The package of racialized hate toward and virulent opposition to immigrants from the global South has become the main gateway to power for authoritarian and autocratic governments across the globe.

Trump’s remark in Detroit that the country without his leadership will look like Detroit wasn’t misspeak on his part. It was a racist appeal to white people in Michigan and beyond. And it isn’t the first time that a politician played the Detroit race card. It has a long history in Republican circles in Michigan and elsewhere. One would have to go back to Republican governor William Milliken in the seventies to find a Republican politician in Michigan who didn’t.

Looking at some of the posts by people and organizations on facebook a few days ago hailing the “Resistance” and legitimizing the wanton slaughter of 1200 innocents in Israel on October 7 makes me think that these same people and organizations, if they are consistent in their political logic, would argue retrospectively that the attack on the World Trade Center that killed roughly three thousand innocent people and provided a specious rationale for the “forever wars” was a righteous blow against U.S. imperialism.