This is what happens when you blame migrants instead of billionaires

The poor get poorer, the rich get richer, and the list of 'domestic terrorists' gets longer.

Trump has created a police state to deport migrants and keep Americans safe and prosperous. That was the story.

The diagnosis was simple: migrants were entering the US illegally, undercutting hardworking Americans in the jobs market, pushing up prices in the housing market, bringing drugs, and committing crime.

The cure was ICE. The government would hire hardworking Americans to round up migrants on the streets of their towns and cities. ICE would not only cure America of the migrant threat – leading to lower crime, higher living standards, and lower prices – it would also boost employment and economic growth.

This story was simple to tell, and easy to believe. Voters wanted a simple narrative to explain why their living standards kept falling – and why they felt so scared all the time. The Democrats refused to tell the story that came closest to the truth: billionaires had captured the US economy and corrupted its government, squeezing working people to line their own pockets. So, Trump’s story – the only story being told – won. Migrants were to blame, not billionaires.

But what happens when you get rid of the migrants – or at least terrify them into submission – and things don’t get better? When unemployment keeps climbing, bills keep rising, and people are forced to plug the gap with more debt. What story are you going to tell then?

If the US had a real opposition, this would be the time to turn the tables on Trump’s narrative. They could show that the migrant-blaming story has always been a lie used to redirect peoples’ rage away from the ones really screwing them over. Just look at the way Trump has sent your health insurance premiums skyrocketing while giving massive tax breaks to billionaires. He’s shown you exactly whose side he is on.

Unfortunately, the Democrats are owned by capital too – just different sections of it. Where Trump has the fossil fuel companies, the arms manufacturers, agriculture, and increasingly big tech, the Dems have much of big finance, real estate, and healthcare.

The Dems can’t blame the billionaires, because billionaires are their base. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are mass parties anymore. They’re lobbying firms with electoral arms attached. And the anti-migrant story serves Trump’s donors very well – particularly the ones manufacturing the weapons and constructing the detention camps.

If attacking the migrants didn’t work, and no one is blaming the billionaires, the story needs a new villain. Maybe the problem isn’t only the migrants. Maybe it’s also their children, their friends, their employers. Maybe it’s time to widen ICE’s scope to target all of these enemies of the state too. Then everyone will feel safe and prosperous again.

So, the government hires more troops for the migrant-fighting army. More jobs are created – in fact, pretty much anyone who wants a job can have one. And ICE starts targeting anyone and everyone who could be considered a threat to the American way of life.

But the jobs keep disappearing, the bills keep rising, and people feel more scared than they ever have. It’s not just the migrants. It’s not just their friends and family. It’s certainly not the billionaires. So, maybe it’s the migrant sympathisers. The people who are protecting these enemies of the state. And it’s not so easy to spot these people by the colour of their skin – they could be hiding in plain sight.

So, ICE’s remit is expanded once more. Now, it’s not just a migrant-fighting army. It’s also a domestic terrorist-fighting army. Anyone who is obstructing the governments clearly stated mission will be rounded up and, if they resist, eliminated. That’s the only way to keep Americans safe – the only way to ensure their prosperity.

But it still doesn’t work. And it was never going to work. Because the story was a lie. Migrants are not making Americans poor. Americans are poor because of the billionaires who exploit them, the monopolies who gouge them, and the politicians who tax them to subsidise the billionaires and the monopolies.

The migrant-blaming story has no end point – because it will never deliver the safety and prosperity people crave. Americans lives will keep getting worse and, in response, the state’s list of enemies will continue to expand. Like a Medieval doctor trying to excise a disease he has misdiagnosed, Trump will keep slicing away at the American body politic until there is nothing left.

Some European leftists really believe that they need to harden their stance on migration to win back the working class. But you can only tell one story – and your story can only have one villain.

So, what’s it going to be? Are people poor because migrants are pushing down wages, pushing up prices, and leaching off the state? Or are they poor because billionaires axed their jobs, monopolies jacked up prices, and politicians cut their social security payments to give tax cuts to the rich?

You can only pick one. One of them is true. The other is a lie that paves the way for a police state.