Writing in 1947, shortly after the Nazi-occupation (which he fled) and concentration camps, the German sociologist Theodor Adorno identified “victim blaming” as an essential element of the fascist character and a priceless asset of authoritarian leaders: The most vulnerable and marginalized were said to be responsible for their misfortune. And their differences and deficiencies were deemed dangerous to the authoritarian leader, his followers, and their state. These followers, who themselves felt aggrieved, could be and were mobilized to discriminate against their dangerous inferiors and, over time, brutalize and exterminate them.
So it was in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. So it still is in countries like Iran and Afghanistan, where abused women are harshly punished as immoral provocateurs. And so it appears to be becoming now, in Donald Trump’s America.
Hitler, who used thousand-year-old anti-Semitic slurs — Jews poisoning the pure blood of Aryans — was conscious and deliberate in his demonization of the vulnerable, who came to include Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, and the physically and mentally disabled. It's not clear that Trump is deliberately singling out his victims, but the consistency, quantity, and dangerous consequences of his words and actions are inescapable.
For years, Trump’s contempt has been glaringly apparent: in the mocking of a disabled New York Times reporter, his denigration of imprisoned and tortured war hero John McCain as a “loser,” his slurs of African countries as “shitholes,” his echoes of Hitler as he described immigrants as “vermin” and “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and in his decades-long disparagement of Black people — most recently in his depiction of the Obamas as apes.
Trump’s contempt seems to be rooted in what he learned from a father who famously equated vulnerability with unforgivable weakness and losing with disgrace and death. But what might have been sad and ugly in a private person has become, from the most powerful man on earth, a public banner to mobilize the aggrieved, a guiding force in policy, a goad to intimidation, and a justification for lethal action.
The administration’s early actions against some of the most vulnerable people on the planet — cutting off USAID support for life-preserving food and medicine — set the tone. Not long after, the poor and marginalized in the U.S. were targeted by cuts to Medicaid, SNAP programs, and government agencies needed to safeguard disabled school children. Even actions meant to redress grievances have morphed into further assaults on the victims: The recently released Epstein papers have exposed dozens of nude photos of women and girls who were his victims, and redacted pages may have revealed the identities of powerful men who may have been abusers.
Trump’s relentless campaign against immigrants, justified by the necessity of deporting the “worst of the worst,” has made persecution and its painful human consequences inescapably visible. Masked, weapon-bearing men in body armor, dragging women from their cars, snatching children from schools, intimidating and threatening people of color on the streets and in their homes. All justified by lies: Only five percent of those arrested so far were actually violent criminals.
The killings of innocents, who dared to record, question, or mitigate ICE actions, crystallized the oppression, and the administration’s fervid and unfounded justifications for these murders launched victim-blaming into the headlines. The murdered were immediately and without evidence denounced as “domestic terrorists.” Trump said, in the face of contradictory video evidence, that Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, had “violently, willfully, and viciously” run over the apparently uninjured ICE officer who killed her. The U.S. Border Patrol Chief, Greg Bovino, declared that Alex Pretti, the VA nurse who was helping an injured woman and was shot 10 times while he was unarmed, bound, and on his knees, was determined to “massacre law enforcement.”
The administration’s orders, attitudes, and lies, and ICE actions are reminiscent of authoritarian regimes everywhere and have been magnified by the gleeful cheerleading of right-wing commentators and influencers. The vocal or tacit approval of Americans who focus only on the victims’ alleged culpability and seem blind to the injustice is even more ominous. This is the propaganda of authoritarian regimes, and these are the attitudes of foot soldiers ready to serve and sustain authoritarian movements.
In the years since Adorno, researchers have identified characteristics of people ready to embrace authoritarian leaders’ victim-blaming scenarios. The “defensive attribution hypothesis,” first proposed in the 1960s, suggests that people in precarious economic and social situations reduce their anxiety by distinguishing themselves from the victims they denigrate. Other researchers cited the importance of a “just world belief,” a conviction of people who crave stability and structure that those who are unfortunate deserve what they get, and that they themselves are fundamentally different and blameless.
These self-protective world views are reinforced by a powerful and primitive psychological defense, which the U.S. president and his administration, and authoritarian regimes everywhere, are skilled in mobilizing: projection. President Trump has indignantly denied the abuse and assault of 24 women who have accused him and the crimes for which he’s been indicted or convicted: the women are vicious liars out to get him, the federal prosecutors had a vendetta against him, and, now, the people of Minnesota are domestic terrorists, plotting against his regime.
Victim blaming is obviously seductive to many Americans, but as its consequences blatantly and violently violate norms of fairness and decency, they are beginning to catalyze powerful reactions and, potentially, profound change. In the 1960s, the Birmingham Bombing, which killed four young girls; the brutal beatings on the Edmund Pettis Bridge near Selma; and the murder of Civil Rights workers in Mississippi disturbed and disgusted massive numbers of Americans and prompted President Johnson to press for Civil Rights legislation.
Now may be a similarly consequential moment. Though the majority of Americans understandably support expelling convicted, violent immigrants, only 39 percent approve of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws and more than 50 percent express concern that its actions have gone too far.
The collective actions of the victims may be promoting an even deeper change in consciousness. Every day during ICE's occupation in Minnesota, many thousands of people turned fear and anger into heroic non-violent action. They were generous and courageous, bringing food to neighbors whom they’d never met, ferrying physicians to the homes of Somali and Latino patients too fearful to leave them, filming ICE officers’ abuse, and patrolling the perimeters of schools from which ICE had been snatching children.
Residents came together in rare alliances that transcend race and class. Well-off white people were discovering a shared vulnerability with lower-income neighbors of color. Black and Brown people have been admiring the courage of their white allies. Native Americans, who have been oppressed for centuries, have shared an Indigenous wisdom of perseverance, compassion, and inclusiveness. “We are all,” they remind everyone in Minnesota and all of us, “related.”
Government actions in Minnesota have also offended large numbers of independent, fair-minded Americans and even caused some Trump loyalists, including several Republican members of Congress, to question their fealty. Many who crave stability and might be susceptible to authoritarianism have found the best of what they’re looking for in the spontaneous and loyal community of Minnesotans. A military veteran told me, “This is not me. This is not the country I fought for and that my buddies died for.” He and other red state vets I know are ashamed of those they see as “impostors” wearing uniforms, and identify with the people on the street.
Perhaps all of us can be instructed and inspired by the generosity and mutual respect, the courage and coming together of Minnesota victims — by virtues to which Americans of every class and political belief have long aspired.
James S. Gordon, MD, is a psychiatrist who, for 30 years, has led population-wide trauma healing programs in the U.S. and around the world, in countries run by autocrats, as well as democrats, and is the author of Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing.
