The Crowd That Cheers the Boot: How Scapegoating Powers Trump’s Cruel State
- john raymond
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
The Trump administration’s approach to power has always relied on a crude but effective formula: scapegoat the vulnerable, amplify fear, and weaponize the prejudices of those who see cruelty not as a symptom of failure but as a proof of strength. Nowhere is this clearer than in the state’s treatment of immigrants—legal or otherwise—and the violent applause that follows such cruelty online. In the Reddit thread discussing the ICE raid on legal guest workers at a Georgia restaurant, we see not just the state’s jackboot but the crowd’s eager chant. We see Americans not merely accepting injustice, but justifying it with slogans and smirks. They rush to slander the weak, to paint the victim as the criminal, to excuse the hammer because the anvil dared to exist.
This isn’t incidental. It’s structural. Trump’s rise to power and his continued hold over his base has always required enemies. Not political opponents alone, but entire classes of people—foreigners, refugees, the poor, people of color. To sustain this narrative, a deep well of American insecurity and supremacist mythology must be stirred and fed. That’s where xenophobia comes in. It allows ordinary people to imagine themselves as guardians of a crumbling order, and it grants them the right to vilify those below them on the imaginary ladder. When the state brutalizes a migrant, the xenophobe does not see a victim—they see order being restored.
Racism plays its part just as efficiently. Racist justifications for cruelty rely not on evidence, but on archetypes—lazy, criminal, foreign, dangerous. These are not arguments; they are moral permissions dressed as common sense. When ICE agents tear people from homes or jobs, racists leap into comment sections to narrate the event not as an injustice but as a vindication. “They broke the law,” they say—even when the facts clearly show otherwise. “Play stupid games,” they sneer—ignoring the humanity, the fear, the lives disrupted. These slanders aren’t mistakes. They’re shields. They protect not just the state from scrutiny, but the citizen’s conscience from shame.
Dissecting this system, we see a feedback loop: the state inflicts cruelty, and the xenophobic and racist elements in the public provide the justification. Trump doesn’t need a philosophy. He only needs an appetite for domination and a base willing to slander whoever he points at. Every raid, every detainment, every family torn apart is then explained away—not because it was right, but because the scapegoat had already been chosen. The weak are criminalized so the strong can feel righteous. And those who cheer the loudest are not protecting their country. They’re protecting the lie that they are better than the people being brutalized.
This, then, is the core mechanism of Trumpism and its adherents: punch down, lie loud, and let others clean up the mess—if they dare. The moral inversion is complete when cruelty is not just tolerated, but celebrated. That’s how empires rot. Not from one tyrant’s ambition, but from the millions of little tyrants it licenses along the way.
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