"Aggressively Revoke"

 The focus of the Trump administration's free-floating xenophobia seems to have shifted this week from international students protesting the Gaza war to Chinese students specifically. Marco Rubio's statement on this yesterday was profoundly sinister. (And of course, it was meant to sound that way. Administration officials take a perverse pride in their bombastic cruelty and lying—the more obvious the lie, the better; because it shows just how much integrity you are willing to sacrifice for the boss. "Look, daddy, there's no limit to how low I'll stoop!")

Here's how Rubio phrased it: the State Department is going to "aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields," he said. Note how it's not "Chinese students with connections to," etc. It's "Chinese students" tout court; "including"—but not limited to—those who have these suspect ties. In other words, Rubio just patently announced a policy of nationality discrimination. People are to be treated as presumptive spies simply because they are Chinese nationals, and for no other reason. 

Where I come from, that's called racism, animus, and xenophobia—of a sort all too familiar from U.S. history. Chinese immigrants have long been subject to discrimination and racism in the American past—and as recently as just a few years ago, Trump's racist rhetoric about Asian Americans (particularly in the context of the COVID pandemic) may have contributed to a surge of violence and hate crimes against them. And of course—Rubio knows all this. That's the point. He's mortgaging his integrity and credibility in such a visible way so as to underline his willingness to say and do anything if it will pander to Trump. That's why he's so proud of his little malices and stupidities. 

To the normal person watching this, however—there's nothing to be proud of here. The U.S. government has abundant authorities at its disposal already to vet international students for real-life espionage. What this new "policy" is actually about is simply punishing higher education institutions and draining them of resources; stoking xenophobic outrage through spreading default misconceptions about Chinese immigrants (many of whom are in fact coming here because they want to get away from their repressive authoritarian government, not to serve it); and signaling fealty to Trump. 

When I see Trump drawing from the well of "Yellow Peril" tropes that are a century-plus old at this point (a century of disgrace) I'm always reminded of how little some things change over our history. I think back to one of the poems in Edgar Lee Masters's collection, The Spoon River Anthology—a definitive work of American social criticism, exploding the mythology of small town Midwestern life in the first part of the twentieth century—and a profound influence on my own political worldview. One of the many cruelties and injustices of American life that Masters criticizes is the treatment of Chinese immigrants, in his poem, "Yee Bow": 

They got me into the Sunday-school

In Spoon River

And tried to get me to drop Confucius for Jesus.

I could have been no worse off

If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius.

For, without any warning, as if it were a prank,

And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley,

The minister's son, caved my ribs into my lungs,

With a blow of his fist.

Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin,

And no children shall worship at my grave.