By Axios | Created at 2024-10-18 08:34:24 | Updated at 2024-10-18 10:26:35
1 hour ago
One in three Americans say that immigrants entering the country illegally today are "poisoning the blood of our country" — language echoing the rhetoric of white supremacists and Adolf Hitler, a new survey finds.
Why it matters: The results suggest that in a nation of immigrants, many Americans have bought into the historically racist rhetoric that Donald Trump has used to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment while promising mass deportations if he's re-elected president.
The big picture: The annual survey from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), in partnership with the Brookings Institution, measured the nation's deep political divisions in part by checking their feelings toward the phrase "poisoning the blood of our country."
- During his campaign Trump repeatedly has used the phrase, which has grown in popularity as some Republicans have openly endorsed the racist and once-fringe "white replacement theory."
By the numbers: About 34% of Americans say that immigrants entering the country illegally today are "poisoning the blood of our country," while 63% disagree, according to the survey released this week.
- Six in 10 Republicans (61%) agree with that statement, compared with 30% of independents and just 13% of Democrats.
- Seven in 10 Americans who say they trust far-right news the most agree with the statement, while 65% of those who trust Fox News the most agree, the survey found.
- White evangelical Protestants (60%) are the only religious group in which a majority agree that the statement applies to undocumented immigrants.
What they're saying: "This is a truly alarming situation to find this kind of rhetoric, find this kind of support from one of our major political parties," Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, said in announcing the survey's findings.
- Jones said he never thought, as a social scientist, he would ever have to ask a question on a survey about any group "poisoning the blood" of another.
- "It's Nazi rhetoric."
Flashback: Four times last year, Trump referred to immigrants as "poisoning the blood" of the nation.
- He said it during an interview with a right-leaning website in September 2023.
- He said it again at a rally in December in New Hampshire.
- He repeated it in a Truth Social post in December, then again at a campaign stop in Iowa.
- Since then, Trump has falsely accused immigrants of eating house pets, erroneously said violent undocumented criminal gangs had taken over Aurora, Colo., and said that some have "bad genes" that lead them to murder.
Background: The remarks "poisoning the blood of our country" echoed Hitler's 1925 autobiographical manifesto, "Mein Kampf" — his blueprint for a "pure Aryan" Germany and the removal of Jews.
- "All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning," Hitler wrote.
- "He poisons the blood of others but preserves his own blood unadulterated," Hitler wrote of Jewish males allowing Jewish females to marry white Christians.
Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump's comments about immigrants reflect his plan to "restore his effective immigration policies" and "implement brand-new crackdowns that will send shockwaves to all the world's criminal smugglers."
- Trump also would "marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history," she said.
Zoom in: More than a one-third of Americans (35%) agree with the statement "immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background" — a basis for "white replacement theory," the PRRI survey found.
- Agreement with this statement has remained relatively unchanged from the first time PRRI asked about it in 2019 (36%).
- While Democrats (13%) have become less likely to agree with this idea than they were in 2019 (20%), independents (29%) and Republicans (65%) have remained broadly consistent.
Methodology: The American Values Survey was conducted online Aug. 16-Oct. 4. The poll is based on a representative sample of 5,027 adults (age 18 and older) living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia who are part of Ipsos' Knowledge Panel®.
- The margin of sampling error is +/- 1.82 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the entire sample.
