agricultural workers, and,
you know, all sorts of folks

who say don't have the money,
the time to the patience,

really the money to deal with these,
you know, the, the all of the,

all of the bureaucracy of
of becoming a legal citizen.

Right.

And they will say a guest worker
now will be able to, will come one year

and all of a sudden find out that
something has changed in their status.

And they didn't know.

And so now they're a criminal
and they're kicked out.

So at any rate, that's contested.

I mean, the, the, the application
of the word criminal to someone

who overstays a visa is a
is one of these new flourishes for MAGA

because immigration is not criminal law,
it's something called civil law.

And so somebody who has an immigration
violation who's overstayed their visa

or something like that, right.

They don't actually have a criminal,
that's not a criminal offense.

That's a civil offense.

And so to label them
criminals is just inaccurate.

And yeah, and what the one thing
that strikes me about

this 1929 law is like,
you know, we're talking about a time

when borders were just beginning
to crystallize in that kind of way.

I mean.

Let's not forget that the U.S.

took took over a bunch of Mexico's land.

So what was interesting to me
in thinking about this time period is

this is when my great grandparents
moved to the Central Valley in California

from Mexico. Oh, is that right? Yeah.

Right. Just right around the same time.

I mean, I don't
I don't know the specific dates,

but that would have worked out
timing wise.

Late 20s, early 30s, maybe.

so this law that goes into place to try
to try to restrict Mexican immigrants.

And those like they in this law,

they're saying that you have to cross
an official ports of entry.

Yeah.

The first time, because, you know,
before that you would just walk, you

know, you or you just go,
you know, you would you wouldn't know

when you crossed the border
because the border wasn't a real thing.

And now they're saying you have to cross
through official points of entry.

And, you know, it reminds me
there's just a little bit after this.

Yeah, there's great Mexican comic.

Cantinflas is kind of
in the early days of Mexican cinema,

and he has this great scene,
if you ever look it up, Cantinflas.

I’ll put a link to it somewhere,
and there is a Mexican guy

coming up with his donkey,
and it's in the middle, like the desert.

And he comes across this, this gate

in the middle of the desert, and,
he kind of looks him, knocks on it.

There's nobody around. It's
kind of locked.

So he. Is he what kind of walks around it?

And then there's this gringo.

Hey, stop there, hombre!

Kind of Texas guy who, they go through
a funny skit about, you know,

sort of having to walk through the gate
rather than around it because,

you know, these official ports of entry
were fictions.

Yeah.

So Cantinflas is is a is funny
but then you think about, like,

the racism that was behind the 1929 law.

It was actually the guy.

His name was Harry, doctor Harry Laughlin.

he is probably one of the most evil men
in American history.

And he was this high school
science teacher,

who became interested in genetics.

And he eventually became one of these

experts in, quote,
you know, like eugenics, right.

And his theories on, like, race
and genetics were adopted by guess who.

Mister Rogers?

No, Adolf Hitler.

He was given an award
by the University of Heidelberg in 1936.

So this guy, doctor Harry Laughlin,
was testifying in Congress.

There were some overt racists
there who brought him in

and provided the backbone
of the rationality

behind this immigration law
to to keep the Mexicans from staying here.

They wanted them to be able to
come, is my sense, to work for,

for really bad wages
and to be able to kick them back.

And my guess is
they also didn't want the same people

coming all the time,
because you could guess that,

if you're a more senior seasonal worker,
you might have more knowledge

of the system.
You could probably organize.

I'm guessing that, I don't know,
this is my speculation, but

they wanted the new Mexican blood
to be able to come in,

do the agricultural jobs that needed done,
kick them back out.

They did not want them staying. And.

They don't want them to sully
the gene pool?

Is that what you're saying?

Exactly. And so as someone

who. Is, well, who has sullied ...

Okay, yeah, I am.

I am the sullied gene pool.

So this is. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Finn.

Finn, you are too.

You know, you are exactly what Harry
Laughlin did not want to have happen.

This mongrel Mexican and I guess.

Sure.

Yeah, I, I don't know, Irish became white
I around that.

When did the Irish become.

Oh, we sold out a long time ago.

So here's a quote from him.

Whenever two races come in contact,
there is always race mixture

in the long run.

And the upper levels
tend to maintain themselves

because of the purity of the women
in the upper classes,

the women of the upper classes marry only
into their own racial and social levels.

The women of the lower classes
and so-called inferior races

tend to take mates,
whether legitimately or

illegitimately,
from dominant or upper races.

The only thing that has prevented
the complete mixture of races

where the two come in
contact is the high virtue

and the high mate selection standard
of the women of the dominant classes.

The time will come when the several
states, rather than the federal government

in making marriage laws,
and the people in the building up

their customs will have to demand
fit mating and high fertility

from the classes who are better endowed
physically, mentally

and morally by heredity, and to prevent
either by segregation or sterilization,

or otherwise, the reproduction
by the more degenerate classes.

Immigration
control is the greatest instrument

which the federal government can use in
promoting race conservation of the nation.

High fertility among the upper classes.

Where have I heard that lately?

I'm trying to think.

Yes, this is also news of the week.

Was that Elon Musk?
I mean, doesn't he have like 13.

Kids more now?

Yeah. So,

you know, these are these are old ideas
and they have a storied pedigree.

I mean,

yeah, it's worth knowing that this is like
where the immigration quotas came from.

They were these racial quotas,
right in the 20s.

Now, my understanding of it is in the 60s,
right?

During the Cold War, this race theory
went way, way out of vogue.

We had the civil rights movement
successfully here in this country

and in the context of the Cold War
with all the countries around the world

watching what the United States
is doing in the Soviet Union,

using the racial supremacy
in the United States as a propaganda point

against the United States,
it went way out of vogue.

So in the 60s, they dressed it up.

