Where the Rich and the Racist Disagree

Update: Many thanks and Happy New Year to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for adding this article to Mike's Blog Round-Up! Stay safe everyone, and meet me in Gainesville FL this February 1st for the Sunshine State Book Festival. ;-)

As part of the ongoing American meltdown this winter, we're witnessing a very public and very nasty spat between donald trump's MAGA voting base and trump's billionaire buddies. There's a quick refresher at NPR's All Things Considered with Stephen Fowler commenting:

So for people who are not terminally online, here's a quick recap. Trump made a number of smaller staffing announcements for his second term earlier this week. One of them is a high-profile tech entrepreneur named Sriram Krishnan, who's worked at Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. Far-right activists started trashing the pick on the social media site X, pointing out that Krishnan was born in India, that he previously made comments advocating for more green cards, and devolving into a lot of racist and anti-immigrant attacks on foreign workers that come to the U.S. on these H-1B visas...

the debate over H-1Bs and legal immigration and what Trump might do about them is not something new. In his first term, Trump said that certain visa programs were being abused to bring in foreign workers to replace American workers. He suspended the H-1B program during the pandemic for the same reason, but this time around, things could be different. People in the tech industry, with the Musk-Ramaswamy viewpoint that the U.S. needs more of these top workers no matter where they're from to keep an edge in fields like AI - they're more in Trump's ear and his good graces this time around.

There's also interest in reforming the visa process not just for these tech workers - from lawmakers across the aisle who say it's an overly complex system chock full of carveouts that benefit certain industries and, like Trump has said, are being abused. But there's also a lot of conservatives, especially among the base of the GOP, that shape primary elections, who believe Trump's hard-line immigration stances means reform should primarily come in a reduction of immigrants...

Fowler mentioned the "devolving into a lot of racist and anti-immigrant attacks" but didn't discuss it in detail, considering how that racism is foundational to the Far Right anger towards even legal migrants (like we saw during the elections with the spiteful attacks towards Haitian migrants in Springfield). Steve Benen over at Maddow's Blog (MSNBC) digs a little deeper:

It was against this backdrop that the president-elect announced early last week that venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan — a proponent of green cards for skilled workers — would work in Trump’s incoming administration, serving in a top artificial intelligence policy post. The news was not well received on the Far Right.

A highly controversial MAGA activist named Laura Loomer — who spent at least part of the year as a member of Trump’s inner circle — condemned the decision to hire Krishnan, pointing to his support for the H-1B program, which provides temporary worker visas for high-skilled tech workers. An ugly back-and-forth, which some have labeled the “MAGA civil war,” erupted soon after.

On one side of the divide are prominent far-right voices such as Loomer and Steve Bannon, who have spent the last week clashing with figures such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. They all remain Trump allies, of course, but they’ve also targeted each other in caustic and personal ways, culminating in the world’s wealthiest individual publishing a tweet in which he urged many of the president-elect’s supporters, “Take a big step back and f--- yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

Subtle, it was not.

We are witnessing the divide between the massive and anger-driven Far Right voting base that has been stirred up by fearmongering and racism to hate ALL immigrants (unless they're from Norway) and the upper elite billionaires of the Far Right who have fed all that fearmongering and racism to their masses while profiting - and hoping to profit even more - from that very immigration system that brings them cheap - and indentured - labor. From Janice Gassam Asare at Forbes (paywalled):

The support of H-1B visas by billionaires like Musk, Ramaswamy and others should come as no surprise. On the surface, these work visas seem like a win-win, allowing highly skilled workers in specialized fields to contribute to the U.S. labor force while being granted the ability to stay in the country. What isn’t talked about enough is the exploitation that these workers often experience. The Economic Policy Institute reported that a majority of H-1B workers are paid below median wages. Not only is paying employees lower wages advantageous for employers, but workers on H-1B visas may be less likely to report workplace harm and mistreatment due to fears of how the loss of an H-1B job could drastically impact their life. It’s not outside the realm of possibilities that because of what’s at stake, many H-1B workers are more compliant and less rebellious than American employees, which would naturally make them a more enticing hire. 

Billionaires like Musk need to rile up the voting base to keep them compliant and voting Republican - so that the Republicans can then gift those billionaires massive tax cuts and easy access to the federal pork barrel - but they need the current immigration system to hire thousands of workers who can't fight for better wages or defend themselves in a legal system skewed against them. This is a dynamic vulnerable to rebellion by the MAGA base when they realize their racism has limits. Back to Asare:

Ramaswamy and Musk’s posts on X have sparked a bitter debate among Trump’s supporters. Some Trump supporters have resorted to spewing racist and xenophobic rhetoric online based on fears of a “browning” America and anxieties about being replaced. Instead of uniting across party lines over class struggles and society’s collective disdain for rising inflation, racism has reigned supreme. At the end of the day, capitalism trumps nativism and regardless of one’s party affiliation, the almighty dollar rules. Many of Trump’s supporters may feel hoodwinked; voting for him because of his immigration promises, only to learn that Trump and his billionaire allies are more focused on how foreign workers make American businesses more profitable...

At the moment, this schism is mostly relegated to the social media arena where the MAGA haters are expressing their fury towards their GOP masters. There is no sign that this will translate into the Far Right voters from abandoning the Republicans altogether (after all, where can they go?), or any political factions in Congress turning against trump and Musk to make them suffer for their pro H-1B stances. 

But this all highlights one real fact: The voter anger that supported trump this 2024 wasn't really about inflation, or economic anxiety. It was about hating others who weren't privileged, who weren't viewed as American, who weren't "born here" and "needed to go back where you came from."

It was always the racism. It was always that fear - unjustified, uncontrollable - of the dread Others - even among the non-White communities - that the Far Right demonized for political gain.

That racism won't quiet down any time soon. In the coming year, we are going to see our fellow (White) Americans at their worst, on a scale we haven't seen since the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s.

Gods help us all, as that rage will consume more innocent lives and destroy more communities than the Far Right believes will happen.

Stay safe this 2025.