Trump, White Supremacy, and Why Ancient Brains Still Run Modern Nations
We like to think we’re evolved. Rational. Beyond all that primitive tribalism stuff.
But walk into any room where politics come up, scroll through social media for five minutes, or watch how people react when someone “different” moves into their neighborhood—and you’ll see the same ancient machinery humming away beneath our civilized veneer.
Group hatred isn’t a bug in the human system. It’s a feature. An old one. And in the Trump era, we watched this ancient psychology get weaponized with terrifying effectiveness.
Your brain still relies on decision-making patterns that were shaped thousands of years ago, long before modern societies emerged.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: neuroscience research shows that when we perceive someone as part of our group, it activates the brain’s reward system, flooding us with good feelings. Meanwhile,Neuroscience studies have found that when people view unfamiliar or out-group faces, the brain regions involved in threat detection become more active, even when no real threat is present.
We’re literally wired to sort the world into “us” and “them.” And once we do that sorting, our brains reward us for sticking with our tribe and treating outsiders with suspicion.
This isn’t intelligence. It’s an ancient survival instinct dressed up in modern clothes. Early humans survived by trusting people who looked like them and acted like them. Outsiders meant unpredictability. Unpredictability meant danger. That software is still running, even though the saber-toothed tigers are long gone.
The really disturbing part? Research by social psychologist Henri Tajfel found that people will form tribal loyalties around completely arbitrary distinctions—even when they’re told the groups are random. Experiments in social psychology show that people begin favoring a group they’re assigned to, even if the division is random and meaningless. Our brains will manufacture tribal loyalty out of thin air.
The Chemical Conspiracy
Oxytocin is supposed to be the “love hormone,” right? The chemical that makes us feel warm and fuzzy and connected?
It turns out to have a dark side. The same hormone that deepens feelings of closeness with familiar people can also make individuals more protective of their own group and less welcoming toward outsiders. The same chemical that bonds us to our family makes us more suspicious of strangers.
Your brain chemistry is actively working against universal compassion. The tools that create in-group bonding simultaneously reinforce out-group bias. Nature doesn’t care about your moral principles.
How Trump Exploited Our Tribal Operating System
Donald Trump didn’t create white supremacy. He didn’t invent racism. But what he did—and continues to do—is something more insidious: he gave people permission to express their worst tribal instincts out loud, wrapped in the language of “telling it like it is.”
When Trump launched his campaign in 2015, he declared that Mexico was sending drugs, crime, and rapists, adding that some Mexican immigrants, he assumed, were good people. The purpose of statements like these wasn’t primarily policy. Their real impact was drawing a sharp boundary between who belonged and who didn’t. A way of saying: these people aren’t like us.
During his campaign, Trump proposed a “total and complete” ban on Muslims entering the United States. He followed through with Executive Order 13769, which became known as the Muslim ban—suspending entry from several predominantly Muslim countries and dramatically reducing refugee admissions.
The Charlottesville incident in 2017 became the defining moment of Trump’s relationship with white supremacy. After a white supremacist rally where neo-Nazis chanted racist slogans and one killed a counterprotester, Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides”. Many observers argued that his comments blurred the moral line between people promoting racist ideology and those protesting against it, which only intensified public outrage.
Yes, Trump eventually condemned neo-Nazis specifically. But the damage was done. Critics saw the “very fine people on both sides” line as a moral failure that normalized or at least tolerated white supremacists, especially because the rally was organized by explicitly racist groups and culminated in deadly violence.
This is how modern tribalism operates. You don’t need to wear a hood. You just need to create enough ambiguity that people hear what they want to hear. For those looking for a leader to validate their tribal fears, Trump’s rhetoric was a green light.
The Real-World Impact: When Rhetoric Becomes Reality
Here’s what happened when ancient tribal psychology met modern political power:
Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies led many immigrant families to fear for their safety. Research found his election was associated with a five-percentage-point decrease in well-child medical visits for children of immigrant mothers. Parents were so terrified of deportation that they stopped taking their kids to doctors. Think about that. Children are missing vaccinations and health screenings because their parents fear the government.
Trump’s rhetoric itself was damaging because it discouraged immigrants from showing up at work, sending their kids to school, and seeking healthcare. This is the “chilling effect” in action. You don’t need actual stormtroopers when fear does the job for you.
During Trump’s administration, anti-immigrant rhetoric drove voters away from him while actually increasing support for immigrants and immigration among the general public. But by then, the damage to communities was already done.
Despite the Trump administration claiming record deportations, actual numbers showed removals were just one percent below Biden administration averages—but the administration waged a media campaign exaggerating its enforcement to amplify fear.
The cruelty wasn’t just policy. It was a theater. Designed to trigger our tribal brains and make us feel like our “side” was winning.
