Jeff Sessions, a former U.S. senator from Alabama seeking to regain his old post after having served as President Donald Trump’s attorney general, sent a fundraising letter to supporters Monday evening authored by far-right commentator Michelle Malkin.
The Daily Beast reporter Lachlan Markay noted the email on Twitter, in which Malkin opens by calling Sessions “an old friend of the America First movement.” One could be forgiven for interpreting Malkin’s reference as an homage to Trump’s “America first” campaign rhetoric, but Malkin’s current union with extreme right-wing activists suggests a more alarming context.
In the last year, Malkin has aligned herself with the leaders of a white nationalist youth coalition calling itself the “America First” movement, going so far as adopting a role as a movement “Mommy,” as she called herself in a February speech. Her support of the tight coalition of extreme right-wing voices includes explicit endorsements of many people who have well-documented records of anti-Semitic and white nationalist rhetoric, including podcaster Nicholas Fuentes, hate group organizer Patrick Casey, YouTube personality Faith Goldy, and the racist anti-immigrant organization VDARE. Her support for the movement came with severe career consequence. Young America’s Foundation cut ties with Malkin last year, ending its 17-year relationship with the commentator over Malkin’s support of Fuentes, who has engaged with Holocaust denial. Just yesterday, Malkin used her Twitter presence to promote an interview of Fuentes.
In the fundraising message, Malkin praises Sessions for his hardline immigration positions, writing that Sessions “will work tirelessly to deport criminal illegal aliens and stop amnesty in all forms as Americans have demanded, just like he’s done for his entire career.” She continues:
And Jeff is fully aware of the social costs of mass immigration, which have been overwhelming.
Immigrants aren’t assimilating because they don’t have to. They just move to barrios filled with other immigrants.
With Jeff Sessions in the Senate, we are going to take back America for Americans.
Sessions has a reputation for pushing and enacting aggressive anti-immigration policies. Former Sessions aide Stephen Miller, who now serves as a top policy adviser in the White House working on immigration, repeatedly sent white nationalist material to former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh, a Southern Poverty Law Center investigation revealed last year. Miller was also instrumental to the implementation of the border policy that forcefully separated migrant families and put kids in cages—a policy that Sessions, then the attorney general, defended.
In a section titled “Jeff understands the dangers of globalism,” Malkin writes that Sessions “demanded that we halt employment-based immigration during this time of stunningly high unemployment: We have ZERO jobs—we have no jobs for Americans, much less for workers from abroad.” Such calls for immigration freezes have gained popularity among the far-right, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The 2020 election cycle is crucial to the success of the America First movement. If we do not elect candidates who will fight alongside President Trump to put America First, I fear that we may never have another opportunity to break the chokehold of the political establishment,” Malkin writes. “We know that Jeff Sessions is a powerful conservative advocate with a strong & proven record who believes in the America First agenda.”
Malkin recently collaborated with disgraced far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos on a reading list for the young “America First” activists that includes numerous books notorious for their extremist contents, like “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” “Culture of Critique,” and “The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit,” all of which have been panned as virulently anti-Semitic works of literature. Also included in the reading list are books by prominent alt-right voices such as Theodore “Vox Day” Beale and Jared Taylor and racist works of fiction such as “Camp of the Saints.”
Her extremism dates back years. In 2004, Malkin wrote a book called “In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror.” In that book, Malkin argued that targeting anti-terrorism measures on people based on their perceived religion or ethnicity was valid, and went on to argue in favor the internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans in World War II.
In recent months, Malkin has appeared on white supremacist radio programs and headlined a conference of far-right activists. She has also been promoting dangerous nonsense about COVID-19, elevating anti-vaxxers and attacking the nation's top immunologist.
