People have been saying for a long time that Trump was a knee-jerk reaction to Obama's presidency. He is the anti-thesis of Obama. His presidency has been centered around some pretty heavy nationalist policies, including trying to build a wall between the US and Mexico, the Muslim ban, increasing tariffs to various nations around the world, and blaming China among a host of other things. While there is nothing wrong with nationalist policies, they do tend to align with more extreme nationalist and supremacist people.
We see this all the time. Our leaderships specifically target groups where blame can be shifted. We blamed China for the NZ Housing Bubble and Trump has blamed Mexicans for bringing undesirables. The consequence of that, even if not intended, is that the population then gets onboard and starts seeing these people as threats to your way of life and they become targets for discrimination. If your leaderships rhetoric is to blame other nations for issues domestically, that's when you see these groups emerge and leadership swell.
There are countless stories of hate directed toward Asians, simply because of coronavirus. Hate against Muslims because of radical terrorism.
