Donald Trump’s Propaganda Techniques: Fear, Enemies, and Identity (Part 2)

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

At its core, the promise of a democracy is pretty simple: the government is there to work for us. It’s supposed to protect our lives, our freedoms, and our rights through fair courts and clear limits on power. We rely on it for the basics – paving roads, funding schools, keeping our air and water clean, and defending the country. And when big crises hit, whether it’s a pandemic, a natural disaster, or an economic downturn, we expect our institutions to step up and guide us through. This is the fundamental deal between the government and the people it serves.

Donald Trump, however, flips this entire model on its head. He doesn’t see government institutions as tools to serve the public; he sees them as instruments to serve his own interests. Under his approach, the system is rebuilt to prioritize personal power over public duty:

• Loyalty over duty: Replacing independent, career experts and public servants with yes-men and ideological loyalists.
• Grabbing power, dodging checks: Weakening the courts, ignoring congressional oversight, and pushing the boundaries of executive authority.
• Controlling the narrative: Attacking the free press, spinning alternative realities, and eroding the public’s trust in basic facts.
• Playing favorites with the law: Weaponizing the justice system against political rivals while shielding and pardoning allies.
• Putting self-preservation first: Prioritizing personal survival and grievances over the actual well-being of the country.

In our democracy, the system is designed to serve the people. In Trump’s autocracy, the system is reshaped to serve him. When power is used primarily as a shield for self-preservation, the things we rely on every day, our rights, our financial security, and our safety, are sacrificed. In this piece, we’re going to look at how Trump has updated several age-old tactics, focusing on how he uses target labeling, scapegoating, and manufactured fear to control the narrative.

Fear, Enemies, and Identity

If you want to understand how authoritarian rhetoric gains real momentum, you have to look beyond simple misinformation and focus on how it actually moves people. Controlling the facts is just the starting point; the real power lies in tapping into deep-seated emotions like fear, identity, and tribal loyalty. You can see this constantly in Donald Trump’s rallies, speeches, and social media posts, which are designed to turn everyday political disagreements into high-stakes battles. In Part 2, I’ll break down four of his go-to strategies: creating “us versus them” divides, weaponizing fear, using name-calling, and leaning into conspiracy theories. By looking at how these strategies work, and how they fit into history, you can see how these tactics manufacture enemies, feeds on resentment, and rallies a base against a manufactured threat.

Scapegoating and “Us vs. Them” Framing

One of the methods authoritarians rely on is a pretty simple psychological trick: splitting society into a righteous “us” and a dangerous “them.” When life gets overwhelming, whether it’s the anxiety of losing a job to automation, a shifting economy, or rapid cultural change, people naturally want clear answers. Scapegoating offers an easy way out. Instead of encouraging people to grapple with messy, often times complicated shifts in the world around us, it gives them someone to blame, channeling a vague sense of dread into sharp, focused anger.

Obviously, Donald Trump didn’t invent this tactic, but he has seemingly perfected it. By drawing hard lines between who belongs and who doesn’t, he offers his supporters a powerful sense of community and purpose. They aren’t just voters; they are the “real” Americans, standing against a threat that is hell bent on destroying their way of life. Once you buy into this black-and-white view of the world, politics stops being a debate about policies – it becomes a fight for survival. Supporting him isn’t just a political preference anymore; it’s self-defense against “them”.

To keep this narrative alive, you need clear, easily identifiable villains. Trump consistently points to the same targets autocrats have used for generations:

• Immigrants and Minorities: When Trump warns of an “invasion” or claims migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, he is tapping into something raw and primal. These phrases are crafted to trigger deep evolutionary instincts about survival, purity, and threat. Human beings react intensely to anything framed as an existential danger, especially threats to the body, the home, or the tribe. By portraying immigration not as a policy challenge but as a biological contamination or a hostile military assault, Trump bypasses rational debate and activates fear at its most visceral level. It’s a sheet straight out of the 1930s European playbook, where minorities were cast as physical threats to national purity.
• Political Opponents: Calling rivals “vermin,” “traitors,” “Communists” or “radical Marxists” shuts down any dialog for normal discussions. Opponents aren’t just neighbors with different ideas; they are enemies of the state. We’ve seen this before – with mid-century dictatorships and the most paranoid moments of the Cold War, when disagreeing with the government was a traitorous act.
• Democratic Institutions: By lumping civil servants, judges, and agency experts into a shadowy “Deep State,” Trump systematically chips away at the public’s trust in the rule of law. If a court or a constitutional check tries to hold him accountable, he can easily write it off as a corrupt conspiracy. It’s highly reminiscent of Soviet leaders blaming hidden “wreckers” for their own failures, dodging accountability by inventing enemies from within.