They changed it from being explicitly
racial to being of national origin,

but in neither case
where they like studying

the needs of the country or of people
in general, of migrants of the world.

There was no study of the facts
on the ground and then a scientific

rational Assignment of numbers
to various racial or national groups.

No, they made it up
and it was completely unrealistic.

And that's why by 1986,
there were 3 million people in the country

who had no legal status.

That's a problem with the law.

Far from being a problem of people's
actually actions,

if the law has no relationship
to what people actually do,

well, that's what's going to happen.

And where basically it does
is it just creates this underclass

of millions of people in this country
who can't do normal things,

like feel protected by the police or have

some protection against their employers
if they choose to organize.

So it creates people with like less rights
than everybody else living here.

Speaking of, ICE just recently,

arrested some union organizers
that were farm

workers, and apparently that,
this was kind of a coordinated thing.

They had a list of these union leaders,
and they went after them.

Surprise, surprise.

So, so we're getting the 1920s
just like you're describing come roaring

back in the form of MAGA.

And like what are the other things
that they say they love to say.

Crime is associated with immigration.

They love that.

And I find that to be such a poor argument
because all you have to do

is look anywhere on the internet
for the crime statistics

starting from 1993 to 2023,

and you'll see that they've fallen
precipitously.

Like there's the the conflation
of immigration with crime rates.

It's just it's it's patently false.

Just made up.

Completely made up.

Like here,
So the crime rate has fallen as it shows

a 59% reduction in crime, 75%
reduction in burglary.

That's since when?

1993.

So 1993, today, 59% reduction in crime.

So that means, like of every ten crimes
that were committed

in 1993,
only four are being committed today.

Is that what that means? Yeah.

But interestingly, people's
perceptions are that crime is rising.

So at least 60% of U.S.

adults have said there is more crime
nationally than there was the year before.

Despite this downward rate in crime rates
during most of that period,

I mean, you'll see little upticks,
and little downticks,

you know, just slight variations. Right?

But but the people will say
in every Gallup crime survey

since the 1990s, Americans
have been much less likely to say

crime is up in their area

than to say the same
about crime nationally.

So they're not basing it all
necessarily off of their own

personal experience of crime,
but they're watching the news.

Perhaps they're they're
they're getting information somewhere.

Or perhaps it's simple racism that
they assume that crime is worse elsewhere.

Maybe they just see scary people,
you know?

Well, also the argument that,
you know, immigrants commit

a large portion of the crimes
that are committed is is wrong.

Per capita, they commit
less crimes than US citizens do.

If we're concerned about cracking down on
crime, we should go around arresting U.S.

citizens.

You'll have a higher likelihood
of arresting a criminal than you would

if you go around arresting migrants.

So don't believe what you read
in the newspaper, folks.

You heard it here first.

Crime is not a rising issue
and immigrants are not to blame.

Now, that is not to say that
homelessness is not a rising issue.

There's many issues that are rising.

Right? So crimes by the rich.

I also think. Crimes by the. Rich.

I also want to say that locally,
I wouldn't say that

thought crimes are not on the rise
because I'm seeing them happen

left and right, right here in front of me.

And I appreciate both of my fellow
criminals, Meg and Finn.

I think

it's about time for us to wrap this up,
but anybody have any concluding thoughts?

Free Palestine.

That's been episode

Welcome to episode five
of The Left Unsaid, where we peel back

the wallpaper of official history,
scrape off the propaganda

and see what kind of mold is growing
underneath.

I'm Patrick McElwee, and I'm joined,
as usual, by my son, Finn McElwee.

Hello.

And again on Mother's Day

by my amazing wife,
to the gratitude of all

the listeners out there who had to suffer
through last week without her.

Meg McElwee. Hi, all. It's
good to be back.

Nothing I'd rather be doing
on Mother's Day.

It's true. Nothing I'd rather be doing.

Not everybody gets to do a podcast
with the two men or two of the men

that they love the most in the world.
That's true.

Very grateful.

How’s it been going this week?

Yeah.

You know,
it just feels like there's a lot going on.

Always, always a lot going on.

There's a lot of people in the world.

Whoof! Billions. I think. Crazy.

And we just want to remind some of
those billions who are listening to us

right
now, that we could really use your help.

if you happen to have an account on
Spotify or you get your podcast from Apple

or really any podcasting platform, we
would love for you to leave us a review.

Five stars is always expected.

And if you want to put
some kind words in there,

we recently had a review from Karl Rove.

Meg, you want to
read out Karl Rove's review?

All right.

Here it is.

Karl Rove,
I think a jokester friend of ours

must have left this comment,
but Karl Rove says five stars.

Loving the insights
and dynamics of this podcast.

I'm learning a lot,

helping me get back into the news
in a way that feels productive.

Meg and Pat are great
and Finn is the coolest.

Can't wait for more episodes.

Thank you Karl. Thanks, Karl. Buddy.

You know, I actually was in a room
with Karl Rove once.

Yes, true.

And who else were you in a room with, Pat?

Joseph Biden.

That's right.

Did you actually touch your body?

He touched my butt.

This is family lore.

And now you all know.

I was sorry, I was a very young,

legislative slash press

outreach person at a think tank
in Washington, D.C., and I was preparing

for a press briefing that I was organizing
with some economists.

Left leaning, of course.

And Joe Biden happened to be in the room

that I had booked
with, like, three older women.

And he was just taking up that room.
He loved it.

He really is kind of an attention hound.

Or at least he used to be back
when he didn't have dementia.

Yeah.

And he was just living it up.

And I had to say, Senator,
because he was a senator than he was.

He hasn't always been president.
I don't know if you knew that Finn.

No, no, I had no idea. Yeah.

There was a time before he was president
and he was a senator.

And I said, Senator, I have the room.

Is it okay if I start setting up?

