Invasion Politics

Fox and Friends is a morning show on the “news” station we know as Fox.

As any regular watcher of late-night comedy shows knows, the hosts spend a good chunk of time defending racist-in-chief Donald J. Trump. Today, Brian Kilmeade (who is one of those hosts) had this to say in defense of the wide spread calling out the President for his frequent and habitual use of the word “invasion” when discussing the passage of Spanish-speaking migrants across our border:

What the president has during his two and a half years is a major problem at the border which was not his doing——unless you want to blame President Obama for the unaccompanied minors that streamed through here in 2014. When you have over 110,000 people coming a month, over a million last year and then well over a million this year, if you use the term “an invasion” that’s not anti-Hispanic, it’s a fact. [Source]

The Merrian-Webster dictionary defines the word “invasion” like this:

1: an act of invading (especially an incursion of an army for conquest or plunder)
2: the incoming or spread of something usually hurtful

When you have a million people a year——not one solider but hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children——trying to cross your border and enter your country, the only “fact” is that you are witnessing a refugee crisis. De-humanizing language that portrays poor migrant families in need of refuge as a danger, a threat, and an attempt to “take over” the country are not only wrong, they are openly racist.