The Return of Libel

Paul Krugman’s Op-Ed Return of the Blood Libel from June 21 could just as easily be entitled The Return of Libel. Libel in terms of rank misrepresentation. In his very first paragraph he claims that “in a matter of months” America is gone from a nation of values to a nation that “Tears children from their parents and puts them in cages.” Either Mr. Krugman is deliberately trying to mislead his readers, or perhaps like so many others in the media he simply chooses to ignore the instances in which children were separated from their parents during the Obama administration.

His deception continues in his next paragraph when he claims that crime committed by immigrants are “things that simply aren’t happening,” but instead are just “sick fantasies.” I would like to ask Mr. Krugman to tell that to the parents of Kate Steinle.

Mr. Krugman’s next disingenuous tactic is overused by alarmist media types who have  swastikas dancing in their eyes. Yes, he trots out the comparison of Trump to Hitler by interjecting the specter of anti-Semitism into the immigration debate.

He goes on to describe Trump's policies as a "vision of 'American carnage', of big cities overrun by violent immigrants. And this is not the case." Has Mr. Krugman ventured out of his New York city ivory tower as far as Long Island? Is he conveniently ignoring the news reports about law enforcement rounding up members of the notorious MS-13 gang?

His mention of the statistical analyses that have to do with illegal immigrants and any correlation to the rate of violent crime, as though it is as conclusive as the “settled science” of climate change, is also misleading. In an article written for the Center for American Greatness by Pedro Gonzalez, the author rationally questions the accuracy if not the actual veracity of the popular claim that illegal immigration has no correlation to a rise in violent crime. He cites that the data from the Texas Department of Public Safety used to substantiate this claim in a Cato Institute study “selectively sources data” from the TDPS. His assessment of the “authors analysis” is reinforced by the fact that, “[a]n internal Texas Department of Public Safety report revealed that between 2008 and 2014, 177,588 illegal alien defendants were “responsible for at least 611,234 individual criminal charges over their criminal careers, including 2,993 homicides and 7,695 sexual assaults.”

Krugman is using the crime correlation statistics as the bright shiny object to detract from the more substantive concern; that being regardless of any impact in the crime rate illegal aliens may exert, it is an unquestionable fact that the massive influx of illegal aliens is affecting aspects and systems of American society in ways that are largely going un-studied and unreported. One need look no further than overcrowded urban emergency rooms, or interview frustrated elementary school teachers to get a sense of the urgency.

Krugman doubles down on his invalid comparison of the justifiable concern about illegal immigration to anti-Semitism with the haranguing history lesson about the infamous “blood libel” accusation about Jewish sacrificial ritual. He says that anti-Semitism was always about “lurid myths, often based on deliberate fabrications.” While true, it is hardly reasonable to compare the aforementioned justifiable concerns to myths and lies.

He concludes his propagandist screed my dangling the bright shiny object in front of the readers eyes one more time and says, “There is no immigration crisis; there is no crisis of immigrant crime.” Whether or not there is a crisis of immigrant crime is questionable at best, but falsely equivocating immigrant crime with an immigrant crisis is a clever but invalid tactic. Characteristically Krugman also uses the worn out propaganda tactic of conflating “immigrant” with “illegal immigrant.”

His conclusion is no less idiosyncratic of biased propagandist persuasion. He attempts to equate justifiable concern about illegal immigration with “unreasoning hatred.” A hatred he claims that “bears no relationship to anything the victims have done.” If the illegal immigrants who violate basic immigration law are victims, it is the drug cartels and corrupt governments from whom they are fleeing who have made them victims, not Donald Trump, and certainly not the generous American people.