And he said, yeah, go ahead.

And he kept going.

And actually, I had a pretty good turnout.

So people started coming in to the room
and I'm still standing by the table,

like sorting things and sweating profusely
like I would do.

And also a little bit of background here.

So Patrick has a round
a little angelic Irish face.

And back
then he was mistaken for younger than 18,

like he would go out to a rated-r movie
with colleagues post-graduation,

post-college graduation,
and he would get carded,

because people didn't
think he was over 18.

So you you were.

I think 17, actually, because that's.

You were a baby.

That's the age for R-rated movies.

Yeah. So the room had filled up.

And Joe Biden, it was time for him
to make his grand exit,

but he couldn't really get past
very easily.

So he had to kind of squeeze
in right behind my rear.

And he kind of just scooped in
right behind me and made his way out.

Yeah, it's a brush.

Your brush with fame.

A brush with fame.
You know what could have been?

One is made sure to wash that spot
extra well.

So don't worry.

One shudders to think,

Yeah, well, that's not how we anticipated
starting this podcast.

That's you never know where
we're going to end up.

That's complete improv.

Why was I talking about that?

I don't know,
said you were in the room with Karl Rove.

But I was, I was, I was,
I was also in a room with Karl Rove.

He was very charming. I got to say.

Karl Rove had, like, these great stories.

Great for those for those who are new
to this world, like, For those of you

who are younger
listeners, who's Karl Rove?

Karl Rove was like, well,
he was sort of the whisperer

in the ear of George W Bush,
the guy everybody thought was in power.

The little devil on his shoulder.

Except maybe Dick Cheney.

Everybody thought Dick
Cheney might be in power, too.

But Karl Rove was. Yeah,
he was the whisperer.

He was what Steve Bannon was to the
first Trump administration.

With and
Stephen Miller is perhaps to Trump.

Perhaps in the
in the second administration,

maybe Elon Musk at times
although he seems to be kind of fading.

I would say Karl Rove was less
overtly fascist than Steve Bannon.

Things have changed a little bit in
the consigliere of the Republican Party.

So thanks, Karl.

We appreciate your review
and everybody else out therem

I hope you're inspired
to write a review of your own.

You don't have to use Karl Rove's words,
although you can.

Just run em through ChatGPT and say,
could you change these a little bit,

but make them equally,
if not more flattering?

Well, this is Sunday,

where we're recording this
on Sunday afternoon on Mother's Day.

And it looks like the cease fire
between India and Pakistan is holding.

And so we've all got our fingers
crossed. Yes.

It's been a harrowing week
between two nuclear

armed powers in South Asia,
India and Pakistan.

They've been trading more than just
limited fire across their borders.

It's been pretty extensive.

Yeah.

And, into each other's administrative

regions of Kashmir,
which is disputed territory between them.

Poor Kashmir,
I mean, sounds like such a lovely place.

And it's constantly the fight of this
battle between two regional powers.

And I think some of the strikes have been
not just in Kashmir, but

within other parts of India and Pakistan.

I saw, for example,
that the Indian government

had taken out the air defenses in Lahore,
a city inside Pakistan.

And that's a particularly dangerous thing,
because if you take out the air defenses

in one corridor,
it means you've got a place

that your planes can fly through
and they can bomb deeper into the country.

So it's definitely the kind of thing that,

like military observers were worried
could lead to a lot of escalation,

obviously worrying
since both countries have nuclear weapons.

Do you know some historical truths
of this region?

It's hard when you, say,
are just opening up the New York Times and

and things are fairly simplistic
in their telling of of the situation.

It seems that
there were some terrorist attacks

and there retaliation
for terrorist attacks.

But but let's go a little deeper
than that.

The trigger for the current back and forth
between India and Pakistan was this

terrorist attack against tourists,

mostly tourists from India, in Kashmir.

Now, we should talk about where Kashmir is
and the whole thing.

Right?

And to understand that we have to go back
a little bit in history, but just to say:

Kashmir is a disputed territory
between India and Pakistan,

and there were militants
who are opposed to the way that India is

ruling the part of Kashmir it controls,
ruling with a whole lot of repression,

because Kashmir is a Muslim majority
region.

And militants
who are presumed to be Muslim.

I think that actually very little
is known about

who exactly carried out these attacks.

But they had lots of guns
and they killed 20 something tourists.

Mostly Indian or Hindu tourists

although I think so, also
some other foreign nationals.

Yeah.

And India, immediately
blamed Pakistan for the attacks.

They said that Pakistan
had facilitated the attacks,

which they've provided
absolutely no evidence for.

And that's kind of,
what set off this round of conflicts.

Yeah. And

I think that Pakistan has asked for there
to be an international investigation.

And India has said no,
they won't agree to that.

They don't need to.
They said they know who it is.

And we should point out

who India is currently ruled
by what's going on in India.

Right. So we've got Modi.

he's, you know, a politician
And he's been bringing back

a particularly virulent form

of Hindu nationalism within India.

India, previous to this.

if you look back under Nehru, for example,

who was a previous leader of India
under the Cold War.

India at the time sought to be
a secular state, sought to be the leader

of what they called the Third World,
affiliated neither with the United States

nor the Soviet Union, and that secularism
has been under steady attack since.

And now we just see India sort of ruled
by this very strong nationalist Hinduism.

I loved seeing that you sent me
that video of that young Indian kid.

That was amazing. Oh, that was great.
Did you watch that, Finn?

I have.

sent this reel along to Finn.

I was like, hey, Finn, it's your friend.

This little guy must have been your age,
Finn.

Maybe a little younger even.

He's being interviewed by,
the Indian press.

Just a rabidly nationalistic Indian press.

And he keeps on saying like, well,
I don't want anybody to die.

We're all people. We're all human.

and the woman was like, well,
who taught you this?

