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How Trump’s anti‑migrant rhetoric masks US racial capitalism

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* 
“India, China are hell holes,” posted President Trump on his Truth Social account. He claimed that Indian and Chinese migrants “have done more damage to this nation than all the mafia families put together. Gangsters with laptops. They’ve robbed us blind, treated us like second-class citizens, let the ‘turd world’ triumph, stepped on our flag, et cetera.” Such outrageous, racist rants should surprise no one. 
They fit a well-established pattern in his regressive attacks on women, minorities, and migrants. His diatribes serve to divert public attention from failures of American leadership at home and abroad. There is method in the madness: Trump is speaking to millions of supporters who share and celebrate his anti-migrant views.  
Yet these views are not aberrations. They are part of a broader message of racial capitalism in the United States. Wage inequality, occupational segregation, limited career growth, and the concentration of Black men and women in low-paid jobs reveal systemic discrimination embedded in the racialised capitalist order. White families control nearly eighty-five percent of American wealth, while Black and Hispanic families together hold barely six percent. 
The racial wealth divide, rooted in ownership and control, is far wider than the wage gap. American capitalism, represented by Trump and his ruling elites, offers no policy alternative to this racist system. It is easier to divide people along racial lines than to confront the structural inequities of wealth and wages. The elites follow the colonial path of divide and govern.  
Within this asymmetry, Asian migrants stand out as among the most hardworking, skilled, and successful communities in the US. They excel in income, home ownership, and access to health and education. Their contributions are central to American capitalism, yet white supremacist politics cannot accept their rise on the racialised ladders of economy and society. This is the context in which Trump hurls his rants against Indian and Chinese immigrants.  
Most alarming is his claim that “almost all the internal mechanisms are set up to be run by Indians and Chinese.” He frames this within California’s technology industry, suggesting that Indians and Chinese dominate ownership and control. Historically, such rhetoric echoes Nazi Germany’s antisemitic conspiracy theories that Jews controlled the state and economy. Those falsehoods led to the Holocaust, exterminating Jewish populations across Europe. 
Trump’s assertion that white ownership in California’s tech industry is nil is not only factually wrong but historically dangerous. It mirrors fascist propaganda that fueled mass murder. By spreading such lies, Trump stokes racial hatred while concealing the failures of racialised American capitalism, which has denied prosperity and peace to its citizens.  
This is not merely about Trump the showman or his views on Indians, Chinese, and migrants. It is about the erosion of peace, solidarity, and stability in American social, political, and economic life, driven by the racialised system he represents. 
To blame Trump alone is a mistake. His worldview is manufactured by institutions that seek to hide the failures of American capitalism and its imperialist wars, which have killed more than twelve million people, maimed millions more, and left countless destitute across the globe. 
American capitalism produces hunger, homelessness, death, and despair. Racialised capitalism is the true “hellhole” for the American people, while American imperialism is the “gateway to hell” for populations across continents.  
Solidarity remains the only strategy to mobilise the masses, defeat Trump’s worldview, and reform progressive America. It is the path toward secular prosperity, economic growth, and political empowerment of citizens, while contributing to world peace by dismantling racialised capitalism and resisting US-led imperialism.  
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*Academic based in UK  

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