White Supremacy Meets Political Expediency
Let’s be clear: white supremacy has always been part of American history. But there’s a difference between historical racism embedded in systems and a president who actively stokes those flames for political gain.
Trump has a documented history of speech and actions viewed by scholars and the public as racist or sympathetic to white supremacy, including being sued by the Department of Justice in 1973 for housing discrimination against African-American renters.
In 2024, Trump accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country,” a statement that shares connections to white supremacist ideals of blood contamination. This wasn’t dog-whistle politics. This was a bullhorn.
Research shows Trump’s rhetoric helped shift the window of acceptable language and policy toward immigrants, making controversial practices like family separation and mass deportation more palatable. When a president normalizes dehumanizing language, it changes what society considers acceptable.
Why Education Doesn’t Fix This (Not By Itself, Anyway)
There’s this comforting myth we tell ourselves: “If people were just more educated, they wouldn’t fall for this.”
Reality check: plenty of highly educated people supported Trump’s immigration policies. Some of them probably work in your office.
As evolutionary artifacts from our past, our brains evolved to reduce uncertainty and increase predictability through conformity to tribal beliefs. You can train someone to be brilliant at engineering or medicine while leaving their tribal instincts completely intact.
Think about America’s ongoing struggle with immigration attitudes. Despite being one of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth, suspicion toward immigrants—particularly Latinos and Indians—remains stubbornly persistent. Why?
Cultural nostalgia plays a huge role. Many Americans grew up with a mental picture of a white-majority nation. When demographics shift rapidly, it feels threatening—not because of any rational calculation, but because the familiar is being replaced by the unfamiliar.
Economic anxiety provides convenient scapegoats. When middle-class security feels precarious, it’s easier to blame newcomers than to confront systemic economic failures. Never mind that the Congressional Budget Office found that the immigration surge from 2021-2026 will boost GDP by $8.9 trillion and lower federal deficits by $0.9 trillion over a decade. Reports from demographic and economic researchers show that undocumented workers collectively contribute tens of billions in taxes while still having significant spending power.
The facts don’t matter when fear is driving the bus. And Trump understood this perfectly.
Political manipulation amplifies everything. From Roman senators to modern politicians, leaders have always understood that fear of outsiders is a powerful tool. As political scientist Lilliana Mason notes, partisanship has become a social identity similar to ethnicity or religion, more than just a bundle of policy opinions.
We’re not arguing about ideas anymore. We’re defending our identities. Trump didn’t invent this—but he exploited it more effectively than any modern American politician.
How Civilizations Actually Advanced (Hint: It Wasn’t Through Isolation)
Here’s the irony that history keeps trying to teach us: every golden age, every flourishing civilization, every period of remarkable innovation came from openness, not isolation.
Trade routes. Mixed cultures. Cross-pollination of ideas. Strangers bringing new perspectives.
The greatest achievements in human history emerged when people figured out how to work across tribal lines, not within them. The Silk Road. The Renaissance. The Scientific Revolution. The birth of Silicon Valley. All of these happened because different people, with different backgrounds and perspectives, came together and built something new.
But our brains keep trying to drag us backward into our safe little bubbles. And politicians like Trump know exactly which buttons to push to make that happen.
America’s Identity Crisis in the Trump Era
The United States is experiencing a cultural transition that many empires have faced at their peak: shifting from a dominant-group identity to a truly multiethnic one.
Recent data shows that immigration has accounted for almost half of U.S. labor force growth since 1995, and immigrants now comprise about 19% of the civilian workforce. Between 2005 and 2010, immigrants had an 80% higher rate of firm founding than their U.S.-born peers.
The resistance isn’t really about economics. It’s about identity. About fear of losing cultural dominance. About a familiar worldview being replaced by something less predictable.
Latino and Indian immigrants become prime targets not because of what they’re doing (which is largely contributing to economic growth), but because they’re visible symbols of change. They’re successful. They’re growing in number. And for people whose sense of self is wrapped up in maintaining a particular vision of what “America” looks like, that’s terrifying.
As cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot explains, human thinking evolved to prioritize whatever improves our sense of safety, not necessarily what brings us closer to factual accuracy. And survival, to our primitive brains, means protecting the tribe—even when the “tribe” is an imagined community of millions we’ll never meet.
Trump understood this intuitively. His genius—if you can call it that—was recognizing that millions of Americans were experiencing demographic anxiety and giving them permission to express it as righteous anger rather than examining it as fear.
The Psychology of Shortcuts
Our brains love efficiency. Stereotypes offer exactly that: quick judgments that feel true because they’ve been repeated enough times.
Confirmation bias leads us to seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs while dismissing contradictory evidence. We build echo chambers around ourselves—not because we’re stupid, but because our brains are doing exactly what evolution trained them to do: reduce cognitive load and maintain certainty.
