Trump and the GOP’s fascist rhetoric has broad appeal, poll finds
Donald Trump’s fascistic rhetoric about how immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, as well as the GOP’s embrace of the “great replacement theory,” are repellent to many Americans. But for a startling number of people, new survey results exclusively provided to Rolling Stone reveal, the message that immigrants pose a dark threat to the nation is being met with enthusiasm — or a dangerous shrug of indifference.
More than a third of Trump’s 2020 voters — 35 percent — agree with Trump’s claim, parroted from fascists before him, that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” according to survey results from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll. Only 32 percent of Trump voters and 37 percent of Republicans outright disagree with the Nazi slogan.
Trump first started using the blood-poisoning rhetoric late last year, ratcheting up his longstanding hateful declarations that migrants are “rapists,” “murderers,” or “animals.” The notion that immigrants are corrupting the national bloodline, though, directly echoes Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Trump believes this fascist rhetoric works for him, and has privately said that “poisoning the blood” is a “great line,” a source previously told Rolling Stone.
A solid 54 percent of Americans disagree with the blood-poisoning sentiment — and 39 percent “strongly.” More worrisome, a full quarter of the country is roughly neutral to it; they “neither agree nor disagree” with the pollster’s phrasing. The survey indicates that Trump’s fashy talk may not deter voters who are not already repelled by the former president. The messaging is, however, decidedly objectionable to Latinos, 64 percent of whom disagree, as well as 80 percent of liberals.
For an academic who oversaw the polling, the results are sobering: “There is a significant market for openly authoritarian ideologies in the United States,” says UMass Amherst political science professor Jesse Rhodes. “It would be naive to think that these ideas will eventually just wither away on their own,” he adds, insisting that those who recognize their danger need to be “persistent and loud in challenging them.” [Continue reading…]