Former President Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden earlier this week should be a grave reckoning for voters, though I strongly feel that it will not. The blatant racism, xenophobia, and misogyny that was on display is not more of the same old distasteful rhetoric of Trump’s platform. That such a grossness so blatant and unabridged could be platformed in this day and age is a scary and grave indictment on the current status quo of American politics. I am not at all surprised or bewildered by the statements from any one person from the slate of speakers that Trump’s team held. Trump’s agenda is precisely the home to the views promulgated from that podium — referring to Vice President Harris as the antichrist, or the nativist statement “America is for Americans only.” This is Trump’s constituency, and the rally at MSG was not revelatory in that manner. Regardless, it is still imperative to report the danger that Trump’s ideology presents to longstanding political norms of democracy.
Trump’s campaign is one of vengeance. He blames the stark economic inequality which plagues working-class voters, crucial to his coalition, on both the political left who advocate for reform and communities that ultimately hold no correlation with this inequality — namely immigrants from the Global South. Rather than directly addressing the root causes behind the chasm between the wealthiest and the majority of Americans, Trumpism turns to migrants — who make up a key base of labor power for the American economy — and manufactures crises relating to the rights of transgender Americans and their access to proper healthcare. These are only two components out of a large field of rhetoric that Trump and his comrades have deployed, but these are the flagship issues that compose his campaign. Such rhetoric, by nature, is misleading and distractionary. And it is so in a distinct manner akin to fascism.
Trump has spent the past eight years in politics crafting a nativist, white nationalist model of America in the exact manner of every fascist that has preceded him. Alienating and advocating for America to actively exclude migrants from the Global South has no basis in what is economically beneficial for America. Migrants are a key component of a healthy economy in America. As CNBC reported, immigrants will provide an extra $1 trillion to the national economy from 2023 to 2034. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that immigrants without four-year college degrees make up 11 percent of the total US labor force and 36 percent of jobs like fishing, farming, and forestry fields. These jobs are not stolen from native-born U.S. citizens either. We in fact have a large surplus of unfilled jobs throughout the U.S. economy, as the Institute for New Economic Thinking reports. This problem is projected to compound with an overall aging native-born U.S. population too, as we are approaching an “historically low birth-rate.” The economic burden of both pre-existing job vacancies and our aging population is only alleviated by immigration. This has historically been true, and it continues to be so today. If Trump was in the business of fixing the economy, he would not spew the dogma that he currently does.
Trump has intentionally crafted a racist and nativist myth that ultimately boils down to ethnonationalism. As multiple pundits have pointed out, Miller’s phrase “America is for the Americans” is directly taken from the Ku Klux Klan’s rhetorical playbook. Trump and cronies like Miller have relied on the fearmongering Great Replacement theory to organize their political base. This theory, which originated in the 19th century, posits that eliminating racial barriers to full and equal political representation would inevitably lead to white people being repressed under the foot of tyranny and eventually put to extinction by people of color. It is a desperate attempt to spur a political return to the systematized repression of people of color under white supremacy, akin to the Jim Crow political order of the 20th century in America. The Trump movement’s natural affinity with those who stand for such a movement was never far from sight prior to the rally at Madison Square Garden. From the Charlottesville riots in 2016, to George Floyd’s killing in 2020, Trump and the GOP have always taken steps to abet white nationalists, preferring to apologetically refer to them as “fine people,” with legitimate causes rather than denouncing them. The white nationalist culture that has been attached to Trumpism since its creation is not coincidental, but a prescient marker of what Trump has in store if he gets reelected.
Moreso, he is carrying the torch for the tradition of ultranationalist authoritarians of the 19th and 20th centuries. Hitler himself codified a political agenda that was the manifestation of these very anxieties, called the Nuremberg Laws. As the U.S. Holocaust Museum states, “those with ‘Aryan’ [pure white] blood were protected by the law while those with so-called alien blood were relegated to second-class citizenship.” Jason Stanley, a political philosopher who has written extensively on how fascism and propaganda works, cited in a 2022 op-ed for the Los Angeles Times a quote of Benito Mussolini stating: “It is a question of knowing whether in the face of the progress in number and expansion of the yellow and black races, the civilization of the white man is destined to perish.” He expanded in that article to explain that fascist ideology views a state as belonging solely to one ethnic group. Afterward, it pits that ethnic group “against domestic ‘enemies,’ who are against national forms that are racially, ethnically or religiously homogeneous. These domestic ‘enemies’ are invariably institutions and individuals who champion democracy and its ideals.” This is also the Trump 2024 game plan.
Banning books and curriculum in high school and colleges that espouse a historical narrative that is critical of the United States’ record of injustice, Trump’s vision for the country is diametrically opposed to democracy. He is not pitting white Americans against immigrants and other communities of color, but he is pitting them against anyone who refuses to uncritically embrace the country. This is manifested when he said that he wishes to shut down the Department of Education, promising to “stop the abuse of taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth.” Trump is not for democracy. He is not for critical discourse. He wants to enforce a vision of America that dismisses the legacy of slavery, racism, and bigotry and how these legacies continue to manifest in the present day.
The rally at Madison Square Garden serves as a grand flourishing of everything Trump and his comrades have spent years espousing to the American public. This is not new. Trump is a modern day fascist. Instead of extinguishing class disparities, he wants to deploy white Americans against the very migrants of color who provide the economy with a crucial boost. Instead of relishing the democratic ideals like freedom of speech, he wants to centralize the authority of education in order to promulgate a propagandic narrative of America in classrooms. These may seem fanatical or absurd to the everyday voter, but these are not empty threats. Trump represents a very real and threatening dive toward tyranny. This is a last-minute call for everyone who relishes the ability to actively participate in a democratic political system to stand up when it matters most.
