Tingles nods in approval.

By UC Berkeley law professor Ian Haney López (Raw Story):

… Strikingly, though, many Republicans have been depicting ISIS not primarily as a foreign concern, but as a domestic threat that may portend the invasion, and even the potential collapse, of our country. Especially in the repeated linkage of ISIS to security on the Mexican border, conservative warnings on ISIS seem to constitute a new form of dog whistle politics, the dark art of using coded terms to stir racial anxiety among voters.

First, the claims:

Representative Trent Franks, a Republican from Arizona, warned earlier this month: “It is true, that we know that ISIS is present in Ciudad Juarez or they were within the last few weeks.” He continued: “So there’s no question that they have designs on trying to come into Arizona… If unaccompanied minors can cross the border then certainly trained terrorists probably can to. It is something that is real.”

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in a CNN opinion piece published on September 10, explained how the nation must prepare to confront ISIS: “First and foremost, Washington should resolve to make border security a top priority finally, rather than an afterthought . . . in light of concerns about potential ISIS activities on our southern border.” First and foremost, we should combat ISIS by focusing on our southern border? Yes, Cruz explained, for “[a]s long as our border isn’t secure, the government is making it far too easy for terrorists to infiltrate our nation.” […]

It’s easy to shrug off as farcical the warnings of Cruz, Brown and other GOP figures about an ISIS invasion from the south — and then to look askance at those voters who credit such evident absurdities. But this misses the point. ISIS on the southern border is a dog whistle. Decoded, it’s a warning not of any actual military threat, but of accelerating demographic change. This is the real panic that the GOP seeks to harness in the voting booth.