All of this adds up to a highly effective spin on the classic “us versus them” formula. Labels like “RINO” are used to keep his own party in line, while massive, vague targets like the “radical left” or the “Deep State” turn vital democratic protections into sinister subversions. By taking genuine anxieties and pointing them at these simplified villains, Trump reframes complicated national problems as a high-stakes battle of good against evil. It is a brilliant strategy for keeping his base energized, united, and completely closed off to compromise.

Appeals to Fear and Threat

Fear is one of the oldest tricks an autocrat can use in his attempts to grab absolute control. If you can convince people that their world is on the brink of collapse, suddenly political disputes start to feel like life-or-death emergencies. We saw this early on with Donald Trump’s 2017 “American Carnage” inaugural address, and it’s a drumbeat he hasn’t stopped playing since. By painting the country as a dystopian warzone overrun by crime, immigration, and “enemies within,” he turns everyday policy disagreements into threats. And when people genuinely believe their survival is on the line, they become willing to accept extreme measures they would normally reject out of hand.

We think and react in weird ways when we experience fear. When we’re scared or overwhelmed by how fast the world is changing, our survival instincts kick in and override our commitments to abstract concepts like civil liberties, due process, or minority rights. Trump may not understand the psychology behind our reactions to fear, but he knows exactly how to leverage constant anxiety to justify sweeping power. Under that kind of intense stress, tearing up constitutional rules or expanding executive authority doesn’t look like tyranny anymore. It looks like a necessary sacrifice to keep the chaos at bay.

Policy Area	Standard Democratic View	Authoritarian Framing
Immigration	A complex dispute over administrative capacity, legal pathways, border security, and economic labor demands.	An existential “invasion” by foreign forces threatening to destroy national identity and culture.
Elections	A routine civic competition between political parties to win public support under constitutional rules.	A zero-sum fight for survival, where losing to opponents equals the total destruction of the country.
Public Safety	A legal and structural challenge managed through professional law enforcement and crime prevention policy.	A state of violent “carnage” and lawless chaos that requires unchecked force to suppress.

None of this is new. In the 1930s, European fascists rose to power by capitalizing on public panic over economic ruin, civil unrest, and foreign conspiracies. They argued that democracy was simply too slow, too weak, and corrupt to protect ordinary citizens, selling autocrats like Adolf Hitler as the only leaders strong enough to restore order. We saw the same arguments used during the Cold War, when governments used the threat of espionage and imminent war to justify everything from mass surveillance to cracking down on protestors.

Trump has effectively used this classic strategy for the 24-hour news cycle. When he calls immigration an “invasion,” paints major cities as lawless battlegrounds, or warns that America “won’t exist” if his opponents win, he keeps the country’s anxiety levels at a boil. It turns a standard election into a desperate battle for national survival. Once you buy into that mindset, bypassing democratic guardrails and letting Trump call all the shots feels like the only thing standing between his supporters and total ruin.

Labeling and Name-Calling

Name-calling might look like playground behavior, but in politics, it’s a highly effective shortcut. Donald Trump turned this into a science, branding his rivals with mocking nicknames like “Crooked Hillary,” “Sleepy Joe,” and “Lyin’ Ted.” Once a label like that sticks, people stop thinking. The nickname acts as a filter: supporters no longer have to weigh an opponent’s actual ideas or qualifications because the insult tells them everything they need to know. In their minds, Hillary Clinton is dishonest, Joe Biden is old and tired, and Ted Cruz is a deceiver.

It never stops at individual rivals, though. Eventually, the personal attacks scale up to target entire groups of people. We’ve watched Trump expand his target list, calling critics, civil servants, and political opponents “vermin,” “thugs,” or “radical left lunatics.” Immigrants and asylum seekers are dismissed as “animals,” “invaders,” or people with “bad genes.” This language attempts to rewire our moral compass. When you reduce human beings to pests or biological threats, empathy drains away. Cruelty starts to feel justified, and extreme actions that would normally spark outrage begin to seem necessary.

This graphic, “The Escalation of Demeaning Rhetoric: A Pathway to Conflict,” visualizes how authoritarian propaganda uses language to gradually dehumanize opponents and pave the way for political violence.

Throughout the 20th century, dictators relied heavily on animal and disease metaphors to isolate the groups they targeted. Nazi propaganda systematically called Jews and political opponents vermin” and “parasites” to convince the public they were dangerous, not neighbors. In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin used the exact same tactic, branding independent farmers and dissidents as “bloodsuckers” to kill off any public sympathy before unleashing violence.

