I hadn't really thought of it this way, but that's a common thread through so many political problems of the last 20 years. If you can convince enough voters that immigrants are the problem and you are the solution then you can do anything you like.
The question is, what are we going to do about it? If we keep ignoring the condition of the working class for too long like in this country, you get Trump and the likes.
It's an enormous failure of our political class to have ignored real issues for so long, getting it to the point where pretty much the same thing is happening all around the world, and the plutocrats and billionaires are exploiting it because they can since they have all the power.
Not even a new thing, Rage Against The Machine wrote songs about all of this 20 years ago, it's just that most people weren't paying attention.
You can do better than such a low effort swipe.
Is there a fundamental difference between these if there are private groups guilty of persecuting the innocent, and the party in power chooses to not persecute (or prosecute) those groups?
David Frum writing in 2017:
> The transition [in Hungary] has been nonviolent, often not even very dramatic. Opponents of the regime are not murdered or imprisoned, although many are harassed with building inspections and tax audits. […] The courts are packed, and forgiving of the regime’s allies. Friends of the government win state contracts at high prices and borrow on easy terms from the central bank. Those on the inside grow rich by favoritism; those on the outside suffer from the general deterioration of the economy. As one shrewd observer told me on a recent visit, “The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.”
* https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-...
Do not let how autocracies worked in the 20th Century distract you from how they now work in the 21st. (Though no doubt there are still places where people are disappeared.)