The stream of fascistic filth emanating from the White House reached a new stage this week. At the conclusion of an over two-hour cabinet meeting on Tuesday, President Donald Trump unleashed a racist tirade targeting all people from Somalia, using language that has never been publicly uttered by an American president in office.

Speaking in support of mass deportations and blocking asylum and refugee applications from 19 countries, including Somalia, Trump said, “We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”

After referring to all people from Somalia as “garbage,” Trump turned to Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat and the first Somali American elected to Congress: “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”

Trump doubled down on Wednesday. Responding to a reporter’s question about Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey expressing pride in the city’s Somali community, Trump replied, “Well, then he is a fool. I would not be proud to have the largest Somalian. Look at their nation, look at how bad their nation is. It is not even a nation, it is just people walking around killing each other.”

This is the language of the Nazis and their publication, Der Stürmer, which portrayed entire populations, particularly Jews, as “parasites” and “vermin,” subhumans to be expelled or exterminated.

Millions of people in the United States and around the world watching Trump’s outpouring will draw the appropriate conclusion that the real “garbage” is in the White House. Trump, a real estate swindler and racist demagogue, longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, is the embodiment of the rot of American capitalism.

Trump’s latest statements follow his Thanksgiving weekend of racist incitement, triggered in part by the publication of a New York Times report alleging that Somalis in Minneapolis were engaged in fraud related to COVID-19 programs aimed at providing social services. Of the 86 people alleged to have engaged in fraudulent activity, the Times admits the “vast majority are American citizens, by birth or naturalization.”

Trump has seized on the report to cast all Somalis as criminals in an attempt to whip up a pogrom-like atmosphere against immigrants and all non-white people in Minnesota and across the country. Following the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump administration officials confirmed immigration Gestapo agents were being deployed to Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, and New Orleans, Louisiana, to carry out kidnapping operations.

Under conditions where Trump’s popularity is collapsing over his warmongering, corruption and self-dealing, his racist attacks aim to divert social anger away from Wall Street and the billionaire oligarchy he represents. His vulgar vernacular is textbook fascist agitation. He blames immigrants for the social decay produced by decades of deindustrialization and austerity. His latest broadside follows earlier lies on the campaign trail, such as claiming Venezuelan gangs had taken over Aurora, Colorado, or slandering Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, by claiming they were “eating pets.”

There is widespread revulsion among workers and young people toward these racist attacks. Only fascists and open racists respond with enthusiasm. On his December 2 show, neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes praised Trump’s remarks as “epic,” declaring, “He talks and sounds like we do. Nobody does it like him. He is saying what we are all thinking.” This is precisely the audience Trump is mobilizing.

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X and world’s richest individual, has used his platform to promote fascist memes from neo-Nazi accounts. One post he boosted claims Omar “was elected by 80,000 Somalis that Obama dropped in Minnesota.” Another promotes the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, declaring that whites are on the verge of “extinction.” Under conditions where Minnesota Democrats have already been targeted for assassination by Trump supporters, the president’s rhetoric and Musk’s propaganda form a coordinated campaign to legitimize political violence by the far right.

Somalia, it should be pointed out, is a country with a long and rich history. Somalia’s present crisis is the result of decades of colonial plunder, by British and Italian imperialism, which partitioned the region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and then by American imperialism. 

Somalia has been ravaged by repeated US military interventions: the “humanitarian” invasion under George H. W. Bush in 1992, continued by Bill Clinton, drone assassination campaigns under George W. Bush and Obama, counterinsurgency operations by US-backed forces, and airstrikes during Trump’s first term and Biden’s administration. These interventions destroyed infrastructure, displaced millions and created the conditions that drive refugees to flee. 

As the WSWS has noted, Trump is not an interloper in the Garden of Eden of American democracy. He speaks, fundamentally, as the representative of a social class, the capitalist oligarchy. 

The Democratic Party, confronted with open fascistic incitement from the White House, offers no genuine opposition. At every step of the way, the Democrats have enabled Trump, most recently in ending the government shutdown on Trump’s terms. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz responded to Trump’s immigration raids by writing on social media: “We welcome support in investigating and prosecuting crime. But pulling a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to a problem.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who recently endorsed New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, has flatly refused to bring forward articles of impeachment against Trump, instead calling for “bipartisan” probes of the murderous strikes targeting boats off the coast of Venezuela. “What’s on the table is a meaningful investigation which we can hope would be bipartisan,” he said.

Trump’s tirades come less than two weeks after Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, made his pilgrimage to the White House and pledged to work in “partnership” with the fascist administration. Between smiles and handshakes, the pair took photographs and bonded over their shared vision for New York City.

The principal concern of the Democratic Party, Mamdani included, is the eruption of social anger from below. The working class faces unbearable levels of inequality, debt and economic insecurity. Payroll firm ADP reported on Wednesday that private sector employers cut 32,000 jobs in November. In Detroit, over 1,100 Factory Zero workers are facing permanent layoffs.

Trump’s attacks on immigrants, moreover, are the expression of an international phenomenon. Fortress Europe, originally Festung Europa under the Nazis, was repurposed in the 1990s to describe the European Union’s expanding border regime, including remote detention sites and criminal “pushbacks” that have drowned tens of thousands of refugees in the Mediterranean. The ruling class in Europe, as in the United States, is responding to the crisis of capitalism with repression, anti-immigrant chauvinism and the resurrection of the ideological and political filth of fascism.

Trump’s escalating threats are a sign of weakness, not strength. The attacks on immigrants are provoking mass anger. Last month more than 56,000 high school students in North Carolina walked out against ICE raids. In neighborhoods throughout Chicago and Los Angeles, workers and students mobilize to block ICE operations and protect friends, family and co-workers. 

The task before workers in the United States and internationally is not to plead with the Democrats or hope for a return to “normalcy.” It is to build an independent political movement based on the interests of the working class, rejecting both factions of the capitalist ruling class and preparing for a revolutionary struggle against the entire system of exploitation and war. This is the perspective advanced by the Socialist Equality Party and its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International.

The working class is an international force, bound together by shared interests that transcend borders, languages and nationalities. It is the most powerful social force on the planet—capable of breaking the grip of the corporate-financial oligarchy and reconstructing society on a democratic and egalitarian foundation. The ruling elite is terrified of this power. To realize it, the working class must be armed with a conscious, internationalist and socialist strategy.