Authoritarianism Expert Spots Trump Line Showing Who He'll Target After Immigrants
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Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat said there’s a “very precise purpose” for Donald Trump ramping up of his divisive and “fascist rhetoric,” which came under scrutiny again after the former president said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” at a New Hampshire rally this weekend.
The Trump campaign has “made it very clear what they want to do to immigrants,” Ben-Ghiat, a New York University history professor and the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday.
She cited reported planned “mass deportations, mass detentions, likely abuses and violence in those operations” if Trump wins back the White House in 2024.
Trump’s language dehumanizes immigrants and “is a way to get Americans prepared now to accept these repressions later on,” she said. “That’s what’s so terrible and that’s also another thing that’s so fascist about this.”
Ben-Ghiat also suggested immigrants won’t be the only ones targeted.
“Anyone who thinks this isn’t going to bother them because they’re not an immigrant, they’re not going to stop with immigrants,” she said. “I’m quite concerned that he is mentioning what he calls mental institutions and prisons so often. In another speech, he actually talked about the need to expand psychiatric institutions to confine people, and he mentioned special prosecutor Jack Smith as someone who should end up in a ‘mental institution.’”
“This is what fascists and especially communists used to do to critics,” Ben-Ghiat added. “They used to put people who didn’t believe in the propaganda of the state or who were troublemakers into psychiatric institutions. So the swathe of people who are going to be targeted certainly doesn’t stop with immigrants.”
Watch the interview here:
