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Ilhan Omar speaks to her own people, in her own language, and she is getting blasted for it.
The video itself, from what I think is the most original source I could find.
The headlines I've collected:
Ilhan Omar Deportation Calls Grow From Republicans
'Squad' member grilled for remarks about allegiance: 'Somalians first, Muslims second'
Rep. Ilhan Omar Faces Backlash on Social Media Following Viral Speech on Somalia
From her own, preferred, translation:
Nothing here is news to me. I also think Omar should be expelled from Congress and deported, but that's because she's committed immigration fraud to bring her brother into the US by posing as his wife. It's always been obvious to me that she's simply not American, will never be American, and can never be American. She's Somali, and here, in her native tongue, talking to her coethnics, she admits as much. Look at her preferred translation again, and consider who she lumps herself with.
This is the part that has been translated into Somalis first, Muslims second, and Americans not at all (emphasis mine). She does, eventually, say Minnesotans:
The video subtitles do not translate Minnesota, but it's clearly recognizable (sounds like "rare minnesoto" at ~1:38).
The "brothers and sisters" refers to Somali muslims, not the Scandinavian or German ethnics who have been in Minnesota for generations, those who are being replaced by Omar and her ilk. Not the yankees who moved west from New York and Pennsylvania. Solidarity is for blacks and muslims, not whites, not Americans.
I'm not trying to hide my biases here. I've long thought it obvious that this woman was a foreign agent, representing foreigners in the US congress at the expense of Americans. That offends me deeply. I can't even call her disloyal, because she's very clearly loyal to who she considers her own. I'm glad more people are noticing, and I hope that she is punished for her misdeeds eventually. I simply wish I could say, America for the Americans, our lands will not be taken from us, but I unfortunately that sentiment is only available for foreigners.
Hopefully Tlaib is next.
I don't see how you can reasonably construe this speech as a problem.
Plenty of Americans describe themselves as "Irish" or "German" or whatever without trying to imply they are less American. American's do this so much that there are thousands of memes making fun of us for it. So I see getting bent that a Somali-American calls herself Somali as just a thinly veiled boo outgroup.
Please find me an Irish congressman addressing Irish in America in Irish about how Ireland is "we" and not "they."
Better yet, find me a German congressman who calls himself German, speaks to Germans living in America in German, about the need to keep Germany for the Germans.
Or, even better, find me a Somali in Somalia who says makes fun of Omar for pretending to be Somali. Please, demonstrate this supposed equivalence. It's not the same, it's not close to same. It's offensive to even equate the two.
The Germans were rightly discouraged from doing this. They know better. The Somalis ought to know better, too, and if it takes their brightest star being cast out of my country in disgrace for them to learn, then so much the better.
These people are foreigners, regardless of laws or citizenship, and they have no desire to assimilate.
Pretty sure if you went back a hundred years ago when Irish immigrants were coming to the country through Ellis Island, there were probably numerous speeches given by congressmen and government officials at places like Tammany Hall that both were about how that particular Irish leader was looking out for the Irish constituents in America but also making sure that that the USA relationship with Ireland would only grow stronger and they promised that their home island would be subject to less bullying from England because of their American leverage.
I would put huge money on that any wasp republican from that time period would say the same exact thing as you regarding those Irish and Italians. That they are foreigners, have no respect for this nation and its culture and have no real desire to assimilate.
To a large extent you're true. I think first gen immigrants have a strong attachment to their country of origin and will always be like this. You can see it in other groups like how Indians Americans were in full force when Narendra Modi visited America, ect.
I think you're overestimating though how that makes any difference in the light of time. Children who grow up in America are mostly Americanized completely. Few younger Indian Americans care much about Indian politics, I know many Ethiopians who grew up here and though they are saddened by their recent civil war, they didn't shed tears like their parents did because their attachment to Ethiopia is more of a general vague identity and cultural traditions. Not the land or even its people. My Brazilian origin ex visits her grandparents and extended family in Brazil every couple of years and has somewhat strong ties to Brazil visiting it fairly often as a child, but she isn't Brazilian. She knows Portuguese, and loves the food of her country, follows some traditions and is culturally catholic, but she's American. She's not religious, dates people from every ethnic background, her favorite cuisine is Korean and lives to watch trashy american reality tv.
