section_path: Comparisons/Dehumanization and racism
section_name: Dehumanization and racism
paragraph_text: Dehumanization and racism
  
  Trump's embrace of far-right extremism and several statements and actions have been accused of echoing fascism, Nazi rhetoric, far-right ideology, antisemitism, and white supremacy. In 2018, Dr. Mike Cole, emeritus professor in education and equality at Bishop Grosseteste University (UK) stated that Trump's racist and fascistic rhetoric and accompanying agenda targeted at people of color in the US and elsewhere, and his use of Twitter promoted a public pedagogy of hate to add legitimacy to fascism. Cole highlighted neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin 's connections to the alt-right to claim it is a new (neo-) fascist movement, but with links to older fringe white supremacist movements, rather than just a component of right-wing conservatism. Mattias Gardell has argued that Trump's "key fascist vision of national rebirth" featured "banal nationalism, Americanism, nativism, white supremacy, manifest destiny, and racialized discourse and practice". Gardell argues that while most Trump voters were not fascist, his rhetoric featured a return to "fascist elements" of political nostalgia and that a "heterogenous milieu of white nationalists, radical traditionalists, alt-right identitarians, conspiracy exposers, militias, neo-confederates, and sovereign citizens" were knowingly catered to by Trump, which related to an important "affective dimension which fascism frequently caters to".
  
  Trump's comments comparing his political enemies to " vermin " who will be "rooted out" have been compared by several historians to fascistic rhetoric made by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. During a rally in 2023, Trump stated:
  
  In honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country—that lie and steal and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible; they'll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and to destroy the American Dream.
  
  The comments were compared to comments made by Nazi politician Wilhelm Kube in February 1933 in a Nazi propaganda publication where he stated, "The Jews, like vermin, form a line from Potsdamerplatz until Anhalter Bahnhof... The only way to smoke out the vermin is to expel them." They were also compared to Oswald Mosley 's British fascists referring to Jews as "rats and vermin from the gutters of Whitechapel" and a 1934 Hitler interview where he stated, "I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin!"
  
  Responding to critics, Trump's campaign later said that "their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House", which was also criticized for echoing the rhetoric of authoritarian leaders, along with Trump's statement that, "the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within." According to The New York Times, scholars are undecided about whether Trump's more fascist-sounding language is to antagonize the left, an evolution in his beliefs, or the "dropping of a veil". When a reporter asked Trump in 2015 about how his proposed national registry of Muslims would differ from Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews, Trump responded, "you tell me."
  
  Since the fall of 2023, Trump has repeatedly used fascist-sounding rhetoric by stating that undocumented immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country", which has been compared to language echoing that of white supremacists and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. He later claimed that immigrants who commit murder have "bad genes". According to Politico, his rally speeches contain "what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology ". Other fascistic comments include statements that immigrants are the "enemy from within" who are ruining the "fabric" of the country. Trump has stated that some immigrants are "not people", "not humans", and "animals". At rallies, Trump has stated that undocumented immigrants will "rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill" American citizens, that they are "stone-cold killers", "monsters", "vile animals", "savages", and "predators" that will "walk into your kitchen, they'll cut your throat" and "grab young girls and slice them up right in front of their parents". Donald Trump called for the " remigration " of undocumented immigrants in the United States during the 2024 election, a term that is commonly used by European white identitarian movements as a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. On October 27, 2024, Trump held a rally in Madison Square Garden that featured speakers making various racist and dehumanizing remarks, including Tony Hinchcliffe's statement that Puerto Rico was an "island of garbage". The event drew comparisons from media and politicians to the 1939 Nazi rally that took place in the same location. In 2020, Trump told a nearly all-white crowd, "You have good genes... The racehorse theory. You think we're so different?".