At the Start of Hispanic Heritage Month 2022--The Agit Prop of Migration

 

Pix Credit NBC

Agit-prop--agitation propaganda--was one of the most brilliant tactics bequeathed to liberal democratic societies by its progressive and Marxist-Leninist wings (eg here and here), and now embraced with equal enthusiasm by liberal democracy's traditionalist and conservative wings. 

Roughly understood as political propaganda expressed through the arts, it now manifests itself, like art, in and as the society for which it is created.  Performance art itself has now come to provide the techniques and tropes for the elaboration of  more deeply embedded agit prop strategies: (1) the strategic use of press organs by exploiting their ideological predilections; (2) the deployment of oral-action-agitation networks through coordinated campaigns through non-governmental collectives; (3) the insertion of agitation-provocation elements deep into the heart of target areas or targeted collectives; (4) the deployment of techniques of narrative control and education campaigns undermining official orthodoxies.

Migration has long been a popular front in agit-prop campaigns, even if they are never entirely its object. It is a theme the directors of which  deploy the bodies of people to make a point. It is not merely the use of individuals as stage props for  propaganda theatre, but also as weapons in the larger battles these theater pieces  reflect. While used world-wide, its theater of agitation in the United States touches most deeply on migration of Hispanic and indigenous peoples from Latin (and especially Central) America.  It is used with equal vigor  by all sides of the migration debate as currently constituted--and its effectiveness as theater tends to drive the political and policy conversation in the United States.

This convergence of the power of the techniques of agit-prop and its centering of migration as the structures through which the agitation can be most effectively elaborated was most recently deployed--and deployed effectively (to the chagrin and horror of its targets). 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday flew two planes of immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, escalating a tactic by Republican governors to draw attention to what they consider to be the Biden administration’s failed border policies. Flights to the upscale island enclave in Massachusetts were part of an effort to “transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations,” said Taryn Fenske, DeSantis’ communications director. (DeSantis flies two planes of migrants to Martha's Vineyard).

Pix Credit here

Texas' governor says his state intentionally sent two buses of migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris' residence in the nation's capital -- resulting in a Thursday morning arrival that surprised volunteers who said they weren't prepared to receive them at that site.The drop-off temporarily left dozens of migrants -- some of them carrying belongings in trash bags -- standing on sidewalks and grass Thursday morning outside the gated US Naval Observatory in Washington while volunteers scrambled to make arrangements for them.Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, one of at least three Republican governors who've taken credit for busing or flying migrants north this year to protest the Biden administration's immigration policies, said Thursday his state sent the buses to Harris' residence."VP Harris claims our border is 'secure' & denies the crisis," Abbott tweeted. "We're sending migrants to her backyard to call on the Biden Administration to do its job & secure the border." (Texas sends two buses of migrants to vice president's residence in Washington)

This bit of agit-prop expertly invoked all four of the tactical strategies and objectives of agit-prop.  First it manipulated the press organs by effectively anticipating its ideologically expected responses. This produced a substantial amount of propaganda space that would have been unattainable otherwise. Americans love the spectacular gesture as an invitation to, and as management of, policy discussion.  And that is precisely what these governors got. Second, it deployed oral-action-agitation networks in a new way.    Third, by projecting the bodies of migrants into spaces where oral agitation was strongest against the interests of the border state governors, it sought to bring the action  into the heartland of the opposing camp through theater using the bodies of migrants. Lastly, this action was useful as a means of reframing narrative and of advancing a counter-education campaign, here about the orthodoxies of migration policies advanced by the party in power and its administrative apparatus. 

The object here was not centered on the migrants themselves, whose individual tragedies continue to serve as political objects in a larger campaign in which their misery and tragedies serve as fuel.  Migrants, in this sense are political consumables that serve the interests of all of the parties to this agit-prop campaigning--the state, the press, the party in power, and the agitation propagandizing opposition.  The only losers are the migrants themselves. The United States, it seems, is now a nation that, to some extent, is managed through the devices of agit-prop. For some this may be a great advance in popular democracy; others might not agree.

It bears emphasis that the use of agit prop that consumes the bodies of migrants  is not limited to the political right.  The left is in its own way as enthusiastic in its use of the tactics, when it suits them.  And it suited them greatly during the time of the Trump Administration. In that case, the great waves of slow moving and well publicized migrations heading toward the US southern border served as effective agitation-propaganda vehicles as it nicely deployed its four principal elements in the service of campaigns for open birders and against the restrictive (and at time cruel) policies of the Trump Administration.  I emphasize as well that the object here is not to suggest right or wrong in this political debate--but rather to illuminate the methods that now drive the conversation, that shape it, and that, to some extent (from both sides) inhibit a different sort of discussion of migration .