TL;DR
The New Right sees the world as zero-sum competition between groups: whatever you do, and however legally you got there, a brown face marks you as an invader — and that refusal to build coalitions will dismantle the country it claims to defend.
A Texas politician named Bo French posted a photo: a group of Indian-American kids cheering for the University of Texas football team. His caption called it an invasion.
French is nobody much. Oil-family money, two lost primaries for the state House, and this year a first win as the Republican nominee for railroad commissioner — while trailing in the polls.
The 'legal vs illegal' card the Right never plays
Whenever anyone defends immigration, the Right shouts that legal and illegal are not the same thing. Everyone in that photo either came legally or was born to parents who did.
They are not poor either. Indian Americans are the highest-earning group in the country, and those at a school like UT do better than that average — paying taxes all their lives toward local Medicare and Social Security.
After years of 'poor immigrants come for the welfare', the moment a wealthy immigrant group shows up the line switches to 'they stole our jobs and our college seats'. There is no way to win.
A team sweater does not help
Speak a foreign language, build a Hindu temple, wear traditional dress, and the Right screams 'alien invaders'. Put on a University of Texas sweater and go to a football game, and the photo still gets you called an alien invader.
What bothers them is who you are, not what you do. Indian Americans are incarcerated at a quarter the rate of non-Hispanic white Americans; almost nobody in that photo will ever see a jail cell — which matters to ordinary voters and not at all to the New Right.
Even voting Republican does not help. Trump won Texas Asians by a solid margin. French and his allies either do not know this or do not care.
Nation-dismantlers, not nation-builders
The New Right treats the world as a zero-sum contest between groups: Indians getting into UT means white people were 'replaced'. It never considers that freshmen admitted grew from 15,000 in 2011 to 19,000 in 2021 — the seats were multiplying.
In the 1970s Christian conservatives brought Catholics, Jews and white ethnics into a coalition and won plenty of battles. After 2024, with Hispanic, Asian and even some Black voters swinging hard to the Republicans, the tent was wide open. They chose race war instead.
Hispanics were alienated by racial profiling in mass deportations, Muslims by a 'civilisational' crusade, Jewish voters by Nazi apologetics tolerated in the ranks. Now it is the Indians' turn.
If the Hispanics and Asians are ever seen off, the Greeks and Italians are next. There is no victory in sight, only eternal conflict.
Polling puts 73% of Americans in favour of immigration. The New Right shouts loudest online, and the volume is a cover for how few they are.
In one line: a movement that treats everyone who looks different as an enemy will eventually look around and find only itself.
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