America is America and people are much too busy to care that much when its not a firsthand direct connection. Now, will my exes potential grandchild go to a liberal arts college one day and become a super woke identiterian using her latino and brazilian heritage as a crutch to not have or develop a real personality? Quite possibly, but that's also a uniquely American thing too.
Eh, the Italians were relatively Republican (as were the Germans) while the Irish leaned Democratic (AFAIK there's still a decent-sized partisan gap between Americans of German or Italian ancestry and those with Irish ancestry.). It's not a coincidence that Antonin Scalia and Ron DeSantis are big Republican names while the Democrats still boast politicians like Joe Biden and Mike Duggan. The GOP of that era thought that the Great Migration (Party of Lincoln!) was going to save them from the white ethnic hordes.
I believe the Germans were mostly Democrats during the peak periods of German immigration. The liberal, largely atheistic Forty-Eighters were almost all Republicans, but they were, despite their outsized cultural influence, a tiny minority of German immigrants. The majority were conservative Catholics and Lutherans who had little use for the Republican party. The midwestern German-Americans began to warm up to the Republicans before WWI, but they didn’t switch en mass until after.
The Texas Germans voted Republican for a while IIRC, and they were conservative enough to schizophrenically larp about seceding to set up a Hapsburg monarchy.
That is interesting. Do you know what group that was? I know there were a few… attempts, if you can call it that; it would probably be more accurate to say idle day-dreams… to create a new Germany in the Midwest (every one of which fizzled out almost immediately as the immigrants realized that the USA was actually pretty great). I hadn’t heard of anything similar in Texas, but then I’m only really familiar with a couple of German communities down there.
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/adelsverein
They were successful enough that Texas had it's own dialect of German(which still has like a thousand native speakers in nursing homes in central Texas) and Fredericksburg is still a major town. Can't find a source on the monarchism RN but I swear they were planning it originally.
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My understanding is that Catholic and "traditional" Lutheran Germans were Democrats and the pietist Lutheran and Calvinist Germans were Republicans.
You are correct, and I shouldn’t have glossed over that distinction. The pietistic German Lutherans and Reformed tended to assimilate much more quickly than their Catholic and traditional Lutheran counterparts, with many joining Methodist or Baptist churches, supporting Prohibition, opposing parochial schools, and rather quickly dropping their “hyphenated” German-American identities, in many cases anglicizing their names in the process. These were much more likely to join the Republican party prior to WWI. The German freethinkers, with their singing and athletic clubs, were even more strongly Republican.
The Republicans actually had some decent success in courting traditional Lutherans and Catholics, but they had a habit of shooting themselves in the foot every couple of years and driving those groups back to the Democrats. Prohibition was the longest-lived issue, causing friction from the 1850s until the passage of the 18th Amendment, with the Republicans typically in favor and the Democrats typically opposed. Then in 1889, Illinois and Wisconsin passed laws requiring children to attend English-speaking schools, which led to a massive backlash from the traditional German communities and concomitant electoral victories for the Democrats. (There had already been quite a few skirmishes over Bible reading and prayer in the public schools before then, which an uneasy alliance of Catholics, traditional Lutherans, and German freethinkers opposed.)
Interestingly, the Scandinavians, being mostly Pietistic, were a pretty reliable Republican vote early on, though that naturally shifted over the years as the parties changed.
In Indiana, there was an additional wrinkle in the 1920s. The Ku Klux Klan popped up in the state during WWI, then flourished massively in the early 1920s, before dying off just as quickly as it had grown. Unlike in the south, the Indiana Klan was not primarily an anti-black organization, but was anti-Jewish, anti-immigrant, and anti-Catholic, with animosity toward traditional Lutherans typically thrown in with those last two. The Klan was technically bipartisan but was more closely associated with the Republicans, which probably hampered the German vote’s transition to that party.
Very interesting post.
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In the GSS, Italians lean more heavily Democrat than the Irish and both are significantly more Democrat than Republican. In this sample, the only white categories that don't lean Democrat overall are the British, the Scandinavians and the Germans & Dutch.
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