A threat to the white nation

It’s hard to believe. but more and more racist groups continue to deploy through the border states to — as they say quite seriously — confront the “invasion” of Central American children.

Even harder to believe is the idea that 57,000 innocents — a number that would easily fit inside Yankee Stadium — who arrive here, fleeing from some of the world’s most violent countries, could exacerbate the racism of those people in such a way that they would proudly proclaim their willingness to take the children’s lives.

“If you see an ‘illegal,’ point your weapon between his eyes and say: ‘Cross the border right back or I shoot.'” As we had mentioned earlier, this is the brutal modus operandi of one of those groups, Operation Secure Our Border.

Despite their jingoistic rhetoric, all these “militias” — from Secure Our Border to the Ku Klux Klan, including The Minutemen and similar others — are nothing but contemptible brotherhoods of hatred. What’s ironic is that they try to pass themselves off as brave defenders of the nation, displaying photos of themselves in warlike stances, looking like the bullies they are.

They would be laughable if it weren’t because, as denounced by the Southern Poverty Law Center, these militias have assumed the right to patrol the border carrying assault rifles and bad intentions.

Their “mission”? As they put it, to protect the border with Mexico against the “invasion” of terrified and defenseless children who come alone from Central America to the world’s wealthiest nation in search of refuge, to save their lives.

Somehow, and despite the men’s truculent statements and absurd poses as third-rate Ramboes, that mission doesn’t sound as heroic as they claim, although its potential for abuse and tragedy forces us to take them more seriously than they deserve.

“To me, when [the Central American children] come, they’re breaking the law,” said, in an interview with Al Jazeera America, Robert Jones, who calls himself the Grand Imperial Wizard of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, or something like that.

Wearing the infamous hood and the white sheet under which so many in his group have committed horrendous crimes against blacks and minorities, Jones said that the Honduran, Guatemalan and Salvadoran children represent a “threat” to what he calls a “white nation.”

With a cowardice difficult to imagine, the Imperial Wizard offered this chilling solution to the alleged threat of the border children:

“If we can’t deport them back, I think that if we liquidate a couple of them and strew their bodies along the border, they might realize that we’re serious about stopping the immigration.” A great patriot, no doubt.

The Minutemen are, in addition to being as racist as the others, even more ridiculous. Not only have they announced that they plan to recruit an army of 3,500 volunteers to “stop an invasion” of defenseless creatures and thus strengthen the border with Mexico but also have christened their activities with a slightly disproportionate name: Operation Normandy.

“If you are familiar with the Normandy invasion of France in 1944, then you have an idea how large and logistically complicated this event will be,” says the group on its website, equating parading along the border with a rifle to persecute exhausted and defenseless children with the Allied invasion of Nazi-controlled Europe in World War II.

All that would be laughable if it weren’t because the combination of hatred and stupidity with firearms could turn lethal at any moment.

There’s no doubt that Republican politicians like the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, are guilty of fueling the fire of collective hysteria that has emboldened these groups.

Incredibly, Perry, who sent 1,000 members of the National Guard to the border, perhaps ashamed by the absurdity of mobilizing troops at a cost of $38 million to confront unarmed children, declared last week that the children are “something secondary” and that he really took that step because — listen to this — an unprecedented number of people from terrorist countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria are coming through the border.

This, an obvious lie, has been disproved by various press media. As my people would say: “Hay que ser caradura” — you gotta have brass.

The tragedy is that while the Perrys of this world and the despicable fauna of the hate militias boast of their unbridled racism, thousands of innocent children who deserve being treated like refugees remain crowded in detention centers without knowing what their fate will be.

Did anybody say “human rights”?

albor.ruiz@aol.com