Old demons, new times

An American leader denounces new immigrants as “generally the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation,” and warns: “They will soon so out number us ... (and we) will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious.”

No, that was not Donald Trump. It was Benjamin Franklin, fulminating about the influx of Germans into Pennsylvania in 1753. But it certainly sounds like Trump, a very American figure, the latest in a long line of demagogues who have demonized immigrants to terrorize voters and gain political advantage. 

Like the hate-mongers who preceded him, Trump attacks foreigners because the tactic works. In a new ABC poll, 56% of voters support his plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, and that includes one-third of Latinos — mainly younger men born in this country.

As the election approaches, Trump’s “racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker,” reports Politico. A prime example came last week, when Trump addressed a rally in Aurora, a Denver suburb where many immigrants from Venezuela have recently settled. 

Kamala Harris, Trump thundered, has “imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world. ... And she has had them resettled, beautifully, into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens.”

Like much of what Trump says, this is a bold-faced lie. As Reuters reports: “A range of studies by academics and think tanks have shown that immigrants do not commit crime at a higher rate than native-born Americans.” 

And the Republican mayor of Aurora, Mike Coffman, directly contradicted Trump: “The concerns about Venezuelan gang activity in our city — and our state — have been grossly exaggerated and have unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety.”

Trump earned a similar rebuke from the Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, when he insisted that Haitian immigrants in the city of Springfield were stealing jobs and pets from local residents. 

“The Haitians who are in Springfield are legal,” the governor told ABC. “They came to Springfield to work. ... And Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies. ... What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there, and frankly, that’s helped the economy.”

These facts don’t matter to Trump, who has based his entire career on stoking nativist anxiety and anger. He entered politics by claiming — repeatedly and falsely — that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and disqualified from being president. When he announced his own campaign in 2015, he denounced Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers, and one of his first acts as president in 2017 was to ban refugees from several Muslim countries.

“He’s been taking Americans and his followers on a journey since really 2015 conditioning them ... step by step instilling hatred in a group, and then escalating,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who studies authoritarianism and fascism, told Politico. “So immigrants are crime. Immigrants are anarchy. They’re taking their jobs, but now they’re also animals who are going to kill us or eat our pets or eat us. That’s how you get people to feel that whatever is done to them, as in mass deportation, rounding them up, putting them in camps, is OK.”

At the core of Trumpism is the idea that immigrants are inferior beings with “bad genes,” who are degrading the national character and “poisoning the blood” of America with both physical threats (fentanyl, murder, COVID-19) and alien ideas (globalism, Marxism, non-Christian religions). 

During World War II, that fear of foreigners led to the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, one of the most shameful episodes in our nation’s history. The law Trump wants to employ to deport immigrants is the same statute that was used to force those citizens out of their homes and into camps. 

In 1988, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which apologized for that grave injustice and allotted reparations for survivors of the camps. The act cited “racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and a lack of political leadership” as the causes of the incarceration, and in signing the measure, Ronald Reagan declared: “For here we admit a wrong; here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.”

It took America more than 40 years to recognize and rectify that wrong. In less than four weeks, the country will make another decision about another political leader preaching prejudice and hysteria.

Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at [email protected].