To understand how conservatives endorse the Trump administration’s actions, we must address a particular strategy that the right-wing uses to justify their attacks against minority groups. This tactic, called fearmongering, involves spreading irrational fears of minorities’ intentions and actions.
Italian cultural critic and political commentator Umberto Eco describes elements of fascism in his 1995 essay entitled “Ur-Fascism.” Eco stresses that fascism grows by “exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference.”
Eco’s warning remains disturbingly relevant today. By exaggerating the differences between us, the Trump administration justifies its actions against historically marginalized groups such as queer people, immigrants and African Americans.
Donald Trump has made several claims regarding unnaturalized immigrants. One such example is when he made this xenophobic remark during an interview with Raheem Kassam in 2023:
“We know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions, insane asylums. We know they’re terrorists. Nobody has seen anything like what we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country.”
The statistics tell a different story, however. Reuters cites a study published by Stanford University, “Law-Abiding Immigrants: The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-born, 1870–2020,” by Ran Abramitzky. The study finds that immigrants have had a lower incarceration rate than U.S. citizens over the last 150 years, “with recent waves of immigrants being 50–60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born men.”
Reuters cites another study, “Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born U.S. citizens in Texas,” by Michael Light, which found lower felony arrest rates among illegal immigrants as opposed to legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens. Trump uses his unsubstantiated claims regarding immigrants to call for mass deportations of people in the U.S. without legal status. According to an article from NPR News entitled “ICE has arrested scores of migrants in the U.S. who have no criminal records,” Trump began mass immigration sweeps across the country on his first day of office.
Because there is no fact-based way to garner support for overly stringent border security and mass deportations, the idea that illegal immigrants are inherently dangerous is a cornerstone of Trump’s rhetoric. In addition to demonizing immigrants, the Trump administration also takes advantage of the controversy surrounding the LGBTQ+ community, particularly trans people. For example, in one of Trump’s executive orders, he asserts that “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex,” according to the Associated Press. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s statements are not accurate. The Endocrine Society lays out a step-by-step pathway for gender-affirming care, none of which includes giving children drugs to sterilize them. Though sterility is a risk, it is something to be discussed between the parent, child and doctor when considering the treatment.
It is easy to understand why many people are concerned about gender-affirming care being given to minors. It is rational to be skeptical about the risks of altering natural processes in the body and the damage that may be done as a result.
However, research indicates that the benefits outweigh the perceived risks. A study published in the Wiley Online Library by Zoë Aldridge and colleagues indicates a significant reduction in levels of depression in transgender people taking gender-affirming hormone therapy over the course of eighteen months of treatment. For a population plagued with higher rates of depression, this kind of treatment is not only necessary, but lifesaving as well. Instead of allowing modern science to guide his actions, the Trump administration uses charged language to demonize an already vulnerable group of people.
Trump’s fearmongering tactics do not target only immigrants and LGBTQ+ individuals. Because the Trump administration does not have any factual basis for its hostility against these groups, they gain support by instilling their followers with fear. The scapegoating of marginalized groups is part of a push to attack human rights, a broader theme of fascism that we will discuss in the next article of this column.