Who taught you this?

And they it's like.

I have a brain, man.
And he like, walks off.

And they keep saying like,
do you say, long live India?

He says, yes.

And they say,
do you say long live Pakistan?

And he says, yes. And they're like,
how can you say both?

He says,
everybody should live in their own place.

Yeah, I love that
everybody should live in their own place.

I mean that I think

is the wisdom of international law
as it exists between nation states.

that's one of the reasons that Kashmir
so dangerous because it's It's a zone

on the map through which there's no
settled lines between India and Pakistan.

And like to really understand it.

And I'm not saying
that I really understand it,

but I do think it's worth
knowing some of the basics

of where India and Pakistan
even come from, right?

Because they were both part
of the British Raj.

The British colony in India included

a much larger area
than what is currently India today.

And after World
War two, when the British just couldn't

keep it up anymore, when it was clear
that the Empire was over.

And that was true in Palestine,
as we've talked about before.

But at the same time, that was all going
down in Palestine, over in India,

you also had the British in retreat,
leaving chaos and violence in their wake.

And the way that they retreated from India
was to break the region down roughly,

according to sort of a Hindu

majority area,
which became India and a muslim

majority area, which became
Pakistan and later Pakistan broke again.

So you had Pakistan and Bangladesh,
but we call that the Partition.

And there was just a massive
outpouring of sectarian

violence afterward that some people call
a genocide on both sides.

We're talking about millions of people
moving to go

toward the other side of the line,
as well as many people who didn't make it.

terrible kinds of violence.

This has been studied like crazy
and there's all kinds of writing,

but it seems to a lot of people that this,
this extreme sectarianism that led to

this kind of violence was itself
a product of the British colonialism

and in particular, just the last
sort of 20 years leading up to partition.

That before
then, you had had hundreds of years

of coexistence between these communities,
in fact, so much coexistence that,

like a lot of times in the folk religions,
you couldn't really tell the difference

between a Hindu practice

and a muslim practice because they kind of
would bleed into each other.

You know, where you might have a Hindu
shrine to the locals, to a

you might have a Hindu shrine
to a muslim sultan or something.

Well, and even just in modern day,
my good friend is,

her parents are from Pakistan,
and she was raised here,

but we we took our daughters
to this dance festival,

which is where I was last week
when you all recorded without me.

But, the girls had this, Bollywood
dance class,

and my friend was like,
oh, I love all this music.

You know, this is the music.

So this is Indian music.

But they played it at her, her wedding.

And because it's all, you know, yeah,

we listen to it,
you know, we listen to each other's music.

There's less separation of culture

than certain parts of society
there would like to believe.

As it should be.

I mean, what we wish for the whole world,
right? Right.

Yeah.

For example,
they they both, do have, a caste system,

obviously, India is famous for their very,
rigid, caste system.

But, you know, Pakistan
also has, an unofficial caste system.

Most of that area of the world
has some sort of caste system.

So these cultures are really, not
as far apart as many in the West believe.

And so what about the caste system cuz
I have sometimes I,

you know, not being an expert in this area
at all, I've sometimes thought, well, am

I being ignorant
to think that India has a caste system?

But I'm not right. It it does.

Can you say more about it? Yeah,
absolutely.

the Brahmins, which are the highest caste
in India, occupy

the vast
majority of positions of power in India.

You know, they're federal judges,
they're elected officials,

they occupy these positions of power
in much higher

numbers,
than they should in an equal society.

Sounds, sounds,
it sounds slightly familiar, like we have

a sort of racial caste system,
but it would be wrong. Right.

To think it's exactly, you know,
translatable over to, to how the Indian

caste system works and do you know, like,
did colonialism create the caste system?

Did they find the caste system?

I'm sure it affected the caste system
and maybe made it more rigid.

Yeah, absolutely.

When the, British came into India,
a lot of the people they went to for help

with advising them on on
how to run their colony and how to do

all these things were the Brahmins,
these higher caste people.

So, you know, a lot of historians
think that these Brahmins

used, these positions of power
within, British administered, India

to really impose rules
that were beneficial to them.

For example,
the implementation of Hindu law,

really helped the Brahmin class
at the expense of the lower classes.

And actually they created two law systems
one Hindu and one Muslim,

which kind of forced people
to separate out

more rather than, you know,
mixing cultures like they had before.

Now they're under two different
legal systems under the British.

Interesting.

And, you know, I think feel like it feels
like a recurrent theme within history

when you have colonial occupations
or other kinds of occupations.

I'm thinking right now
of the occupation of Iraq after

the United States invaded in 2003, where

the occupying regime ends up inflaming
sectarian tensions, maybe in large part

because they end up allying with certain

identity groups, which that are maybe
sort of legible to them.

They can sort of understand it.

Like, for example, everybody here was
talking about Sunnis versus Shia in Iraq.

We could understand that distinction,
even if we didn't really know anything

about what it meant and didn't understand
how intertwined these groups

were until the occupation
by the United States

sort of forced, forced them into this
terrible sectarian violence.

Yeah.

And I think it has
it does have largely to do

with class recognizes class right
across cultures.

I'm thinking particularly
so when we studied at Notre Dame,

there were a lot of really upper class
Latin American students there.

and yeah,
you know, they fit right in in many ways.

Right.

Spoke English super.

Well, but they were clearly there
because they were getting an education

and their intent
was to go back and rule their countries,

all right, like they were they were going
to be in the administrations.

They were going to be at the top.

You know, the top of the top. And,
and be doing all these things.

So yeah. Especially
if they were from a smaller country.

Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

And definitely this thing
that you're talking about existed heavily

and British India as well.

there was kind of this cultural Darwinism

that emerged
that traced specifically higher, caste

Indians to an Aryan

race that was all descended from Europe.

So seriously. Yeah.

