Trump's Dehumanization Of Migrants Is A Warning Americans Shouldn't Ignore
Trump's demagoguery, and the second-term agenda this rhetoric seeks to justify, emulates historic authoritarian regimes. Dehumanizing rhetoric always preludes dehumanizing policy.
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At a rally in Ohio this past weekend, Donald Trump ramped up his dehumanizing disinformation campaign targeting immigrants.
Trump falsely claimed that countries are emptying prisons and sending “young people” to our border. Then, he corrected himself. Trump appeared to believe that calling these migrants “people” was too complimentary.
Trump said, “If you call them people, I don’t know if you call them people. In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion. But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.”
“These are bad — these are animals, ok,” he added. “And we have to stop it.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has sought to strip migrants of their humanity. During his presidency, Trump called undocumented immigrants, who were gang-affiliated, “animals.”
The defense of these comments attempts to draw a distinction, claiming Trump is only referring to migrants who commit violent crimes as "animals.” But Trump, who launched his presidential campaign in 2015 by calling Mexican migrants rapists, constantly conflates law-abiding, asylum-seeking migrants with criminals.
The attempted distinction rings hollow. It’s clear Trump believes anyone who crosses the border, including those seeking legal asylum, is a criminal attempting to circumvent the immigration process and “invade” America.
Trump’s effort to dehumanize migrants has long been a core component of his political message. But in his 2024 campaign, his rhetoric is reaching dangerous new levels to match his unhinged, authoritarian immigration promises.
It also comes amid a renewed Great Replacement theory push by Republicans and right-wing figures like Elon Musk who claim Democrats are seeking to radically change the demographics of America.
At a rally in New Hampshire in December, Trump repeated his claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Notably, he only mentioned immigrants from majority non-white countries:
“They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
This rhetoric not only reads like it’s straight from a white supremacist terrorist’s manifesto, it directly echoes Nazi Dictator Adolf Hitler. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote: “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.” Hitler was talking about Jewish people and other groups he targeted as “undesirable.”
In an interview with Fox News that aired this past Sunday, Trump was directly asked why he continues to use rhetoric that draws comparisons to fascist dictators. Trump responded by doubling down.
Fox News host Howard Kurtz asked Trump: “Why do you use words like ‘vermin’ and ‘poisoning of the blood’? The press, as you know, immediately reacts to that by saying, ‘Well, that’s the kind of language that Hitler and Mussolini used.’”
“Because our country is being poisoned,” Trump responded.
Trump then went on a diatribe continuing to claim, without any evidence, that other countries are sending migrants to America from prisons and mental institutions. Of course, the data doesn’t back that up. The New York Times fact-checked Trump’s claims of '“migrant crime”:
Evidence does not support that. According to border officials, most migrants are families fleeing violence and poverty, and despite a few high-profile cases, data show no increase in crime attributable to immigration. Crime rates, including that of murder, declined last year.
Trump, of course, knows what he’s saying is false. But facts never get in the way of his demagoguery.
By overtly quoting fascist dictators of the 20th century, Trump’s dehumanization of migrants draws on an age-old authoritarian strategy. Scapegoating the “other” in a bid to consolidate power can be seen in regime after regime, most notably in Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
This tactic is not only being used as a fear-mongering maneuver to gain power. It’s seeking to lay the groundwork and garner public support for the absolute depravity Trump plans to unleash on migrants if he wins re-election.
As we know, Trump says he will be a dictator on day one, calls people who disagree with him “vermin,” claims all non-white immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and promises he’ll jail his opponents. He’s repeated this multiple times, all while promising to detain millions of immigrants in camps using local police and the National Guard, implement ideological screenings, end birthright citizenship, end student visas for people participating in pro-Palestine protests, and expand on his previous administration’s Mulsim ban.
It was in May 2018 when Trump first called undocumented immigrants who were gang members “animals.” This is important because it was right as his administration issued its zero-tolerance policy, which systemically separated migrant families at the border.
Trump used this same tactic with Muslims, repeatedly equating the religion as a whole with terrorists. Then, he entered office and issued an illegal Muslim ban in week one of his presidency.
You see the pattern? Trump’s dehumanizing rhetoric always preludes dehumanizing policy.
Americans should not allow themselves to fall for this fear-mongering and should not support this vicious response to migrants. There are other ways to address this. President Biden and a bipartisan group of lawmakers sought to resolve the problem at the border, but Trump tanked the bill precisely so he could use these fear-mongering tactics to fuel his campaign.
Americans need to see this for what it is and also put it within the context of the agenda this rhetoric is seeking to justify.
This hostility to migrants is disgusting. Americans who back Trump need to express more empathy. A lot of the folks egging Trump’s behavior on are people who were lucky enough to be born in safe environments. Trump supporters need to project themselves into the situation of a migrant parent who is fleeing violence and poverty. They see no way out. Wouldn’t you do the exact same for your kid if you were born in that situation?
That migrant parent or kid could easily have been Trump if he hadn’t been born in America to rich parents. Trump should read the Bible of the religion whose evangelical followers he exploits to gain power:
“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself…”
Leviticus 19:33-34
The majority knows trump is full of shit. The majority of immigrants coming here are grateful for peace and prosperity, earned. Free from harm in elections. The Wealthy are threatened with 25% tax charges come next year and this is the motivation to end our Democracy.
This is not something ignore. We are all reading or seeing outlandish dangerous rhetoric in America, these last 9 years.