For many Americans, life in the United States feels like watching a ticking time bomb. The violence against immigrants, legal residents, and citizens, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the continual rise of targeted crimes against Latinos, Jews, and LGBTQ people, and the ever-present threat of mass shootings, injects “blood and hatred in the air,” to quote Bruce Springsteen.
Alexander Laban Hinton not only understands the urgency of the present but also provides education on how to analyze and address it. One of the leading authorities on genocide and atrocities, he is the author of 12 books, directs the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, and testified as an expert witness at the trial of Nuon Chea, the prime minister of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s.
His 2021 book, It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US, is a detailed, sober, and yet chilling presentation of how the rise of white nationalism, and the Republican officials, such as Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, who cater to it, have endangered racial and ethnic minorities, in addition to democracy itself. His work should terrify most Americans, but fear need not freeze them. Hinton offers wise advice, based on his years in countries under dictatorship and the atrocities committed there, and on his work toward the realization of democracy, civil rights, and peace.
I recently interviewed him over email. This has been edited for brevity and clarity.
David Masciotra: You wrote your book as a warning that President Trump, with his rhetoric, his white genocide/Great Replacement conspiracy theories, and abettors in politics and the press, could provoke mass violence from hate groups and lone wolves, similar to the mass shootings that occurred during his first term, the foiled plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and ultimately January 6. How do the violence and human rights violations of federal agents, particularly in Minneapolis, alter the picture? Now the violence isn’t coming from non-state actors, but from the state.
Alexander Laban Hinton: The majority of people in the U.S., including many Republicans, believe ICE has “gone too far.” Many are understandably outraged, and the protests are growing. The Trump administration has made an already volatile situation more so by telling heavily armed state actors that they have “immunity.” It’s shameful. It’s wrong. And it’s led to violence. But it’s important to keep one’s eye on the big picture. Greenland, Venezuela, and ICE spectacles are also meant to distract people not just from the unfulfilled promises of Trump 2.0 but from the ongoing democratic backsliding, surveillance capitalism, and massive grift. Trump 2.0 isn’t a golden age. It’s a Gilded Age in which a very small number of people control the majority of the wealth.
DM: Your work on the Khmer Rouge is extensive. You’ve often said that genocidal and dictatorial regimes are not the same, but they have “echoes.” Granted, Trump is not committing genocide, but what’s echoing from his White House?
ALH: There are many echoes. Here are two: First, it is astonishing that the idea of white genocide, which was fringe at the start of Trump 1.0, is now mainstream in the form of replacement theory, or the idea that there is a plot by nefarious actors, ranging from Democrats or, in its extreme form, Jews, who want to replace the white population. Twitter/X is a cesspool of replacement ideas, as well as fringe, extremist ideas that used to mainly circulate in spaces like 4chan. Elon Musk himself frequently promotes this idea. It’s even baked into U.S. foreign policy, as illustrated by the term “civilizational erasure” in the November 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy. In a nutshell, the idea that the white race is under threat has become almost taken for granted by many hard-core MAGA conservatives in Trump 2.0. And when you feel under threat, what do you do? Fight back and defeat those who allegedly pose a danger. The ICE raids in Minneapolis are one manifestation of a strategy that is partly legitimized by the idea of replacement.
Second, the primary “echo” I am attending to right now is democratic backsliding toward a Hungarian-style soft authoritarianism. It’s not the extreme totalitarianism of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. But the backsliding is alarming as many observers have noted. In keeping with Project 2025, Trump has ramped up executive power while eroding checks and balances. This includes attacks on other branches as well as on potential buffers against authoritarianism, such as academia, the media, and civil society. Fortunately, the U.S. federal system is a major impediment to authoritarianism, even as President Trump has tried to whittle away at state power. The mobilization of state force—and threatened invocation of the Insurrection Act—in places like Minneapolis illustrate this point.