The British used this to say, oh, look,
we're not like colonially occupying you.

We're just, like, helping,
a brother race.

We're both descended from the same people.

And the Brahmins also use this to kind of
shut the lower castes out there.

They're, you know, barbarians.

They're descended from someone else.

We’re the true descendants
of these Aryan people.

Yeah.

It makes you shudder to think about,
you know, now it's in the news

that some people in the white House
are floating this idea

that the United States would become
a kind of provisional authority in Gaza,

in a way
that would be modeled on what they did

with the provisional authority
in Iraq, that.

That worked out so well. Right.

And worked so terribly

that then just brought a descent into hell
for many, many years in Iraq,

ended up leading to ISIS,
which conquered vast swaths of Iraq

and Syria for a while,
was kind of a militant terrorist group.

So I hope hopefully, hopefully that gets
that that kind of horrific idea goes away.

But, you know, there's just just one
horrific idea after another in Gaza.

Yeah.

Israel's cabinet recently

passed a resolution,
calling for an expansion of their war.

And with that, they made comments
like, we're doing this, in accordance

with President Trump's plan

for Gaza, which, you know,
it's it's really horrific that that

this looks to be even a possibility for,
what the future holds.

So if you haven't yet,
you really need to find the documentary.

The Settlers and and watch that
and get a sense of this on the BBC.

BBC is that where it is?

Yeah.
Also just copied all over the internet.

I watched it on X, just some random
account had posted the whole thing.

So yes.

So we hope not.

We hope
not for this future occupation of Gaza.

But we're talking now still about

the British occupation of India and,
just the vast

mélange of resentments

and Identities and violence
that it brought forth.

As soon as the British pulled back,
we had the partition, we had the violence.

but Kashmir
was a sort of independent entity.

The local ruler, a couple of years

after partition, decided
that he actually wanted to join India,

despite being a muslim majority area,
because they were getting invasions

from the Pakistan side of the border
from like tribesmen in Pakistan.

That resulted in a war
between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

India asked the United Nations
to get involved in one of the early United

Nations resolutions was that
there should be elections inside Kashmir

to decide
whether it would join India or Pakistan.

And like the UN resolutions on Palestine,
that resolution, despite

being in international law, has never come
into play, has never been fulfilled.

And so we have it. When was that?

When did that happen?

That was, in the late 1940s.

Okay.

And so we have Kashmir left
as this festering sore between

India and Pakistan
that erupts into violence periodically.

And India has been trying to assert

more and more control
over its section of Kashmir.

So we've had all this repression.

We don't know
what motivated the militants,

but we had - it’s
generating militant activity

and nearly led to a nuclear exchange
between these two powers.

You know, I it makes me think like,
what's going to happen

if Trump gets his way
and we throw away the United Nations,

we throw away all of the international law

that was created after World War two
to make sure that kind of thing

didn't happen again,
especially now that the world

saw the use of nuclear weapons
for the first time.

What's going to happen
if that's all thrown away

and we go back to this sort of nations
as spheres of influence,

where the United States has
its sphere of influence and Russia has its

and it's just kind of might makes right
if there's nuclear weapons. Now.

Because I'll tell you what new

I think I think that Trump's
plan is pretty simple. I,

I think he wants to get the Nobel Peace
Prize.

What?

Please say more.

Him and Henry Kissinger.

How so?

Did you hear that Daniella Weiss,
the settle, the woman in the settlers,

the, Daniela Weiss, the sort of godmother
of of Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

Now, she's been nominated
to get Nobel Peace Prize by her.

I don't know.

Can anybody be nominated?

I don't know, like.

Who can nominate? Can like, could I just
write a letter, nominate somebody?

I don't know. Anyway.

Trump. Trump.

Actually I read it today. That's.

Yes he wants the world to see him as
the peace president which is interesting.

Is it - what’s he thinking about? Ukraine?

Is he thinking about that?

he's trying to claim that he was the one
who instigated

the cease fire between India and Pakistan.

He's, he's kind of shunning Netanyahu
a little bit in his upcoming

trip to the Middle East, you know, I think
perhaps he wants the war to be over.

I don't know what.

I don't know what his deal is, but, yes,
someone in his cabinet was quoted

as saying, well, if he doesn't get it,
then what is it even for?

So this is. What. The Nobel Peace Prize.

So this
sort of like, again, a megalomaniac,

like he goes around and he makes his own
little personal deals.

He's the art of the deal guy.

He he needs validation. If only he does.

If only his father had loved him.

And imagine.

Yeah. What are we to make of this?

This news that maybe there's some rift

between President Trump and Prime Minister
Netanyahu of Israel?

I mean, some people have suggested
that's a smokescreen.

That's just like the initial cease fire
that went into place

right after Trump came into office,
where it seemed like

maybe the Trump administration was going
to bring some pressure to bear on Israel.

But now, obviously,
we are - how many days?

We’re
like 65 plus days into a complete blockade

of all international aid,
all food going in to Gaza,

which is a, you know,
just a horrific development when

and now they're saying they're
going to they're going to be

doing a ground invasion of Gaza.

This is worse than the blockades
that we were talking about

under the Biden administration.

I'm not sure the Biden administration

would have been able to or been willing
to tolerate a complete blockade like this.

But the Trump administration has.

So some people were saying that this idea
that there's daylight between Trump

and Netanyahu is just sort of public
relations.

Yeah, I for one am highly skeptical

of any actual rift
between Trump and Netanyahu.

You know, it
may have something to do with Trump's ego.

It's probably,
a combination of multiple factors.

But at the end of the day,
the arms shipments are still going out.

Right.

And he's saying nothing about there's
no, no, not a mention of

Israel needs to lighten up here,
let some food through.

Yeah.

You know, even Biden said that, well,
you know, while still sending the arms.

But. Well, they had the whole thing

where they built a little bridge
that didn't work.

