Another day, another anti-Trump action and another round of protesters chanting “f*** Trump!”

I’ve never found this a particularly appealing slogan, given the vileness both of Trump’s appearance and his character. We could make bad jokes here about whether even his wife Melania wants to, but let’s refrain in the interests of decorum.

Nevertheless, given Trump has declared war on his own people (the “enemy within”), never mind continuing the US policy of aiding and abetting genocides abroad and meddling in regime change, it’s an understandable sentiment when not taken literally.

I tend to recoil similarly from the “Nazi scum off our streets” chant we hear during marches in Britain rightly protesting against racism, anti-migrant violence and the growing power and influence of a far right whose leadership certainly qualifies for the Nazi tag.

But in labelling everyone “Nazi scum,” even if that is indeed the face they have chosen to present, seems to me to descend to the same level of gutter-dwelling ad hominem that we accuse the other side of indulging in. This is not to excuse the racism or the violence, but to end it we must also understand its etiology.

One who most certainly does is the venerable socialist film director, Ken Loach, who has spent his entire filmmaking career telling the stories of mostly white working-class people in Britain. From some of his earliest work such as Cathy Come Home in 1966, to his most recent, including I, Daniel Blake, Loach has tackled the toll taken on working-class people stripped of opportunity, dignity and hope.

Loach touched on the root causes of the current upwelling of racism and violence in Britain during a speech he gave on November 11 when accepting an honorary doctorate in philosophy from the University of Bologna. Loach is 89 now so he did not travel to Italy in person but spoke before a live audience in London.

In addressing the shock of having to confront fascism again in our lifetimes, Loach noted that it stemmed from the anger and disillusion of working people who feel “threatened, endangered, insecure” and who are being “exploited and developed,” he said. “We see mobs on the streets who are not all rightwingers bred in their bones,” Loach said. “They are people who’ve been whipped up to this.”

The far right, he said, are finding new ways to exploit people because of the widespread problems of insecure work, poverty and hunger “and people being supported by charity food. That was unthinkable 15 years ago,” Loach said.

Seizing on this disaffection, the far right presents them with “a scapegoat, someone to blame,” Loach said. “And it will be someone poorer even than the poorest people in our country, the most vulnerable with nothing, nothing at all.”

In his final film, The Old Oak, released in 2023, Loach tackled the response to migrants directly, through the prism of Syrian refugees arriving in a depressed former coal mining community in County Durham. In it, he gives voice to the full range of viewpoints, but with an understanding of their roots rather than dismissive judgement.

In the US, the left and even many regular Americans who are not necessarily political, have taken to the streets to protest at the cruel, and in some cases illegal, seizing of immigrants in communities across the country.

In towns and cities run by Democrats, citizens are encouraged even by their own elected officials to film the actions of ICE agents, the masked and armed personnel who have been deployed by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to round up anyone they deem “illegal,” often without cause.

This led to possibly one of the most incredible social media postings from the Trump administration so far, which is already a very low bar under which this one did a veritable limbo dance. It was in the true sense of the word “incredible,” hard to believe, so much so that many reading it questioned whether it was a spoof site.

This is what the official DHS X page posted last Friday in response to citizens attempting to protest against yet another ICE raid in Illinois.

“Womp, womp, cry all you want. These criminal illegal aliens aren’t getting released. Like clockwork, violent rioters have arrived at the Broadview ICE facility to demand the release of some of the worst human beings on planet earth. Get a job you imbecilic morons.”

The comments below it were incredulous, many speculating whether teenage boys had taken over the department and why government officials would stoop to such vile language and use it against their own citizens. (Similar questions were raised several days later when Trump, sounding like a toddler, retorted “quiet, piggy” to a reporter asking about the Epstein files.) For the record, there were no “violent rioters.”

It certainly made Hillary Clinton’s notoriously rash “basket of deplorables” epithet, uttered during a 2016 campaign stop when she was challenging Trump for the presidency, seem almost intellectual. That said, I’ve yet to find anyone who can explain why “deplorables” are to be found in “baskets.”

The scenes of zip-tied children in their pajamas trembling on pavements and school teachers snatched from classrooms by DHS thugs have not exactly endeared the US to visitors either. Tourism numbers are down dramatically and in September, CNBC predicted the US would lose $30 billion in international tourism revenue by the end of the year.

Nor are its own citizens that eager to stay. A recent Gallup poll said that two in five young American women want to leave the US permanently.

But the DHS continues its campaign of hostility, even toward a potentially huge demographic of football fans who will attend next year’s men’s World Cup, to be played in the US, Mexico and Canada.

“We want EVERY American and Fifa fan visiting the US on a tourist visa to enjoy this historic event and travel home safely in a timely manner,” wrote Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on X.

In other words, please come and spend your hard-earned dollars here during the matches. Then get the hell out.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.