As Donald Trump deteriorates
and his grasp on power fades,
he has been lashing out furiously
at female journalists and ethnic groups, most recently Somali Americans.
His insults land because of their animosity and his power,
not their accuracy.
Likewise, his administration’s attacks on immigrants are sloppy and driven by lies.
It’s strikingly clear that the target is not individuals with criminal records.
It’s anyone and everyone guilty of being brown.
Native Americans with tribal identification cards,
US citizens,
people doing crucial work from construction to nursing,
military veterans,
college students,
people sleeping in their own beds,
small children:
all kinds of residents of this country are under attack.
“ICE raids are cruel, inhumane, and do nothing to serve public safety,”
declares Zohran Mamdani,
the New York City mayor-elect.
Masked thugs smashing car windows and dragging parents away from their babies,
terrorizing whole swathes of the population,
and interfering with the ability of schools and businesses to function
does the opposite.
The rounds of targeted hatred by Trump and his minions
– for people from Haiti during the 2024 campaign,
for people from Venezuela this spring and summer,
and most recently for people from Somalia
– rely on defamatory lies and insults,
because the facts about these groups don’t support the hate.
This terrorizing and demonizing pretends to be in service of recreating a white America -- that never existed.
The US when white supremacists like Trump were young was whiter,
but this was never a white country.
In 1776, the 13 colonies that became the United States included a significant percentage of Black and Indigenous people
(some southern states were a third or more Black).
When the US annexed Texas in 1844 and then in 1848 took Mexico’s whole northern half,
a Spanish-speaking population was already settled across parts of what’s now the south-west and California.
The first African Muslim in what is now the United States came in a Spanish expedition almost a century before the Mayflower brought its fanatical Puritans to the shores of Massachusetts in 1620.
The persecution of huge numbers of brown people and even the mass deportations will not create the white country of far-right fantasy.
Los Angeles, for example is an almost 50% Latino city,
and despite the ICE and border patrol outrages, arrests, imprisonments and deportations,
it remains so.
The city’s very name is Spanish,
a reminder of who was here first.
All the hatred, all the persecution, seems like the panic of racists pretending they can stop the future of this country no longer being majority white through
sheer cruelty.
the Guardian
Trump wants to recreate a white America that never existed | Rebecca Solnit
The persecution of brown people and mass deportations will not create the white country of far-right fantasy
