Your turn will come too

In the 1850s, the dominant nativist movement in the United States was organized around anti-Catholic and anti-Irish hostility. The Know-Nothings argued that Catholic immigrants were culturally unfit for republican self-government , loyal to a foreign power (the Pope), and incapable of genuine American citizenship. By the 1880s, the same suspicion had moved heavily onto Chinese immigrants. By the 1920s, it had moved again toward southern and eastern Europeans, especially Jews and Italians, now described as racially or culturally unassimilable. Each wave insisted it was responding to the specific danger posed by the specific group in front of it.

Then the Irish Catholic became normal. So did the Italian. So, largely, did the eastern European Jew. The hostility moved on.

That pattern matters because it suggests the target is more replaceable than the hostility itself. The fear of the foreigner is as old as humanity itself. That is getting better, since we have better education and communication with other cultures, most people grow being able to meet and understand people from other cultures, unlike the past. However, something interesting to reflect on is the mechanism itself: some people carry a stable readiness to divide the world into trusted insiders and threatening outsiders, then become politically activated when a suitable target is available.¹ In plain English, I do not think they hate only one group. They are looking for one, and often inmigrants are obvious, but any other group would do nearly as well

Across the American National Election Studies, the General Social Survey, and Pew Research Center polling, one pattern is that the most intense anti-immigrant sentiment correlates with hostility toward other out-groups as well.² That does not mean every is motivated by racial hostility, misogyny, Islamophobia or homophobia, but they sure are inclined to. And, anecdotally, every single racist person I know also turns out to have at least some other groups to hate, usually LGBTQ, Islam, "lefties"...

A bit more historical data

The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 sharply restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe and all but closed the door to large parts of the world.³ Ok cool, immigration is uniform. The 1930s did not produce a settled, calmer public culture relieved of its central anxiety. They produced strong currents of antisemitism, renewed conspiratorial nationalism, and the search for fresh internal enemies.

The insider problem is the part I think people miss, and it is the most useful part of the pattern to understand. Out-group status is not fixed. Groups that eventually become ordinary insiders were often treated first as civilizational threats. The Irish moved from suspected papal agents to something we all identify as during St. Patricks day if we have even 1% Irish ancestry. Jews moved from being treated as permanently alien to being deeply embedded in American professional life, then remained vulnerable to rapid reclassification under political stress. Japanese Americans were citizens and neighbors until wartime fear made citizenship suddenly less important than target availability.

Hate just needs a outsider, doesn't really matter that the outsider is inside

Think yourself, even about the current right-wing narrative pushed by Trump and his cronies. Yes, they do talk big about China/Mexico and other foreign groups. But they also get political traction out of deshumanizing trans people, "Marxists in universities", "Lefties", "The Sheeps", "Soyboys"... all of those are American groups.

If you're an American and you felt neutral about hate speech since it's all about other groups that you don't belong into, remember, your turn will come too.