Even as the Trump regime appears poised to ultimately lose a number of cases revolving around instant visa revocations for anti-genocide foreign student protestors, Downmarket Mussolini's purse dog at State, Marco Rubio, is looking to expand the tactic to target Chinese foreign students; and the ominous context of this move suggests to me that we might be in for a bumpy ride if this really is going in the direction I think it's headed.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/china-us-revoke-visas-international-students
'This Will Hurt Us As Much As It Hurts Them': Trump Admin Says It Will Revoke Visas of Chinese Students
"The U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday that it is working with the Department of Homeland Security to "aggressively revoke" visas that have been issued to Chinese students—sparking a rebuke from China's government and anxiety among Chinese students.
The Trump administration is endeavoring to revoke visas for students that hail from China, "including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields," according to a short statement from the State Department. "We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong."
Even taken at face value, this policy shift is authoritarian, racist, and alarming. The power Rubio is attempting to exert here is about protecting American national security in the event of a crisis on par with an impeding war; it's not intended as a method for the Trump regime to get back at China for criticism over Downmarket Mussolini's unhinged trade policies. Even under the most benign interpretation of Rubio's actions here, this is still Trump repurposing the apparatus of the American state to prosecute his personal grievances.
Of course, we as observers who just watched the Pork Reich use this exact same process to justify kidnapping and attempting to deport foreign student anti-genocide protestors as part of a larger authoritarian plot to use "fighting antisemitism" as a justification for installing a new McCarthyism, have no reason to assume the most benign scenario here. Are we to expect the US government to begin kidnapping Chinese students and shipping them to ICE private detention hellholes now? If that happens, how do you figure the Chinese government is going to feel about it? Regardless of what you think about Palestine and Hamas, they don't have nukes and international economic power; China does. Does anyone know what the phrase "critical fields," means in this context and does it bother you that it's so vague? Are we worried about Chinese students stealing our crappier AI technology or some bullshit? Does it seem rational to anyone who isn't a Sinophobe nazi to kick a hornet's nest like this one, because Trump had some feel bads about social media posts from Chinese officials?
While I wish I could stop there, in a Project Esther world every bit of repressive policy based on foreign relations and winger anticommunism is a possible vector for ideological policing and the elimination of what the nazis classify broadly as "the radical American left" - a group that includes Democrat politicians and apparently, the hosts of The View. The sleight of hand the regime is employing to conflate anti-Zinonism and opposition to a genocide with anti-Americanism and material support for our "enemies," can be just as easily applied to China and a very broad, Bircher definition of "communism." In fact, I'd argue decades of American anticommunist rhetoric would make that application even easier and more effective in the public discourse. If you take a look at what the folks behind the 1776 Commission, and Project 2025 define as "communism" there's an unreasonable argument that anyone advocating for racial, gender, or social equality is a communist. Ditto for folks advocating for regulations on capitalism, labor rights, or even the separation of church and state; the possibilities are pretty endless given what these folks call "communism." From there it's only a short little hop to "China is communism, therefore communism is China" and you've got a whole new application of Project Esther techniques to work with in your quest to crush all political opposition to the Trump regime.
Are these nazis really prepared to repurpose a global trade struggle with China to install a martial law-style police state? Who knows; but if you listen to guys like Stephen Miller talk for about five minutes, you'll realize why I think assuming they *don't* intend to go the full nine yards, is a very bad idea indeed.
