MSNBC host Ali Velshi compared Americans’ feelings toward illegal immigration to Germany and Rwanda during a segment on his show Tuesday afternoon with NBC News correspondent Morgan Radford.
They were discussing how hot topic issues like health care and immigration could impact the midterms in a from week.
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“When you talk about the economy or you talk about health care, it’s remarkably experiential, right? I often say the economy is your economy, whatever economy you have you’re feeling, right? But immigration is not that to a lot of people. Many people to whom immigration is the highest priority don’t have a negative experience with immigration,” Velshi stated.
“Which is what’s interesting, right? Because I’ve been covering these MAGA rallies. What it seems to boil down to just as a reporter watching this is about safety. Not only safety in terms of your personal and social position but also in terms of your pocketbook and in some cases crime. But we’re kind of seeing people create these oppositions out of things that they’re not necessarily —” Radford responded.
“And otherness, which by the way, we’ve seen all through history, in Germany, in Rwanda, in the Balkans and otherness, when people feel insecure, identify some group,” Velshi added.
While the MSNBC host didn’t specify, his comparison to Rwanda is likely in regards to the Rwandan genocide in the mid-1990s. According to United To End Genocide, approximately 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus were murdered during a “carefully organized program of genocide over 100 days.” (RELATED: Florida Sen. Nelson Compares U.S. Political Climate To Lead Up To Rwandan Genocide)
A picture taken on April 30, 2018, shows collected victims’ bones and skulls from a newly discovered pit which was used as mass grave during 1994 Rwandan genocide and hidden under a house at the local administration office in Kabuga, the outskirts of Kigali, Rwanda. (YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images)
His other comparison to Germany is probably a reference to the Holocaust.
Redford continued, “And the cognitive dissonance, right? I’m sitting there interviewing a woman at the last MAGA rally and she says, you know, I don’t mind Latinos, looking at me, but, you know, they have a very matriarchal society she says and I even like their food, but I don’t want them coming here if they cross the border. So it’s an interesting kind of like cognitive dissonance you see with maybe someone you haven’t met before.”