Oh, we're supposed

to, you know, they remember
they were air dropping, aid for a while.

Yeah.

So I do think that there was some pressure
under the Biden administration.

I don't want to, like,

I'm not going to say
which side I come down on in this

ongoing debate about who's worse
for the Palestinians, Biden or Trump.

I mean, they're both freaking so awful.

It's how can you pick?

But I think in this regard,
the Biden administration was better.

Yeah, but definitely not good.

I mean, The Intercept recently reported
that there was no pressure

from the Biden administration
behind doors at all for a ceasefire.

The Intercept is

a good place to look for news
if you're kind of new to this left world.

The intercept I'd also say if you
if you're looking,

if you don't want a subscription to say,
some of these places

do require subscriptions,
but Democracy Now!

You can always find daily news
episodes on YouTube for free.

It's a great place to go
if you don't want to be

in the liberal, news
bubble of the New York Times. So.

And all the all the other newspapers

that are just derivatives
of the New York Times, right.

All right. Well,
I don’t want to pretend like

everything bad is happening
far away from here.

We've also seen some pretty disturbing
scenes locally here in the United States.

Very disturbing.

I could hardly sleep after I watched
that video out of, Massachusetts.

Worcester.

Why is it said Worcester?

But it's spelled Worchester just easier.

Where?

English is.

It's one less syllable. What? Worcester,
I don't know. No.

No one's ever explained that to me.

But but yeah, we so we saw this video
of an abduction of a mother.

A 16 year old.

Well, a 16 year old was arrested
trying to defend her mother.

Right.

And her face
was also slammed to the ground.

So what was really striking to me
about this footage ICE

going after this woman and her baby,
she had a baby, too.

So so they're violently going after these.

This family from Brazil, I believe.

what almost also brought me to
tears were all the people

in that neighborhood who came out
and were like, screaming

at the police officers who were trying
to put their bodies between ICE

and this family who once they once ICE
got them into the car, I,

you know,
you hear people calling the local 911

calling the local police,
which is not supposed to collaborate

with ICE to come and help
And you see, just regular everyday

citizens like putting their themselves
on the front of the ICE

car and like, you know, their fingers
having to be pried away by these.

you know, and I've seen several videos
like this where people will create a wall,

a human wall to prevent ICE
from coming in

and taking people away,
or at least try, yeah.

Made me think of Denmark
after the Nazis took over Denmark

and after they announced the pogrom,

that every day Danish citizens mobilized,

you know, they didn't
have these networks already in place.

They just mobilized
and saved 90% of the Jewish population.

and it makes you think like
is it time for us to as, as U.S.

citizens is, is it, you know,

like should we be hiding people like
why do you know what is.

Yeah. Providing sanctuary. Right, right.

I mean we've had the sanctuary movement
sort of sprung up and it's been ...

it's there.

People have been doing the sanctuary
movement for quite a while now.

But maybe it's time to scale that. Scale
that up, is that what you're saying?

Yeah. Yeah.

And you also have these, these dystopian

messages and threats
really coming from the Trump White House.

Stephen Miller, for example,
whose Trump's border czar.

when asked a question,

if he plans to suspend habeas corpus,
which is the right of people

to have a trial for something
that they're charged with, it's, The right

that means
you can't just be thrown into prison.

You can't just be thrown in a dungeon
and just left there.

Yeah, it's a fundamental tenet
of American democracy.

And he
he answers this question with, quote,

that's an option
we're actively looking at, unquote.

So the option being suspending
habeas corpus. Yes.

And he also says a lot of it
depends on whether the courts do

the right thing or not, which is a clear
intimidation of the courts.

You know, if
if the courts do the right thing, great.

If they rule in a way
we don't like, snap fascism.

And they're just and, you know,
the fact that they're deporting people

to this prison in El Salvador.

CECOT. Right? CECOT.

I mean, it looks like

something out of a futuristic right
wing dystopia.

And just run by this guy, Bukele,
the leader of El Salvador,

who just styles himself as like,
no law avenger, no law enforcer

against any kind of gang violence,
you know, suitably, broadly interpreted.

Yeah.

And also an investigation found that 70

to 90% of the people
that have been sent to this

dystopian prison have no criminal record
whatsoever.

Sick.

So when did immigration become so central
to the Republican Party's politics?

I mean, it’s
clearly tied to the rise of MAGA?

Well, it goes way, way back.
It goes way back.

But I, you know, I was in DC in 2003 back
when I met Joe Biden.

And in that time, George
W Bush was president.

And as I might have pointed out before
in this podcast,

I really don't like George
W Bush in a lot of ways,

but this.

Is an understatement.

On immigration, George W Bush was in favor

of something that everybody called
comprehensive immigration reform.

And one of my first tasks, again,
as this little 15 year old

looking guy was to go to the office
of Senator Ted Kennedy.

And I would sit there
while labor unions on the one side

and the Chamber of Commerce
and other business groups

on the other side would just negotiate
about immigration reform

in front of the Senate staff

and us immigrant advocates.

I worked for the Catholic bishops
and Catholic Bishops are pretty good

in promoting the dignity of immigrants
in this country.

And so they would sit there
and the idea was that

if you could bring labor
plus business, plus the government to bear

and have a compromise that you could solve
some of these immigration problems.

Well, turns out,
no, there was a huge backlash

and it became core to the rise
of what we all call MAGA now.

Because there were a few loonies.

in The government at that time.

They were extreme,
and now they're in charge.

Yeah.

I mean, they were there was like a handful
of representatives

in the House of Representatives

who would get themselves named to be like
the chair of some subcommittee.

And, yeah, they would pursue these,
like, loony bringing these lunatics.

I mean, that just so racist.

I got, I'd say Republican back then.