The problem is that we’re applying Stone Age thinking to a connected world of billions of people. What worked when you needed to quickly assess whether that stranger from the next valley was dangerous doesn’t work when you need to cooperate across continents.
Multiple studies have shown that documented and undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. But this fact gets drowned out by emotional anecdotes about individual crimes. Trump exploited this relentlessly, turning tragic individual cases into evidence of an “invasion.”
Since 2015, Trump has continued using inaccurate, derogatory, and often racist language to refer to immigrants from all over the world. The repetition is the point. Say something enough times, and people’s tribal brains accept it as truth.
But Here’s the Thing—It Can Change
The most hopeful finding from all this research? Brain imaging studies show that children show little or no amygdala response to racial cues, suggesting these biases emerge over adolescence and are socially constructed rather than innate.
We’re not doomed by our biology. The tribal instinct is deeply wired, yes—but it’s also remarkably flexible about who counts as part of the tribe.
When researchers asked people to imagine an individual’s particular tastes and experiences—like what vegetables they might enjoy—the brain’s fear response to someone of a different race disappeared entirely. Just thinking about someone as a specific person rather than a category was enough to override supposedly “hardwired” responses.
The antidote to tribal thinking isn’t just education in the traditional sense. It’s exposure. Contact. Shared experiences. Real relationships with people who are different from you.
People who actually spend time with “outsiders” tend to lose their fear. Children raised in diverse environments rarely inherit their parents’ prejudices. Societies that encourage integration see less hostility.
The catch? It takes time. Laws can change overnight. Mindsets take generations. And politicians who benefit from tribal division will always work to slow that progress.
The Real Measure of Progress
GDP doesn’t measure a society’s maturity. Neither do skyscrapers or universities or technological advancement.
The real measure is simpler and much harder: Can we rise above our tribal instincts? Can we see the world beyond the comforting mirror of our own identity?
History shows us a frustrating pattern. Even the most advanced societies—Rome at its height, medieval kingdoms, colonial powers, 20th-century nations with record scientific progress—have behaved like anxious tribes. Technology advances. The psychology stays stuck.
America isn’t unique in this. The same patterns appear in Europe, India, Africa, and Asia. Everywhere humans gather in groups, the old machinery keeps running.
As researcher Jonathan Haidt argues, humans are fundamentally “groupish” creatures, letting social identity override reasoning. People often respond first through group identity and only later apply deliberate reasoning, if at all.
But here’s what matters: research shows that both liberals and conservatives exhibit similar levels of partisan bias, suggesting no group is immune to tribal thinking. This isn’t a problem of “those people.” It’s a human problem. Which means it’s your problem, and my problem, and everyone’s problem.
Trump didn’t create these tribal instincts. But he showed us how dangerous they become when someone in power actively exploits them rather than trying to overcome them.
What Actually Helps
Recognizing your own tribal biases is the first step. Not in an abstract “other people are tribal” way—you are tribal. Your brain is running the same ancient software as everyone else’s.
The second step is even harder: actively seeking out perspectives that challenge yours. Not to “win” arguments, but to genuinely understand how different people see the world.
The Robbers Cave experiment, a classic study in social psychology, When opposing groups were given challenges that required collaboration, their hostility gradually faded and they began relating to each other more positively. When people have to work together toward something bigger than their tribe, boundaries start to blur.
The challenge isn’t to eliminate groups—belonging is a basic human need, and groups can be productive, enriching, and healthy. The challenge is participating in groups without becoming blinded by them.
This is what Trump’s opponents needed to understand: you can’t just present facts and expect tribal thinking to disappear. You need to offer people a different tribe. A bigger one. An identity based on shared humanity rather than shared fear.
The Bottom Line
Progress isn’t the absence of hate. It’s the courage to challenge the hate within yourself.
We’re stuck with these tribal brains. Evolution isn’t going to rewire us anytime soon. But we’re not slaves to our instincts either. We can recognize them, understand them, and work against them when they push us toward division and fear.
The Trump era showed us what happens when a leader deliberately pushes our tribal buttons rather than calling us to overcome them. When someone with power validates our worst instincts and tells us they’re actually virtues. When fear becomes a political strategy.
The question isn’t whether tribalism is natural. It obviously is. The question is whether we’re willing to do the uncomfortable work of being better than our worst instincts.
That work never ends. There’s no finish line. No point where you’ve “fixed” your biases and can move on. It’s a constant, lifelong process of catching yourself in tribal thinking and choosing something better.
The alternative is continuing to be ruled by ancient software that no longer serves us—that maybe never really served us as well as we think it did. The alternative is more Charlottesvilles. More children are afraid to go to the doctor. More fear masquerading as patriotism.
White supremacy thrives in the gaps between our best intentions and our tribal instincts. Trump understood those gaps better than most. The question is: do we?
Your call.
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