Matt Cameron Profile picture
Aug 23, 2019 14 tweets 6 min read Read on X
1/ As you may have read by now, the DOJ linked a hateful post on a well-known white supremacist website dedicated for decades almost entirely to xenophobia as recommended reading for 500+ US immigration judges.

How much does this suck? An investigation

buzzfeednews.com/article/hameda…
2/ I've been checking in on VDare for years. It's about as openly hateful as openly neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront, the Daily Stormer, etc. No one who has spent any time in Immigrationland wouldn't know what it is & what it stands for. (Today's top headline for reference)
3/ DOJ's official explanation seems to infer that some outside contractor is responsible for getting these daily news briefs out based on keywords. OK. But why does this contractor's acceptable list of sources include at least one well-known hate site? And no human supervision?
4/ To be clear, any human literate in English who read this would immediately understand that it was not a legitimate news or opinion piece, and certainly not one IJs would want to read. Among other things, it's critical of IJs & uses "Lugenpresse"--one of Hitler's favorite words
5/ White supremacist VDare founder Peter Brimelow got his old pal David Frum to explain to us about how stupid we'd have to be to think "Kritarch"--a Hebrew word associated directly with Jewish judges--isn't a good word to use. Even just after the definitely-Nazi Lugenpresse"
6/ Remember that white supremacists are all about "hiding your power level"--a nerd-ass Dragon Ball Z reference for the anime Nazis--so as not to scare off the normies until they're ready to pull the mask off. Come for the race realism, stay for the Reich.
7/ An important part of this strategy is laughing at people who see what they're doing and gaslighting everyone else into believing that media are crying wolf. This tactic easily rewards foot soldiers happy to troll the libs while spreading the word & pulling in the curious
8/ The linked piece is white supremacist trash, I don't think that needs another tweet.

But it also hits another nerve: the #immigrationcourt union. DOJ is trying to decertify (or "desertify," per the master race types at VDare) and destroy it.

This is very, very bad.
9/ Immigration judges are lawyers employed by the DOJ in an administrative court, not judges in a judicial one. They are hired & fired at the whim of the Attorney General, & Jeff Sessions appointed a record number of them. What little independence they have is through their union
10/ Imagine getting an email from your employer suggesting you check out an extremist website's post about how much your union sucks and how it should be abolished.

This is exactly what every immigration judge in America received in their inbox today.
11/ This whole thing proves exactly *why* IJs need a union. They're already facing major impositions on their judicial independence & workload--including case quotas, something we're not talking about enough--from this admin. They shouldn't have to tolerate open racism too
CORRECTION: it's a Greek word, but one indelibly associated with Judaic history
12/ If you or I accidentally recommended a white nationalist hate post I think we'd want to swiftly condemn the site with an apology as quickl as possible. Not DOJ.

DOJ has no issue w/VDare, its message, or the post at issue. Couldn't be more obvious from this tepid statement
13/ If DOJ kills this union, we're going to start to see major turnover in the #immigrationcourts, even more fresh new Trump IJs, and less due process. They will become the one thing they should never be: the President's judges.

But what's the worst that could happen, right?

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More from @matt_cam

Aug 28
1/ The especially frustrating thing about the right-wing opposition to #KeepingFamiliesTogether is that I sincerely believe that even most MAGAs would be fine with it if they only understood what it actually is and why it is necessary.

So let's talk about that
2/ "If only they knew" is not something I would usually say. I am of the opinion that you can't fact-check bigotry, but even a lot of bigots could be persuaded on this one because it is

(1) definitely legal and
(2) addressing a very real (but little understood) problem
3/ Immigration through marriage to a US citizen is, famously, one of the easiest ways in. So long as you originally came on a visa (typically as a tourist) you can live/work in the US unlawfully for decades and still have a fairly easy path to residency through your spouse.

But.
Read 18 tweets
Dec 4, 2022
Me, a very clever human: write a @alyankovic parody in the form of a 15th century madrigal about the collapse of FTX and the crypto market

*two seconds later*

#OpenAI: alas tis a lamentable day, the visions of riches have become mere wishes, etc
A notably less weird Al here but otherwise am I the only one who thinks this is all kind of terrifying
I will not print it here but it cheerfully spit out an '80s party rap anthem denying the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust just because I asked it to.

The word "orgy" was consistently censored out of my prompts though so I guess we're looking out for what really matters
Read 8 tweets
Dec 4, 2022
My new favorite @OpenAI prompt is "write a Rage Against the Machine song about"

this bombtrack started as a sketch in my prompt box

#RATM
it just... gives you chord changes, if you want, I didn't actually think that would work
Teaching @openAI how to fight the power (fight the powers that be) by writing a protest song complaining about how strict its own censorship is
Read 5 tweets
Oct 21, 2022
N. B.: the author of this fascist manifesto is not some Roman statue "Western chauvinist" account with 76 followers. He is the senior editor of the closest thing the American right has to a journal of record.

How do we step back from where we're heading?
And I'm sorry but I'm going to have to insist that you read this one. You'll never believe me or that I am quoting this in context otherwise

thefederalist.com/2022/10/20/we-…
"save the country"
"rebuild and in a sense re-found"
"getting used to the idea of wielding power, not despising it"
"compromise with the left is impossible"

when I say this is fascism I mean this literally, it is literal fascism Excerpt from column in the Federalist by a senior editor arg
Read 5 tweets
Oct 20, 2022
Very few people outside the system know this, but you need to:

US asylum law knowingly & intentionally requires the deportation to certain death of people who have been on the wrong side of the criminal legal system.

It's not a design flaw, but the design itself.
First: I didn't know her, but this is the only publicly available news re: the murder of Melissa Nunez--and more importantly, her life. She was, among other things, a determined advocate who loved horses and traveling and dreamed of living in Puerto Rico

tiempo.hn/melissa-nunez-…
From information available online, I gather she was convicted on charges brought from defending herself against anti-trans violence. This conviction constituted an "aggravated felony," a class of offenses which bar someone from receiving asylum.

now read that last sentence back
Read 16 tweets
Oct 19, 2022
This @ similar questions from the @MarshallProj sheriffs survey linked below get to one of the most fundamental problems holding back progress today: a belief that past (white) immigrants had it harder & had to do more to "earn" a place than today's. It's exactly backward
It's only human to want to believe that your ancestors were better and smarter and worked harder than today's immigrants, because that kind of generational progress is such a fundamental part of the golden era American immigrant story. Which is to say the *white* immigrant story
But the reality is that it was hardly any trouble at all to immigrate before 1965--& absolutely no effort before 1921--& the system had nothing at all to do with today's. We are in NO WAY doing anything to make it easier now, only much much harder
Read 5 tweets

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