Xenophobic Rhetoric Quotes

We've had characters like Trump in American politics forever, characters who trade on xenophobia.

The current Republican Party is not really the Republican Party. It's been hijacked by this group that is not just Islamophobic but, really, xenophobic. They believe in sort of white, middle America, gun-toting - it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people.

Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism.

Donald J. Trump is not only a racist but a misogynist and a bigot.

Demagogues like [Donald] Trump come along. He says I know what the cause is. Remember, later, the cause was that Mexicans who are coming to this country, well, they were criminals or rapists. Now it is Muslims.

The United States is a melting pot. Like John F. Kennedy said, it's a nation of immigrants. But Donald Trump wants to build a fence that clearly makes the statement: "You and I are divided. We're different, and you're dangerous." That kind of thinking stops human, civilized evolution. It's dangerous to create that kind of tension.

If we say leaders are incompetent, we are going to fuel extremist, populist, xenophobic and ultra-nationalist parties.

Xenophobia doesn't benefit anybody unless you're playing high-stakes Scrabble.

The horrifying thing is that nearly half of America seems in synch with xenophobia and race-baiting.

You could say that Trump is the 21st century version of Pat Buchanan. Protectionist, anti-immigrant.

In Europe there's an dangerous growth of ultra xenophobia which is pretty threatening to any one who remembers the history of Europe... and an attack on the remnants of the welfare state. It's hard to interpret the austerity-in-the-midst-of-recession policy as anything other than attack on the social contract.

Donald Trump always puts himself first. He built a business career, in the words of one of his own campaign staffers, "off the backs of the little guy." And as a candidate, he started his campaign with a speech where he called Mexicans rapists and criminals, and he has pursued the discredited and really outrageous lie that President Obama wasn't born in the United States. It is so painful to suggest that we go back to think about these days where an African-American could not be a citizen of the United States.

Our economy has not served large fractions of our population. Trump grasped that. And rather than saying, "What have we not done right?" he said, "It's those foreigners. Let's build a wall." He says globalization is unfair to the United States.

Every form of anti-Semitism, every form of xenophobia plays on the fear of the unknown, and unfortunately there are all too many politicians who know how to manipulate that. The dumber people are, the more they feel the need for a broad set of shoulders they can lay their head against.