The Environmentalist Roots of Anti-Immigrant Bigotry By Charles Taylor

     On this freezing cold Melbournian Sunday morning, there was nothing much to refute until I came across this beauty from the Leftoid The Guardian, and the eternally poetic, politically correct New York Times.
  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/15/anti

“Recent mass shootings have been linked to ‘eco-xenophobia’ – part of a tradition that dates to America’s first conservationists. The environmentalist, white nationalist, and influential anti-immigration activist John Tanton died less than three weeks before the El Paso shooting. Tanton lived to see his movement shape much of modern US immigration policy, but not this latest violent turn. A hate-filled document allegedly linked to the man suspected of killing 22 people in El Paso on 3 August echoed the kind of rhetoric generally favored by the far right – and also had a decidedly environmentalist, Tanton-like bent. The document praised the Dr Seuss character the Lorax, who says he speaks for the trees, and complained about the unsustainable overuse of paper towels. It concluded that the best course of environmental action would be mass murder. A week prior, on an Instagram account reportedly linked to the alleged Gilroy, California, garlic festival shooter, he complained about migrant-driven sprawl. Months before, the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter called himself an “eco-fascist”. Long before this violence, researchers warned of “the greening of hate”. From Tanton’s anti-immigration nonprofit network to some of today’s avowed environmentalists, across the political spectrum, overpopulation and immigration in particular has been blamed for environmental collapse for over 50 years.

Anti-immigrant ideology has been part and parcel of the whole of American conservationism since the first national park was founded, in part to protect wild yet white-owned nature from Mexicans and Native Americans. National purity and natural purity were inextricably linked. The current rise of eco-minded white supremacy follows a direct line from the powerful attorney, conservationist and eugenicist Madison Grant – a friend of trees, Teddy Roosevelt, and the colonial superiority of white land stewardship. Grant, along with the influential naturalist John Muir and other early Anglo-Saxon conservationists, was critical in preserving the country’s wildlands for white enjoyment. Muir, who founded the Sierra Club environmental group in 1892, was disturbed by the “uncleanliness” of the Native Americans, whom he wanted removed from Yosemite. Grant successfully lobbied, in equal measure, for the creation of protected national parks and the restriction of immigration by non-whites. “Environmentalists were hardcore eugenicists. They were as committed to racial thinking as they were to protecting the great redwoods in California,” said Heidi Beirich, intelligence project director at the Southern Poverty Law Center. That eco-xenophobia resurfaced in the 1970s as overpopulation and resource depletion was deemed the pre-eminent challenge facing the planet at the dawn of the anthropocene. Published in 1968, The Population Bomb, by the Stanford University biology professor Paul Ehrlich, predicted that overpopulation would fuel worldwide famine and global upheaval. Much of what Ehrlich predicted did not come to pass, but the book proved hugely influential in the nascent environmental movement. Global population growth was soon conflated with US immigration growth, and both were blamed for the coming collapse of Spaceship Earth. This argument inspired generations of eco-nativists, and the most influential anti-immigration advocacy network currently operating in the US.”

     In actual fact, Ehrlich was a strong anti-racist and wrote a book called The Race Bomb attacking racism, but don’t let that ruin the story. I knew of John Tanton, meeting him three times, and he was not any sort of white nationalist as I saw it.
  https://www.amazon.com/race-bomb-color-prejudice-intelligence/dp/B0006X8PQM

     The Left has had far more eco-terrorists than the Right, but no mention of them:
  https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Tech-Revolution-Why-Theodore-Kaczynski/dp/1944228004

     The Dali Lama has also supported immigration restriction, and he is not white:
  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dalai-lama-europe-refugee-crisis-immigration-eu-racism-tibet-buddhist-a8537221.html

     Anyway, it does not matter as the main thrust of the article is that any restriction upon immigration based upon environmental considerations, or anything else, is racist, end of argument. The Left want nothing short of open borders, but only for the West. They are silent about the immigration policies of non-western countries. That is not in their agenda.
  https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2019/08/16/new-york-times-editor-racial-conflict-drives-immigration-politics/

     Thus, it is impossible along these lines for the Black South African government to be racist to migrants, because racism is just a weapon to beat whitey around the head with:
  https://www.dw.com/en/south-african-government-accused-of-xenophobia-over-its-treatment-of-migrants/a-49997237

“Outrage is growing over what is seen as the targeting of undocumented migrants in South Africa. After a raid and the arrest of about 500 people, the government is being accused of using the migrants as scapegoats.
The arraignment on Monday of hundreds of African migrants considered illegal by the authorities was met with forceful protests outside the Johannesburg magistrate court. The African nationals had been arrested during a raid of migrant-owned shops in the city the previous week. Police charged them with flouting immigration laws by entering the country illegally. Several court rooms were packed to the brim as hundreds of the arrested immigrants appeared in groups. They looked traumatized, shocked and depressed. Many who had no documents were immediately sent to the Lindela repatriation center, from where they will be deported to their countries of origin. Dozens of immigrants and concerned South Africans protested in solidarity outside the court. Organizations representing migrants were angry with the police and the government, especially after the state prosecutor conceded in court that some of the arrested immigrants were in possession of documents. He said they were being kept in police custody to allow the authorities to verify the documents' authenticity. The non-governmental organization African Diaspora Forum described the arrests as "xenophobic, chaotic, brutal, inhumane and illegal."

     Let’s see the Left deal with that one! But, of course they will not.