A Colony in a Nation

by Chris Hayes

Drawing on ample precedent throughout American history, he’s also exported this particular rhetorical device into the question of immigration, shamelessly conflating foreign-born residents with criminality, despite the fact that most studies show immigrants (authorized and unauthorized) commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans.

In cueing voters to associate immigration with criminality, white fear can be set to work its hypnotic magic on immigration the way it has on the “inner city.” Having primed their constituents to fear the denizens of the Colony, politicians sold white people on ever more punitive policies as a means of erecting a barrier that would keep out the hordes. Trump offers his base a literal wall between Mexico and the US. The metaphor made reality.