Are Far-Right Extremists Preparing to Target Latinos?

A recent arrest in Illinois reminds us just how pervasive far-right extremism has become

Dalton Mattus, 34 | Courtesy of Peking Police Department

On May 17, a vehicle was pulled over for a traffic violation in the former sundown town of Pekin, Illinois. In an article posted by Justin Glawe in the American Doom newsletter and published in conjunction with Rolling Stone, 34-year-old Dalton Mattus was a passenger in the vehicle when police say they found a canvas bag under his seat. After an officer asked Mattus what was in the bag, Mattus responded saying they would have to get a warrant to search it.

Police then took the bag and let Mattus leave while they obtained a warrant. Once they opened the bag they found a handgun and two homemade pipe bombs loaded with BBs. Mattus, who is a felon, was charged with felon in possession of a weapon, prompting officers to go to his house and arrest him. But not before a standoff at the home where they found more pipe bombs.

While police haven’t said anything about what they thought Mattus was going to use the pipe bombs for, he did tell them that he had them for protection from “undocumented immigrants and a corrupt government,” according to a local radio station. And despite police saying he’s not a threat to the general public, a judge thought otherwise and denied Mattus a pretrial release

His social media suggests he fell into the far-right conspiracy theory rabbit hole as COVID was wreaking havoc on the world’s population. It seems to have begun with the anti-lockdown protests that I helped expose as far-right hate group-driven events. Those so-called “protests” were riddled with a coalition of

conspiracy theorists that peddled everything including rantings about chemtrails, QAnon, election lies, and various anti-government ramblings.

But the bigger problem here is noted in his fear of immigrants, Latino immigrants in particular.

I say Latino immigrants because the nature of the anti-immigrant rhetoric we hear in politics, on social media, and in the news media is Latnophobic in nature. Everyone in the United States knows precisely what I’m talking about. When you hear the term “illegal immigrant” everyone automatically thinks of Latin American and Caribbean immigrants. We see and hear it.

There are at least two reasons for this.

The first is that most people know in the back of their minds that Latin American and Caribbean asylum-seekers come to the United States largely because of oppressive U.S. policy in the region. The second is because of the language used, the countries mentioned, and the people mentioned in news stories represent Latin American and Caribbean Islanders. Even right-wing fears of Middle Eastern, Chinese, and African immigrants were short-lived.

Conspiracy theory about ‘importing’ immigrants to rig the presidential election found recently on encrypted social media channels

The language remains centered around Latin American immigrants due to outright fears of the browning of America bolstered by statistics that show Latinos are now outnumbering white people - ever so slightly - in places like Texas. You don’t have to look far to see where (and why) Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s extreme xenophobic anti-Latino policies started. It could be argued that this is where the public’s perceptions and corporate media narratives shifted too.