Republicans, general Republicans,
general Democrats you know, still racist,

but at least didn't say it overtly,
but these folks did.

Yeah.

The idea that these people are illegal
first rather than human

first, was a huge part
of what they'd like to say.

They only call them illegals.

You know, the words undocumented or human.

They you know, don't come up.

I saw I

saw one clip, in fact,
where I think it was Stephen

Miller again, was talking about someone
they had deported.

And he starts to say, you know, this,
this father did this,

but then he corrects himself,
and I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Illegal alien.

It's it's clearly a dehumanizing term.

And, you know, if you look to history,

you have to be very critical
of these dehumanizing terms

because they can be used
and have been used to justify a lot.

I mean, in 1986, Ronald Reagan

was the president who signed an amnesty

that legalized the status of 3 million

people who were in the United States
without documents.

And when he left office in 1989,
he was still citing it

as one of his greatest achievements.

Yeah, but, you know,
this goes back to the early 1900s.

Right?

And really the basis,
the founding principle of,

of our current
immigration law is eugenics.

And I
don't think most people think about that

when they think about immigration law,
but it's it's very much.

Eugenics being the purported science
of racial superiority.

Right. Yeah.

and I'm reading this book, Bad Law by Elie
Mystal and, there were in the early

1900s, racial quotas,

who they would let in to the U.S..

In the early when? Early 1900s.

Yeah.

I mean, I think there were
the first immigration laws

where the, Chinese Exclusion
Act for the late 1800s.

Yeah.

That was aimed,
like solely at the Chinese because,

man, were we angry
they helped us build the railroads.

Right? Right.

And you had quotas on Italians

and whoever else, you know, Irish
and whatnot to come in.

But the one group back in the 20s didn't

have this quota were the Mexicans
and Latin Americans.

The Mexicans by essentially like
the Americas were considered sort of,

an open zone.

And the reason why it wasn't wasn't
because they weren't racist.

It's because they're even back then.

And there continues to be now,
a lobby, business lobby.

Because people want to be able
to bring people in

and exploit them for cheap labor
and then send them back.

So the way they got around
this was by passing the Undesirable Aliens

Act of 1929.

And what that did was
it made illegal reentry a crime.

So it particularly affected guest workers,
right?

Workers who are coming
in, seasonal workers,

agricultural workers, and,
you know, all sorts of folks

who say don't have the money,
the time to the patience,

really the money to deal with these,
you know, the, the all of the,

all of the bureaucracy of
of becoming a legal citizen.

Right.

And they will say a guest worker
now will be able to, will come one year

and all of a sudden find out that
something has changed in their status.

And they didn't know.

And so now they're a criminal
and they're kicked out.

So at any rate, that's contested.

I mean, the, the, the application
of the word criminal to someone

who overstays a visa is a
is one of these new flourishes for MAGA

because immigration is not criminal law,
it's something called civil law.

And so somebody who has an immigration
violation who's overstayed their visa

or something like that, right.

They don't actually have a criminal,
that's not a criminal offense.

That's a civil offense.

And so to label them
criminals is just inaccurate.

And yeah, and what the one thing
that strikes me about

this 1929 law is like,
you know, we're talking about a time

when borders were just beginning
to crystallize in that kind of way.

I mean.

Let's not forget that the U.S.

took took over a bunch of Mexico's land.

So what was interesting to me
in thinking about this time period is

this is when my great grandparents
moved to the Central Valley in California

from Mexico. Oh, is that right? Yeah.

Right. Just right around the same time.

I mean, I don't
I don't know the specific dates,

but that would have worked out
timing wise.

Late 20s, early 30s, maybe.

so this law that goes into place to try
to try to restrict Mexican immigrants.

And those like they in this law,

they're saying that you have to cross
an official ports of entry.

Yeah.

The first time, because, you know,
before that you would just walk, you

know, you or you just go,
you know, you would you wouldn't know

when you crossed the border
because the border wasn't a real thing.

And now they're saying you have to cross
through official points of entry.

And, you know, it reminds me
there's just a little bit after this.

Yeah, there's great Mexican comic.

Cantinflas is kind of
in the early days of Mexican cinema,

and he has this great scene,
if you ever look it up, Cantinflas.

I’ll put a link to it somewhere,
and there is a Mexican guy

coming up with his donkey,
and it's in the middle, like the desert.

And he comes across this, this gate

in the middle of the desert, and,
he kind of looks him, knocks on it.

There's nobody around. It's
kind of locked.

So he. Is he what kind of walks around it?

And then there's this gringo.

Hey, stop there, hombre!

Kind of Texas guy who, they go through
a funny skit about, you know,

sort of having to walk through the gate
rather than around it because,

you know, these official ports of entry
were fictions.

Yeah.

So Cantinflas is is a is funny
but then you think about, like,

the racism that was behind the 1929 law.

It was actually the guy.

His name was Harry, doctor Harry Laughlin.

he is probably one of the most evil men
in American history.

And he was this high school
science teacher,

who became interested in genetics.

And he eventually became one of these

experts in, quote,
you know, like eugenics, right.

And his theories on, like, race
and genetics were adopted by guess who.

Mister Rogers?

No, Adolf Hitler.

He was given an award
by the University of Heidelberg in 1936.

So this guy, doctor Harry Laughlin,
was testifying in Congress.

There were some overt racists
there who brought him in

and provided the backbone
of the rationality

behind this immigration law
to to keep the Mexicans from staying here.

They wanted them to be able to
come, is my sense, to work for,

for really bad wages
and to be able to kick them back.

And my guess is
they also didn't want the same people

coming all the time,
because you could guess that,

if you're a more senior seasonal worker,
you might have more knowledge

of the system.
You could probably organize.

I'm guessing that, I don't know,
this is my speculation, but

they wanted the new Mexican blood
to be able to come in,

do the agricultural jobs that needed done,
kick them back out.

