DONALD TRUMP'S IMMUNOLOGICAL FANTASY Donald Trump's ideology grows out of an immunological fantasy. To maintain the nation’s boundaries, a wall must be constructed, and laws passed to prevent “foreign elements” from entering and contaminating the nation. MAGA means refusal to be penetrated. The President equates his own body with the American body politic and imagines other citizens do so as well. The danger is that “porous boundaries” allow alien elements to seep into and infect Trump's body and the bodies of America's citizens.

The immune system identifies cells that “belong” to the body—in contrast to foreign cells—that do not "belong." Alien cells are rejected and destroyed.

Nation-states are constructed based on the model of the immune system. Like human bodies, national bodies are created assuming that sharply defined boundaries are necessary.

Nations, like bodies, are imagined to be besieged or threatened by foreign or enemy elements. The imperiled nation must “continuously work to quell alien invaders” (Martin, 1999).

When a nation feels its boundaries are porous, it may seek to create walls to prevent alien or foreign cells from entering. Nationalism builds upon an immunological fantasy. 

Hitler and the Nazis treated the German nation as a body with an immune system recognizing what was “self” and rejecting what was “not-self.” Identifying Jews as foreign or not-self cells within the German body politic, the national immune system acted—could not do otherwise--but to “reject” or destroy these alien entities.

Donald Trump's ideology similarly revolves around an immunological fantasy. To maintain the nation’s boundaries, a wall must be constructed, and laws passed to prevent “foreign elements” from entering and penetrating the nation.

Donald Trump equates his own body with the American body politic and assumes other Americans do so as well. These Americans bind their existence to a specific “geographic space” (Howard Stein, 2013). The danger is that porous boundaries permit aliens to seep into the nation and destroy the body politic.

Advocating the creation of firm, solid borders, nationalists seek to create a less vulnerable national body--one not easily penetrated or violated by alien, foreign bodies.