Immigration and Right Wingers like Laura Ingraham

Immigration and Right Wingers like Laura Ingraham

In a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post [April 5, 2018] Elizabeth Bruenig, comments on Fox News and Laura Ingraham: who gets an economics lesson. Ms. Ingraham taunted and ridiculed David Hogg of Parkland High School. He responded by calling for Ingraham’s advertisers to boycott her show. Bayer, Wayfair, Nestle, Hulu, Johnson & Johnson and others did so. The right wingers suddenly worry that boycotts are unfair and threaten their free speech. They also sound surprised as though their doctrine must be the same as corporate America.

Bruenig calls the advertising boycott a capital strike with a reminder that capital does what brings profits, not what’s right wing, left wing or ethically defensible. She cautions “There are no regulations or laws preventing or even restricting capital strikes.”

It is important to remember that profit, or just greed, drive corporate America and the Ingraham example does a good job illustrating the division of capital from the right wingers, but there is a better example, immigration.

Corporate America wants cheap labor and that means every immigrant they can get, skilled or unskilled, documented or undocumented. I don’t believe any other issue better illustrates the divide between capital and right wing politics. Except for the H1-B program, capital keep their immigration demands out of the news and public view and lets Fox News and Trump lead the dehumanizing bigotry parade.

Trump and the Republican Party need people like Ingraham and Fox News to keep the hate vote, now the Trump base, voting while knowing they will vote for the Republican that most reflects their hatred for immigrants. To keep the Democrats out of office and away from labor reform and income inequality, capital wants Republicans, while ignoring the divide over immigration. They remain non-committal or silent and take no responsibility for civility in the larger society. For some of us leadership comes from people who have the wealth and political power to do the right thing for the largest possible social order. Trump and the Republicans will never do that. Corporate America could do the right thing, but like Ms. Bruenig says “Capital is capital: it is not your friend.”