US justice department news email links to white nationalist website
US justice department news email links to white nationalist website
Email sent to immigration judges links to virulently anti-immigrant site full of antisemitic references
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/22/us-justice-department-white-nationalist-website?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVUy0xOTA4MjM%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&CMP=GTUS_email
The US Department of Justice distributed a morning news briefing to immigration judges that contained a link to a white nationalist website riddled with antisemitic references.
As first identified in a report by BuzzFeed News, the executive office for immigration review (EOIR), a division of the justice department, included a link to a blogpost on the website VDare in the briefing, which was emailed to immigration court employees earlier this week.
VDare is a virulently anti-immigrant website that promotes white nationalism, white supremacy and antisemitism.
The blogpost was about an effort to dissolve the National Association of Immigration Judges, a union representing employees of the immigration courts. The post refers to the New York Times as “lugenpresse”, a German term meaning “lying press” that was adopted by the Nazis to stigmatize Jews, communists, and critics of Adolf Hitler. In recent years the slur has regained popularity within the far-right and among white nationalists. The blogpost also uses the word “kritarch” to refer to judges, a reference to a system of governance involving rule by judges in ancient Israeli history and an apparent invocation of antisemitism.
“VDare’s use of the term in a pejorative manner casts Jewish history in a negative light as an Anti-Semitic trope of Jews seeking power and control,” Ashley Tabaddor, the union president, wrote in a letter to the EOIR about the incident, according to BuzzFeed News. “Publication and dissemination of a white supremacist, anti-semitic website throughout the EOIR is antithetical to the goals and ideals of the Department of Justice.”
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