Wannabe Dictator, Autocrat, Authoritarian, King...It's All Semantics - Part VII - Vilifies Marginalized Groups

The New York Times recently published an article Are We Losing Our Democracy? where they looked at various signs of dictatorship or autocracy and whether we had crossed that line. (I also provided the text in a Facebook post for those without NY Times access). I am going to look at each segment in turn and provide my own thoughts. 

#7 - Vilifies Marginalized Groups

Authoritarians tend to demean minority groups, trying to turn them into a perceived threat that provides a justification for a leader to amass power. Mr. Trump has repeatedly suggested that marginalized groups are responsible for the nation’s problems.

Trump has had, from the day he announced his candidacy in 2015, a hatred for immigrants. Not just criminal immigrants, not just those here illegally, but all immigrants. This goes beyond the arguably legitimate desire to secure the borders and to properly vet anyone wanting to come here. He has characterized immigrants as "poisoning the blood" of the nation; called them animals; referred to some nations as "shithole countries"; he framed previous surges as "an invasion"; he has recently focussed on Somalis, saying "their country stinks" and called them "garbage". The crackdown by ICE seems to be designed to not only carry out the law, but to humiliate and dehumanize those who are caught in its net.

One of his executive orders issued on Inauguration Day was an attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.  If the Supreme Court agrees with him, children born in the United States will effectively be stateless, creating a permanent class of people with no right to be here, and no home to go to. 

He has vilified transgender Americans and barred them from military service. He has fired women and people of color from leadership posts and ended programs that promote workplace diversity. His administration has attempted to erase aspects of Black history, including by removing books on slavery and segregation from military libraries and pressuring Smithsonian museums to minimize those subjects. At the same time, he has suggested that white people and Christians are victims, which echoes the autocratic habit of claiming that majority groups are in fact oppressed.

His focus on eliminating anything related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, and erasing anything that he labels as "woke", rolls back decades of civil rights advances. 

By attacking powerless populations and erasing the historical record of depredations against them, by turning them into a bogeyman responsible for all the nations problems, he is creating a scapegoat to distract from his own shortcomings. 

Part I - Stifling Dissent and Free Speech

Part II - Persecution of Political Opponents

Part III - Bypassing the Legislature

Part IV - Using The Military For Domestic & Political Purposes

Part V - Defies The Courts

Part VI - Declares National Emergencies Under False Pretenses