The last time the far right went after ethnic studies and critical race theory in a big way, it was in Arizona. People then had to resort to librotraficantes, book smugglers, for information. Here's a story about their efforts from 2012. hcn.org/issues/44.6/li…
Same bullshit arguments, same bullshit racism. I have seen and covered this all before. My greatest frustration back then was how unaware the rest of the country seemed to be about all this shit. It was clear by then it was a trial run for the whole nation, or the world.
But I was paying attention, even if no one else was, and racists have new ideas about once a generation, making their performative outrage easier to spot when you have a roadmap of it in your head at all times like I do threadreaderapp.com/thread/1374114…
Sound familiar? It's exactly the same people. They just took it national. It's the #TantonNetwork. 
May 2021. Racists recur like malaria. patch.com/arizona/across…
This 2008 report detailed disinformation campaigns around immigrants in the USA and the growing influence and power of the anti-immigrant groups pushing those campaigns. adl.org/sites/default/…
That's why I am so blunt and outspoken about them. This is not a guess on my part. This is settled history, my history, that everyone around me chose to ignore and which has now, just as I predicted, come for us all. But we can fight it. The librotraficantes already showed us how
To put it another way, there's a certain type of American who thrives in grey zones. You probably know the type, the Jim Watkinses of the world. But there has been only one grey zone that I have ever known of that exists at least partially within the United States: the border.
If you know what I mean then you are probably very nervous right now. THOSE are the people I'm trying to protect us from.
I see now. I get it. I can't believe it took me this long. That's why this shit is so inextricably wound up in the border. That's why San Diego is a surveillance lab and the entire border is a disinformation lab. It's because hybrid warfare and grey zones are like PB&J.
The librotraficantes understood how to build resilience. They still do. I was one.
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