“I feel like my country is being stolen by people who have come here illegally,” a Tea Party member told researcher Arlie Hochschild. “People come in and have the benefits of taxes, and the money spent on them puts a burden on the state, which makes me have to pay more.” This sentiment that immigrants are freeloaders cutting in line ahead of hardworking Americans was quite common among the people Hochschild interviewed for Strangers in Their Own Land. What struck me reading this was how similar it sounded to recent developments in banning 75 countries from receiving their immigration visas (and yes that means families of US citizens). In both cases, scapegoating vulnerable groups isn’t just morally wrong, it’s a key mechanism of democratic erosion.

In September 2023, Donald Trump told a rally that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Governor Ron DeSantis chartered planes to transport asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard as a political stunt. Texas Governor Greg Abbott deployed National Guard troops to install razor wire at the border in defiance of federal courts. This escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric follows what historian Richard Hofstadter identified as the “paranoid style in American politics.” It’s quite the apocalyptic, conspiratorial worldview that sees political opponents not as people with different policy views, but as existential threats to the nation itself. When combined with the economic resentment Hochschild documents, this scapegoating dynamic actively erodes democratic institutions and norms.

The Paranoid Style Returns

Hofstadter’s 1964 essay described a recurring pattern in American politics: heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy. The paranoid spokesman sees his enemies as part of “a vast and sinister conspiracy” to destroy a way of life. Contemporary anti-immigrant rhetoric fits this framework perfectly. Trump’s “poisoning the blood” language isn’t metaphor, it’s biological determinism borrowed from Nazi ideology. When politicians describe immigration as an “invasion,” they’re constructing immigrants as a military threat. The “Great Replacement Theory” transforms immigration policy into a sinister plot to import voters and eliminate white Christian America.

This represents a dramatic escalation. In 2013, the Republican Party’s own post-election report recommended a more welcoming approach to immigrants. A decade later, leading candidates compete to propose the most extreme measures: mass deportation camps, ending birthright citizenship, deploying the military against asylum seekers, even banning nationals of certain countries from legally immigrating to the United States. It’s safe to say that the paranoid movement has plagued US politics on a mainstream scale.

The Deep Story of Resentment

But why does this rhetoric resonate? Hochschild’s deep ethnographic work in Louisiana reveals what she calls the “deep story” and an emotional narrative that feels profoundly true regardless of facts. The story goes: You’ve worked hard and played by the rules, patiently waiting in line for the American Dream. But the line isn’t moving. Instead, you see others cutting ahead, immigrants, minorities, people on welfare, helped by the federal government. You feel like a stranger in your own land.

Hochschild’s key insight is that this story reflects real economic and cultural displacement, but directs the anger at the wrong target. Her subjects lived in communities poisoned by industrial pollution, with declining prospects and fraying social fabric. Instead of blaming the petrochemical companies or economic policies that gutted their communities, they blamed immigrants and welfare recipients. Political leaders exploited this and managed to convince a lot of people that they’re falling behind because immigrants are cutting in line.

This explains why anti-immigrant rhetoric remains potent even when factually wrong. Studies show immigration has minimal negative effects on native wages and often helps economic growth. Immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. Unfortunately, however, it is much easier to scapegoat a minority of the population and live in a delusion believing the American Dream is possible if it weren’t for the immigrants.

From Rhetoric to Erosion

The combination of Hofstadter’s paranoid style and Hochschild’s deep story creates what Svolik identifies as “pernicious polarization”, and this actively erodes democracy in interconnected ways.

First, it justifies executive overreach. When immigration becomes an existential crisis, normal democratic constraints become obstacles to survival. Trump invoked emergency powers to redirect military funds to his border wall after Congress refused. Abbott deploys Texas National Guard troops in defiance of federal authority and court orders. These are concrete examples of executives using manufactured emergencies to bypass courts and legislatures.

Second, dehumanization corrodes rights and rule of law. When Trump calls asylum seekers “animals” who are “poisoning the blood,” he’s removing them from the category of rights-bearing humans. This made family separation possible, deliberately ripping infants from parents as punishment. It made Title 42 possible, summarily expelling asylum seekers without hearings, violating asylum law and treaty obligations. And the logic spreads: if immigrants don’t deserve due process because they’re “invaders,” who else gets excluded? We’ve seen this in attacks on birthright citizenship, in voter suppression targeting minorities, and in targeting families who seek to bring their children or spouses legally to the United States.

Third, scapegoating creates polarization that makes compromise impossible. As political scientist Milan Svolik shows in “Polarization versus Democracy,” when voters see politics as existential identity conflict rather than policy disagreement, they become willing to overlook democratic norm violations by their own side. If you believe your opponents are deliberately importing foreigners to replace you and destroy your country, compromise becomes betrayal. Anti-immigrant scapegoating transforms immigration, historically bipartisan (Reagan’s amnesty, Bush’s reform efforts) into a litmus test of tribal loyalty.

Finally, it teaches a broader authoritarian playbook: identify a vulnerable group, blame them for complex problems, use the resulting fear to accumulate power. We see this in Florida under DeSantis, who has recently passed a bill restricting sharia law and designating domestic groups, like student run SJP, as terrorists. The pattern is always the same: identify a scapegoat, claim conspiracy, use manufactured panic to justify expanding state power and punishing dissent.

A Threat to our Democracy

Countries that slid from democracy to authoritarianism, Erdoğan’s Turkey, Orbán’s Hungary, Chávez’s Venezuela, followed similar patterns: scapegoat a vulnerable group, use them to justify emergency powers, consolidate institutional control, dismantle checks and balances. When Trump proposes using the military for mass deportations and building massive detention camps, he’s not describing normal democratic politics. He’s describing authoritarian governance, justified by scapegoating immigrants as existential threats.

Reading Hochschild, I kept thinking about my own community and the rhetoric I heard growing up about Arabs as terrorists. It can be a very simple process: take a complex situation, reduce it to good guys versus bad guys, strip the “bad guys” of their humanity using fearmongering tactics, and use that dehumanization to justify increasingly extreme measures. Whether it’s immigrants at the southern border or Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied territories, scapegoating serves the same function, it redirects legitimate grievances away from structural problems and toward vulnerable people who can’t fight back.

Anti-immigrant scapegoating isn’t just offensive. It’s a direct threat to democratic institutions. By exploiting economic anxiety through the paranoid style, politicians normalize authoritarian politics and erode democratic constraints. And the logic doesn’t stop with immigrants. Once you’ve established that some people don’t deserve rights or due process, the circle of exclusion expands. Recognizing scapegoating as a mechanism of democratic erosion and not just a moral failing is essential to defending American democracy. The greatest trick the wealthy can ever pull, is to convince the struggling to blame each other.