CafePress’ Anti-Latino Merchandise Is Repulsive, But Not New

At first glance the Cafepress web page, filled with Anti-Mexican merchandise — t-shirts, bumper stickers and such — is repulsive. At second glance, it’s even more so. But it’s a sign of the times that such a thing is not extraordinary, in fact it’s uninteresting and dull.

There’s nothing new in spreading an idea on a piece of vinyl that you can attach to a car bumper. Neither is it novel to make a t-shirt out of your favorite whatever. But the point that’s most repulsive is the tone of the favorite idea: “F**k border control, it’s time for sniper control.”

The sentiments are old and tattered. We’ve heard them for generations and most recently read them at ideological rallies, scribbled (sometimes badly spelled) across homemade banners and impromptu placards: Go back to Mexico, deport illegals, fill in the blank. It’s the same general sentiment that germinates in the minds of the people who spend their vacation time sitting on lawn chairs in the middle of the desert with a rifle across their laps, looking for Mexican migrants in the heat of the border area summer sun.

It’s crazy. But crazy doesn’t equal benign.

The anti-immigrant, Anti-Latino, anti-Mexican sentiment has existed, consistently, for decades. A website doesn’t make it any worse. The only thing that’s happened is that the voice of the crazy’s has been amplified to the extent of, as listed on the CafePress website:

780 Anti mexican Gifts designs available on 22,200 products,

The question in my mind is: who are these yahoos? A little digging lead me to a group called “Veer to the Right.” They have a web page (an extension of their cafe press site) and a Facebook  fan page, self-designated as a political organization with 299 likes. The Facebook page organizers have liked Mitt Romney and a cheesy sweepstakes app. Aside from that, there’s not much more to know about them.

But it’s not like we need to know more. We know them, if not by name, then at least by attitude. The fact that they — the ominous, mysterious they — found a way to put their hate on mugs, magnets and maternity ware is not surprising.  It’s the same old hate, still repulsive, only amplified and for sale. What is surprising is that this time, with the exception of a missing comma here and there, they seem to have used spell check.

[Image By Cafepress.com]

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