“Death to America” Chants in Michigan Point to Serious Problems With Mass Immigration
Earlier this month, chants of “death to America” chants rang out at an event. But it was not at a rally organized by Iran’s Islamist regime in Tehran, nor was it in Gaza, Afghanistan, or Somalia. Instead, such hatred towards the United States was being expressed right in the middle of the American heartland in Michigan.
The hatred of America was on full display in Dearborn, Michigan, on April 5, during a rally to mark so-called International Al-Quds Day (“Al-Quds” – literally “the Holy” – being the Arabic word for Jerusalem). One speaker, Tarek Bazzi justified anti-American sentiment by asking “[w]hy are our protests on the International Day of Al-Quds (…) so anti-America? Why don’t we just focus more on Israel and not talk so much about America? Gaza has shown the entire world why these protests are so anti-America. Because it’s the United States government that provides the funds for all the atrocities that we just heard about.”
He quoted with approval Malcom X’s claim that the U.S. is “one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this Earth” and the founder of the Islamist, terrorist-supporting regime in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini. “This is why Imam Khomeini, who declared the International Al-Quds Day, this is why he would say to pour all of your chants and all of your shouts upon the head of America,” Bazzi went on. This prompted multiple shouts – in Arabic – of “death to America.”
In case there were any lingering doubts as to the extent of Bazzi’s anti-Americanism, he emphasized that “[i]t’s not just Genocide Joe [i.e. President Biden] that has to go. It is the entire [American] system that has to go. Any system that would allow such atrocities and such devilry to happen and would support it – such a system does not deserve to exist on God’s Earth.” The fact he could say such things, and have an obviously receptive audience, speaks volumes about the failure of migrants to integrate into America.
The Dearborn area’s representative in Congress, Rashida Tlaib, refused to condemn the “death to America” chants and, instead, deflected by going on a rant attacking Fox News. Like Bazzi, Tlaib does not seem particularly grateful toward America, in spite of the fact that the daughter of Palestinian working-class immigrants benefited from the manifold opportunities the U.S. has to offer, including a seat in Congress.
Dearborn happens to have the highest percentage of residents of Middle Eastern descent of any U.S. city, with 55 percent of the inhabitants being of that background. The city was also dubbed America’s “Jihad capital” in a February op-ed in The Wall Street Journal due to pro-Hamas rallies and strong pro-Islamist, anti-Western agitation. A similar situation exists in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, with its Somali immigrant population constituting an “insular ethnic community” that became a “rich recruiting ground” for such terrorist organizations as al-Shabab and ISIS. According to U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) statistics, the vast majority of 549 individuals convicted on terrorism offenses between 2001 and 2018 was foreign-born, but, disturbingly, more than a quarter (27 percent) were born in the U.S. (although, admittedly, some may not have been children of immigrants). Thus, in November 2016, 18-year-old Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan carried out a terror attack at Ohio State University by aiming his car at a group of students, then leaping out and stabbing people with a butcher knife, resulting in 13 individuals being hospitalized with injuries. In June 2023, a U.S.-born Jihadist of immigrant descent, Ibraheem Izzy Musaibli (of Dearborn), was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison on charges of providing and conspiring to provide material support to ISIS and attending an ISIS training camp. Moreover, Musaibli fought against U.S. forces for two and a half years. Clearly, the potential security threats stemming from a combination of anti-Americanism among certain immigrant groups – combined with problems with assimilation – are not merely theoretical.
In his important book, Exodus, British economist Paul Collier explains how the constant replenishment of ethnic enclaves through unending, large-sale mass migration slows or even counteracts assimilation and integration. It can thus act as a vector for more extreme and anti-American sentiments among diasporas in the U.S. One thing is for sure, however: when immigrants or their children – the beneficiaries of the “land of opportunity” – are shouting “death to America,” there is a serious problem.