Trump's Ambition for a White America Is a Historical Fiction

As the political power of Donald Trump diminishes and his public demeanor becomes more erratic, there has been an escalation in vitriolic attacks aimed at women in media and racial minorities, with Somali Americans as a recent focal point. These disparaging remarks gain traction stems from the animosity behind them and his position, not their factual accuracy. In a parallel manner, the government's actions against immigrants are haphazard and founded on falsehoods. The evidence makes it obvious that the goal extends beyond targeting those who have committed crimes. The true target is anyone with brown skin.

From Native Americans with official tribal documentation to naturalized US citizens, individuals performing critical jobs in construction and healthcare to military veterans, college students, people in their own homes, and very young children: a wide array of the country's population is under siege.

"Immigration enforcement raids are brutal, inhumane and do nothing for community security," asserts a prominent New York City official. The spectacle of masked agents shattering windows and separating parents from children, instilling fear and hindering the function of institutions, undermines safety entirely.

The cycles of calculated hatred—directed at Haitians during the election, Venezuelan migrants this spring, and now Somalis—rely extensively on defamatory falsehoods and slurs. This is because: the truthful data about these groups of people cannot support such hostility.

The Imaginary White Nation Versus Actual History

This campaign of terror and demonization purports to aim at recreating a uniformly white United States which is a fiction. While the US was demographically whiter in the youth of today's white supremacists, it never constituted a purely white nation. In 1776, the thirteen founding colonies included a significant percentage of Black and Indigenous peoples—certain states in the South had Black populations exceeding a third.

When the United States expanded, taking Texas in the 1840s and acquiring northern Mexico in 1848, it incorporated a large Spanish-speaking population already living across the modern Southwest and California. Historical records show the initial Muslim of African descent in territory that became the U.S. came as part of a Spanish exploration party nearly a century prior to the Mayflower's Puritan passengers reached the shores of New England in 1620.

Demographic Realities Against Coercive Fantasies

The persecution of vast numbers of brown-skinned individuals and even mass deportations cannot fabricate the all-white nation of extremist imagination. A city like Los Angeles, for instance, is close to 50% Hispanic, and regardless of aggressive enforcement, detentions and removals, its character persists. The city's very name is Spanish, an enduring reminder of who was there first.

The entirety of this animus and oppression resembles the panic of racists who pretend they can stop the coming changes of a country that is ceasing to be predominantly white by using pure cruelty.

It is coupled with an attack on abortion access that is, sometimes, explicitly designed to prompt Caucasian women to bear more babies. The argument points to a below-replacement birthrate in the US, a phenomenon less impactful than in other countries because of a hard-working population of immigrant laborers that sustains the economy. However, rather than providing the social support that could ease the burdens of parenthood, the approach is punitive and coercive.

An noted writer notes that the reproductive politics of certain political figures—along with insults aimed at women without children—constitute a form of pronatalism. This ideology "usually combines worries about declining birth rates with opposition to immigration and anti-feminist viewpoints."

In a similar vein, reporting indicates that "efforts to bolster the birth rate do not compensate for broader policies aimed at slashing government assistance initiatives like healthcare for the poor and insurance for kids. The so-called 'pro-family' focus isn't merely about encouraging procreation. Instead, it is utilized as a tool to push a right-wing political program that endangers the health of women, reproductive rights, and economic participation."

Incoherent Policies and Widespread Resistance

The combination of anti-immigrant and pro-birth policies constitute an effort to forcibly alter the country's population future. Ultimately, both amount to foolish bullying by proponents of hate who inadvertently reveal that their assertions of being better must be based on skin color and sex; without these constructs, their positions devolve into incoherent nonsense.

A lot of the reasoning offered by the Trump team does not match up with observable realities and actual outcomes. For example, maritime attacks in the southern Caribbean often target tiny boats not confirmed to be carrying narcotics and not able of reaching US shores. Similarly, Venezuela's involvement in the fentanyl trade is negligible, and its involvement with cocaine is much smaller than that of other South American nations.

The administration's stance extends to climate issues, with a rejection of "climate change ideology" and "Net Zero goals." An emotional attachment to coal and oil, especially coal mining, leading to policies that force communities to invest in obsolete and toxic energy sources while sabotaging affordable, clean alternatives. At the same time, health officials have advanced anti-scientific dietary schemes while eroding general public health safeguards.

The core premise of the attacks on immigrants is that non-white individuals not born in the US are threatening outsiders. Yet, from coast to coast—from Los Angeles to Charlotte, from Chicago to Portland—the government's own forces, immigration enforcement personnel, whom local communities view as the unwelcome, violent invaders.

No symbol is more powerful of the widespread rejection of these tactics than the thousands of people mobilizing, demonstrating, facing danger and detention to protect their communities. Municipality after municipality has stood up in protection of its people. No amount of derogatory language or intimidation can change that reality.