By bringing these tactics into the heart of American politics, Trump has built a powerful permission structure. When opponents are called “vermin” who must be “rooted out,” or when migrants are written off as subhuman, politics is no longer a debate over ideas. It becomes a cataclysmic fight for survival against a dehumanized threat. Hearing this rhetoric day after day numbs our collective conscience. It trains people to see any criticism of power as a corrupt conspiracy, making it much easier to accept unchecked executive authority as acceptable and urgent.

Conspiracy-Friendly Narratives

Conspiracy theories have always been one of the most effective tools authoritarians use. They take the messy, frustrating realities of the world and compress them into clean, emotionally gratifying narratives that feel truer than the facts themselves. Instead of offering hard evidence, Donald Trump has mastered the art of blaming his legal troubles, political setbacks, or policy failures on shadowy, behind-the-scenes enemies. He relies on vague, open-ended phrases like “many people are saying” or “you should look into it.” The genius of this ambiguity is that it acts as a blank canvas; his supporters fill in the details with their own fears and frustrations, making the conspiracy feel deeply personal, incredibly flexible, and virtually impossible to disprove.

Ultimately, these stories are about fostering a sense of belonging. They give his followers a shared enemy and a heroic sense of purpose, making them feel like they are part of a noble resistance fighting a corrupt establishment. Once you buy into this “us versus them” framing, you enter an airtight information bubble. Any fact-check, news report, or official investigation is instantly dismissed as part of the cover-up. Because he labels every mainstream institution as corrupt, Trump effectively positions himself as the only source of truth.

This tactic has deep historical roots. Throughout history, authoritarian leaders have weaponized conspiracies to grab power and crush dissent. In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin consolidated absolute control over the Soviet Union by inventing elaborate plots involving foreign spies and internal traitors. Whenever his economic policies failed or food shortages worsened, he blamed these imaginary saboteurs. This gave him a perfect excuse for violent purges while painting himself as the nation’s sole protector. Similarly, after World War I, right-wing extremists in Germany pushed the “stab-in-the-back” myth, claiming their army hadn’t been defeated on the battlefield but had been betrayed from within by socialists and minorities. This lie crippled public trust in Germany’s fragile democracy and smoothed the way for the rise of the Nazi party.

Early in his political career Trump championed the “birther” conspiracy, using loaded questions to cast doubt on Barack Obama’s citizenship. Later, he popularized the idea of the “Deep State”, a supposed shadow government working to undermine him, which became a convenient catch-all explanation for every negative news story, investigation, or policy setback he faced. By using social media and rallies, he bypassed the press entirely, speaking directly to his followers and reinforcing the idea that he alone is telling them the truth.

This strategy peaked after the 2020 election. Unfounded claims about rigged voting machines, foreign meddling, and mail-in ballot fraud were kept alive with vague nudges like “just look at what’s happening” or “everyone knows what happened.” By urging his supporters to “connect the dots,” Trump turned routine, everyday bureaucratic processes into supposed proof of a massive conspiracy. It created a self-reinforcing loop that blocked out any facts to the contrary, locked in voter loyalty, and steadily chipped away at public trust in the democratic system itself.

In the end, this kind of political storytelling does three things incredibly well: it erases any facts that threaten Trump’s power, binds followers together in shared paranoia, and slowly, systematically eats away at the foundation of democracy.

Conclusion: Weaponizing Emotion and Identity

This second part shows a deeper, more dangerous shift in Trump’s strategy: moving away from simply lying about facts and toward weaponizing our very identities. By splitting Americans into a righteous “us” and a threatening “them,” keeping people in a state of constant panic, and turning political opponents into monsters, this rhetoric transforms normal democratic disagreement into a battle for survival. These tactics don’t try to win arguments with logic; they bypass our critical thinking entirely. They build a closed-loop emotional trap where there is no compromise, and absolute loyalty to Trump is sold as the only way to stay safe.

But dividing the public and fueling fear is only part of the battle. Once Trump manufactures a crisis and points the finger at internal enemies, the next step is making himself completely untouchable. That brings us to Part 3: Power, Protection, and Reversal. In the next installment, I’ll examine how Trump shields himself from accountability. I’ll explore how he builds a cult of personality, uses cheap “whataboutism” to dodge criticism, gaslights the public by playing the victim, and slowly conditions his supporters to see a strongman not as a threat, but as their ultimate protector.