DM: Another metaphor you use is “simmering at a boil.” There are times when we are at “low boil” and other times when we are at “high boil” for acts of mass violence. What is the boil level right now?
ALH: If we think of a simmering, low, rolling, and full/high boil, we’re at a low boil. The level of risk can rise and fall depending on trigger events and social or economic conditions. We had a bunch of these escalating factors hit during the 2020 election—the pandemic, an economic crisis, and a contested election. The January 6 insurrection, while spectacular, was not a surprise to many of us who were monitoring the situation. The situation was a full boil. In other circumstances, the boil may increase but then go down as the situation diffuses. Charlie Kirk’s assassination was one of those moments as the situation ticked up to a rolling boil. ICE surges, abuse, and violence have the potential to escalate things back to a rolling boil, but the situation appears to be abating for the moment. But the hardest boil in recent years emerged during the elections as 2020 underscored. 2024 was also an extremely dangerous moment that diffused only because Trump won a decisive victory. What does that tell us looking ahead? If you think 2026 might well be bad, just wait for 2028.
DM: Even though we’ve already referred to it, how does the media, both the mainstream press and the right-wing press, contribute to the problem of governmental violence from the Trump administration?
ALH: Great question—and one that brings us back to the danger of surveillance capitalism, or the monetization of data extracted from our online activity, especially social media. The 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal underscored this danger, which has been amped up by artificial intelligence. In the blink of an eye, mis- and disinformation spreads like wildfire. So too does outrage since fear, conflict, and anger lead to more clicks. The media knows this as well—as do influencers, demagogues, and politicians, including President Trump. Indeed, as Pew studies show, most people in the U.S.—left and right—view immigration as a problem. Instead of a reasonable policy, tech companies and the other actors I have mentioned are motivated to fuel divisions and amplify the perception that we’re much more divided than we really are. So, for example, if you flip between Fox and CNN, you’ll often see completely different framings of what is going on in Minneapolis. This increases the risk of violence—and even civil war, as the January 6 insurrection, which was fueled by all these divisive forces, underscored.
DM: The viral videos of federal agents killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti have disturbed and awakened many Americans. The activism in Minneapolis is encouraging. Still, there are Americans locked into the “It can’t happen here” mentality. What should they understand about how quickly and severely this situation can turn deadly?
ALH: When I wrote my book, many people didn’t believe “it”—political violence, civil war, authoritarianism, and even genocide—“can happen here.” My book demonstrates a long history of such events here. But the exceptionalist “it can’t happen here” mentality, while present in some quarters, is not nearly as widespread in Trump 2.0. The January 6 insurrection is one reason. So too is the extraordinary division they see everywhere, including at the family dinner table and holiday gatherings. The bottom-line reality we all must bear in mind is that it has happened here, and it can happen again. That’s the first step to making sure it doesn’t happen in Trump 2.0. In a phrase, “No Kings.”
DM: For the people who do understand the danger but feel powerless to contribute, what would you recommend? Through your studies of violent, dictatorial regimes, what forms of defiance and solidarity are most effective?
ALH: First, and to reiterate a comment I made earlier, people should keep in mind that they share far more with people on the other side of the political aisle than they realize. Many studies underscore this point. It’s a longer story, but there is a very real way people are being manipulated by politicians, influencers, and corporations that profit from toxic polarization. No one, left or right, wants to be manipulated. And second, there are many ways in which people can act. People working in the nonviolent civil resistance space have detailed hundreds of things people can do. In U.S. history, for example, civil rights activists used tactics ranging from the Freedom Rider bus rides to marches in places like Selma, Alabama. Today, the No Kings protest may be the best-known form of left-wing protest. But activists are using dozens of other nonviolent civil resistance tactics in places like Minneapolis: economic boycotts, whistle-blowing, banging pots and pans, honking horns, creating mutual aid networks, and so forth. To get started and get a sense for the scale of the possible actions, look up Gene Sharp’s “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action” or, for a broader perspective, the website of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.
