“Donald Trump doesn't so much run for something as he runs against somebody. His latest attacks are aimed at Haitian immigrants, but what we're seeing is a playbook previously used to target other ethnic or religious groups, and with a similar goal: to make the MAGA base feel like they're under attack.

”'The followers must feel besieged,' as the late Italian writer Umberto Eco, who grew up in fascist Italy, wrote nearly three decades ago in The New York Review of Books. 'The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.' Indeed, in order to enact much of his radical right-wing agenda, Trump needs his people to think America is on the brink of collapse—and to associate that collapse with an 'other.' The goal is to panic the base, and since there isn't a scary enough truth, lies will do.“

-- Molly Jong-Fast, ”Donald Trump's Springfield Scapegoat: Haitian immigrants in Ohio are just the latest target in Trump's long-running ploy to convince his supporters they're under siege,“ on the Vanity Fair site. Cf., Doctorow's words in ”Ragtime."