Obsessed with conspiracies within his court, King Mithridates developed a resistance to certain poisons by consuming them in small doses. Today, the Mithridatism of American society is underway. With less than three weeks to go before the November 5 presidential election, Donald Trump is stepping up his outrageous and extremist rhetoric. No more ambiguity or provocation disguised as humor. Trump-style rhetoric, instilled over the last nine years, has led to a widespread habituation against a backdrop of weariness.

On Fox News on October 13, Trump said that the biggest problem facing the country is "the enemy from within" – the alliance of "sick people [and] radical left lunatics." In his view, "it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military." The military, invited to hunt down political opponents.

At the end of September in Pennsylvania, the Republican candidate asserted that Kamala Harris should be "impeached and prosecuted" for her responsibility in the porous border with Mexico. He also called her "mentally impaired" and "disabled." Taunts about the physique and intelligence of his opponents, particularly women, are a classic of the billionaire. The rest of it is not.

Fabricated stories

Trump is promising to conduct the biggest deportation of illegal immigrants in history. He envisions special operations in places like the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, where criminal groups are supposedly sowing terror, in his apocalyptic vision of a decrepit America. "Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the Third World (...) prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums," the Republican candidate claimed there on October 11. "And she has had them resettled, beautifully, into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens."

It's no longer about promising a border wall as a magic solution to protect the American citadel, as it was in 2016. Now, this citadel is presented as infested and compromised. Supposedly only he knows how to restore it, by means never before seen. The repeated conflation of migrants and criminals is asserted and normalized. Xenophobia is manifest. Trump says he will rely on very old legislation, the Alien Enemies Act of 1792. This law was enacted in the event of war, "invasion" or "predatory incursion," enabling the president to order the arrest and deportation of non-citizens, without distinction between undocumented and legal residents.

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