


This morning, the President of the United States tweeted out a FOX News link to a New York Post link which tweets a “study” that purportedly proves how Donald Trump’s exorbitantly expensive and utterly useless $18 billion border wall will “pay for itself,” which conveniently excuses the president’s inability to force Mexico to pay for the wall, as he has promised over and over again.

It arrives at that conclusion by playing on deplorable racist stereotypes, arguing that the federal government will somehow save $18 billion by preventing the arrival of undocumented immigrants who will then leech off of our welfare system once they get settled in the United States.

“According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the $18 billion wall will pay for itself by curbing the importation of crime, drugs and illegal immigrants who tend to go on the federal dole…” https://t.co/NdLC6jZwWE — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018

Add your name to tell Trump: We don’t need your fascist military parade in the United States of America!

This “study” was produced by the Center for Immigration Studies, a far-right wing think tank that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group for their embrace of white nationalist and racist writers.

It was founded in 1985 by John Tanton, a professional racist, Holocaust denier, and eugenics advocate who has founded an entire network of anti-immigrant/white nationalist advocacy groups in order to fight immigration “on the grounds of population reduction and protection of an ethnic white majority”.

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This study is one of the more prominent examples of “fake science” that is being created specifically to support the false premises of “fake news” stories, to distort the truth and to play on the liberal faith in scientific fact in order to give legitimacy and justification to racist and fascist agendas.

Activist and researcher Emily Gorcenski took to Twitter following Trump’s tweet to give a quick primer on fake science and share her own experience with the phenomenon.

So this "Center for Immigration Studies" tweet is an interesting intersection of my politics and my tech activism. I have a talk that I give on Fake Science sometimes. — Emily G, Cville. (@EmilyGorcenski) March 13, 2018

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This is a very specific subset of Data Science ethics. It also has come to intersect with my anti-white supremacy activism. There are groups like the Center for Immigration Research and the Ulster Institute for Social Research that have perfected this art. — Emily G, Cville. (@EmilyGorcenski) March 13, 2018

The pattern goes like this: appropriate scientific language, naming conventions and the like. Find racist statisticians. Find data that has a kernel of truth to it, and then apply backhanded statistics until you arrive at the conclusions you want to arrive at. — Emily G, Cville. (@EmilyGorcenski) March 13, 2018

But it's clear that it is working. Fake Science becomes a driver for legitimizing Fake News. And now Fake Science is being tweeted straight from the thumbs of the Presidency to legitimize racist, fascist policies. — Emily G, Cville. (@EmilyGorcenski) March 13, 2018

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It goes without saying that the “facts” in the “study” by CIS have very little basis in reality; the CATO Institute, a conservative think tank, did a real statistical study that shows that immigrants are the least likely group to take advantage of welfare and directly refutes that accusations put out by CIS.

In fact, undocumented immigrants contribute much more in taxes than they reap in benefits, likely paying much higher proportions of their income in taxes than the wealthy millionaires who use their ill-gotten riches to fund hate groups like the CIS and to produce fake science for extremists.

President Trump has been shameless about using his administration to repress legitimate scientific research and to cast doubt on the veracity of critical journalism; the logical next step is to fill that void with ersatz mockeries that only serve his own twisted and disgustingly selfish agenda.

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