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 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. The danger is that “porous boundaries” allow alien elements to seep into the body politic and permanently reside within this body, the nation, Trump's body and the bodies of other Americans. Alien elements already present within the national body must be "removed." This is the singular passion which motivates Trump and generates his "policies."

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

Nation-states, we suggest, are social constructions modelled on the immune system. Like human bodies, national bodies are created with sharply defined boundaries. The contemporary world is constituted by "nations," each separated from other nations by a boundary. 

Nations, like bodies, are imagined to be besieged or threatened by foreign elements (enemies). The imperilled 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. And seek to remove alien or foreign cells already present within the nation. Nationalism builds upon an immunological fantasy. 

Hitler and the Nazis treated the German nation as a body with an immune system, recognising 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--to “reject” or destroy these alien entities.

From the beginning of his Presidency in 2016 to this very day--Donald Trump's ideology (and being) revolves around an immunological fantasy. Trump frames this as a "legal" issue. But the passion with which he invests this issue is rooted in his personal psychology. 

To maintain national boundaries, illegal immigrants (foreign cells) must be removed (ejected). A wall must be constructed to prevent foreign cells from penetrating the body politic. And undocumented immigrants within the nation must be violently removed.

Donald Trump equates his own body with the American body (and many other Americans do so as well). These Americans bind their existence to a specific “geographic space” (Howard Stein, 2013). The danger is that "alien cells" will act to destroy the American body politic. Beneath the political issue lies a psychological one. "Foreign cells" provoke profound anxiety and paranoid rage.

It seems this theme is the consistent one underlying Trump's chaotic and ever-changing thought processes and presidency: paranoid rage. This paranoid rage begins with illegal immigrants, but now seems to be extending to other human beings. 

Pundits comment on his policies, which seem confusing, constantly changing and difficult to decipher. It is more productive to examine the "psychotic core" that lies at the heart of his psychology and political ideology.