Trump Is No Aberration. Xenophobia Is As American As Apple Pie

Americans have a proverbially short memory, and they think the whole world suffers from the same condition. Whether living inside or outside of the US at the mercy of this collective American amnesia, and the unremitting violence it entails, the world needs a much longer memory to survive the chaos Washington is visiting upon it.  

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month that the State Department had revoked at least 300 student visas, as the Trump administration continues to target students with a moral compass. 

Rubio himself was born in 1971 to Cuban parents in Florida who were not yet US citizens at the time. Perhaps he repressed that memory in order to succeed in the xenophobic world of American politics. 

This xenophobia is definitive to American political culture. You can go back to World War II, when the US government arrested, relocated and incarcerated some 120,000 Americans in internment camps, just because they were of Japanese descent. 

You can go way back in history, to when white European settlers engaged in a vicious slave trade to rob Native Americans of their homeland, transforming their newly conquered territories into a haven for white supremacy.  

Across the country’s blood-soaked history, you can recall the cruelty and cultural genocide of Native American boarding schools, where young children were abducted from their families in an attempt to reengineer them into semblances of white people: “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man,” one of the most vicious slogans declared.  

Indeed, targeting vulnerable foreign students or migrant labourers for harassment, abuse and deportation is second nature to US ruling regimes - as American as their sugar-infested apple pie.  

Vengeance unleashed

The white European settlers who call themselves “Americans” do not like people who do not look like them - a running leitmotif across the entirety of American history. Such literary and political masterpieces as James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1963) are moral testimonials to this fact.  

President Donald Trump did not invent this particular brand of American cruelty; he is just carrying it to its vicious ends. There is now a systematic crescendo of demonising Trump by the entire institution of liberal imperialism. Embarrassed by his refreshing vulgarity, they are using it as camouflage to exonerate the rest of American history - as if it was a haven of grace, kindness and generosity towards foreigners.  

Trump is a thoroughly and irredeemably American Goliath. Look at every single US president over the past century: which one was exactly welcoming to foreign students or scholars, unless they were Europeans helping to build the atom bomb? 

The fake feud between American Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, is entirely irrelevant when it comes to their common racist stance

The white supremacy that rules this country, and is itself made up entirely of foreigners, detests other foreigners who might look slightly different than them.  

Long before Trump yielded to the genocidal Zionists gathered gleefully at his royal court, unleashing their vengeance against college campuses where people were protesting Israeli state terrorism against Palestinian civilians, previous US presidents were also targeting foreign students.  

Back in the 1970s under the late President Jimmy Carter, Iranian students were ordered to report to federal authorities and have their visas checked and reconfirmed, under threat of deportation - all for the crime of a revolution unfolding halfway around the globe in their homeland. 

Longer memory

Trump’s predecessor, former President Barack Obama, provided the blueprint for the so-called Muslim ban. Americans should be fully aware that the seven Muslim-majority nations targeted in Trump’s executive order were first identified as “countries of concern” under the Obama administration.    

The fake feud between American Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, is entirely irrelevant when it comes to their common racist stance against recent immigrants, as they actively repress their own recent or distant roots. All Rubio has to do is look in a mirror to see where his family came from, before he demonises and deports other recent immigrants.  

Under the second Trump administration, the world is witnessing the most vicious attack yet on Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students, who are justly outraged by the new wave of genocidal Zionism slaughtering their friends and families in Gaza and across their tormented homeland. Trump is simply using the precedent set by previous presidents, from Carter to Obama, against people with a moral compass.  

Former President Franklin D Roosevelt, who ordered the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, was a Democrat; Trump is a Republican. For the people at the mercy of their xenophobic cruelty, it makes no difference.  

Carter wanted to appear as if he was acting against the hostage-takers in Iran. Obama portrayed the seven Muslim-majority countries as havens for terrorists, while arming Israel to the teeth to terrorise the region and slaughter Palestinians. Trump is targeting anyone who opposes the unfolding genocide, continuing the Biden administration’s unwavering support for the slaughter in Gaza. While their specific political motives might differ, the common thread of American xenophobia unites them all. 

Indeed, suspicion of foreign students is an expression of a sustained course of deeply rooted American racism and white supremacy. But if Trump and his Zionist enablers really think they can silence the whole world by abducting and deporting a few foreign students on US campuses, they are delusional. 

Summoning a much longer memory, we can see that Trump is a direct descendent of all previous US presidents and the country’s sustained record of xenophobia. We, the wretched of the earth, with no ruling state to our names, must stay the course, speaking our steadfast truth to their flimsy power.  

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.