How Trump-Fed Conspiracy Theories About Migrant Caravan Interest With Deadly Hatred

This week’s readings have been centered around changing attitudes towards immigrants in different geographical and demographical contexts. Abrajano and Hajnal (2015) and Hopkins (2010) discuss hypotheses of white and native views about immigration. Both seem to agree that the racial threat hypothesis does not fully characterize trends across the nation in different localities and demographic changes. Abrajano and Hajnal observed that states with larger Latino populations were more concerned about immigration while large Asian populations did not illicit the same effect. Hopkins concluded that negative attitudes resulted from politicized national rhetoric surrounding changes in demographics more so than from interactions with immigrants, while, similarly, Adida (2018) suggested that perspective-taking messaging caused positive views more definitively than proximity with an outgroup. These readings seemed to suggest that one of the most consistent factors impacting outlooks on immigration is politicized messaging. The article linked above provides an example of how specific political messaging about changing demographics permeated local communities and impacted attitudes towards immigration. Peters’ article explains how Trump and his administration’s rhetoric about a caravan of dangerous, malevolent migrants approaching the Southern border has influenced ideologies of local Americans and even inspired acts of hatred in communities like Squirrel Hill. Trump vocalizes and amplifies the ideas of more radical groups, allowing them to be spread nationally and received locally through news organization and his personal Twitter account. The power from this impact can be seen through not just through increasingly negative attitudes evidenced by polling results, but through tangible violence.

Why have these responses to political messaging about immigration so extreme and do you think that if Trump began tweeting perspective-taking messages that local communities would be affected to the same degree?