They did not want them staying. And.

They don't want them to sully
the gene pool?

Is that what you're saying?

Exactly. And so as someone

who. Is, well, who has sullied ...

Okay, yeah, I am.

I am the sullied gene pool.

So this is. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Finn.

Finn, you are too.

You know, you are exactly what Harry
Laughlin did not want to have happen.

This mongrel Mexican and I guess.

Sure.

Yeah, I, I don't know, Irish became white
I around that.

When did the Irish become.

Oh, we sold out a long time ago.

So here's a quote from him.

Whenever two races come in contact,
there is always race mixture

in the long run.

And the upper levels
tend to maintain themselves

because of the purity of the women
in the upper classes,

the women of the upper classes marry only
into their own racial and social levels.

The women of the lower classes
and so-called inferior races

tend to take mates,
whether legitimately or

illegitimately,
from dominant or upper races.

The only thing that has prevented
the complete mixture of races

where the two come in
contact is the high virtue

and the high mate selection standard
of the women of the dominant classes.

The time will come when the several
states, rather than the federal government

in making marriage laws,
and the people in the building up

their customs will have to demand
fit mating and high fertility

from the classes who are better endowed
physically, mentally

and morally by heredity, and to prevent
either by segregation or sterilization,

or otherwise, the reproduction
by the more degenerate classes.

Immigration
control is the greatest instrument

which the federal government can use in
promoting race conservation of the nation.

High fertility among the upper classes.

Where have I heard that lately?

I'm trying to think.

Yes, this is also news of the week.

Was that Elon Musk?
I mean, doesn't he have like 13.

Kids more now?

Yeah. So,

you know, these are these are old ideas
and they have a storied pedigree.

I mean,

yeah, it's worth knowing that this is like
where the immigration quotas came from.

They were these racial quotas,
right in the 20s.

Now, my understanding of it is in the 60s,
right?

During the Cold War, this race theory
went way, way out of vogue.

We had the civil rights movement
successfully here in this country

and in the context of the Cold War
with all the countries around the world

watching what the United States
is doing in the Soviet Union,

using the racial supremacy
in the United States as a propaganda point

against the United States,
it went way out of vogue.

So in the 60s, they dressed it up.

They changed it from being explicitly
racial to being of national origin,

but in neither case
where they like studying

the needs of the country or of people
in general, of migrants of the world.

There was no study of the facts
on the ground and then a scientific

rational Assignment of numbers
to various racial or national groups.

No, they made it up
and it was completely unrealistic.

And that's why by 1986,
there were 3 million people in the country

who had no legal status.

That's a problem with the law.

Far from being a problem of people's
actually actions,

if the law has no relationship
to what people actually do,

well, that's what's going to happen.

And where basically it does
is it just creates this underclass

of millions of people in this country
who can't do normal things,

like feel protected by the police or have

some protection against their employers
if they choose to organize.

So it creates people with like less rights
than everybody else living here.

Speaking of, ICE just recently,

arrested some union organizers
that were farm

workers, and apparently that,
this was kind of a coordinated thing.

They had a list of these union leaders,
and they went after them.

Surprise, surprise.

So, so we're getting the 1920s
just like you're describing come roaring

back in the form of MAGA.

And like what are the other things
that they say they love to say.

Crime is associated with immigration.

They love that.

And I find that to be such a poor argument
because all you have to do

is look anywhere on the internet
for the crime statistics

starting from 1993 to 2023,

and you'll see that they've fallen
precipitously.

Like there's the the conflation
of immigration with crime rates.

It's just it's it's patently false.

Just made up.

Completely made up.

Like here,
So the crime rate has fallen as it shows

a 59% reduction in crime, 75%
reduction in burglary.

That's since when?

1993.

So 1993, today, 59% reduction in crime.

So that means, like of every ten crimes
that were committed

in 1993,
only four are being committed today.

Is that what that means? Yeah.

But interestingly, people's
perceptions are that crime is rising.

So at least 60% of U.S.

adults have said there is more crime
nationally than there was the year before.

Despite this downward rate in crime rates
during most of that period,

I mean, you'll see little upticks,
and little downticks,

you know, just slight variations. Right?

But but the people will say
in every Gallup crime survey

since the 1990s, Americans
have been much less likely to say

crime is up in their area

than to say the same
about crime nationally.

So they're not basing it all
necessarily off of their own

personal experience of crime,
but they're watching the news.

Perhaps they're they're
they're getting information somewhere.

Or perhaps it's simple racism that
they assume that crime is worse elsewhere.

Maybe they just see scary people,
you know?

Well, also the argument that,
you know, immigrants commit

a large portion of the crimes
that are committed is is wrong.

Per capita, they commit
less crimes than US citizens do.

If we're concerned about cracking down on
crime, we should go around arresting U.S.

citizens.

You'll have a higher likelihood
of arresting a criminal than you would

if you go around arresting migrants.

So don't believe what you read
in the newspaper, folks.

You heard it here first.

Crime is not a rising issue
and immigrants are not to blame.

Now, that is not to say that
homelessness is not a rising issue.

There's many issues that are rising.

Right? So crimes by the rich.

I also think. Crimes by the. Rich.

I also want to say that locally,
I wouldn't say that

thought crimes are not on the rise
because I'm seeing them happen

left and right, right here in front of me.

And I appreciate both of my fellow
criminals, Meg and Finn.

I think

it's about time for us to wrap this up,
but anybody have any concluding thoughts?

Free Palestine.

That's been episode
five of The Left Unsaid.

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Tell your friends.

Tell your enemies. Leave us a rating.

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In episode six.

 

five of The Left Unsaid.

Please help us spread our foul propaganda.

Tell your friends.

Tell your enemies. Leave us a rating.

Leave us a review
and we will catch you next week.

In episode six.