Jacobin Radio Behind the News: Homeland Empire w/ Nikhil Pal Singh
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Mar 16, 2026 Nikhil Pal Singh, historian and NYU professor who directs a prison education program, explores how the Trump regime fuses foreign and domestic policy into a unified model of coercion. He examines spectacle, racial and nativist imagery, mass deportation plans, expanded detention and paramilitary policing, and how settler fantasies shape aggression abroad and at home.
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Spectacle Over Ideology In Trumpism
- The Trump administration revels in spectacle and dominance, favoring cartoonish violence over coherent ideology.
- Nikhil Pal Singh ties this to a cult of macho imagery drawn from action movies and a lack of empathy among key advisers.
The Foreign And Domestic Are Being Collapsed
- Homeland Empire collapses foreign and domestic security into a single space of impunity, making migrants, protesters, and foreign enemies part of one internal threat.
- Singh links this to expansions of DHS, immigration policing, and the carceral state used domestically and abroad.
Personal Immigrant History Illustrates Changing Acceptance
- Singh recounts personal and immigrant family histories to show shifting attitudes toward immigrants in the U.S.
- He describes his South Asian ancestry and how mid-20th-century immigrant barriers (country clubs) contrasted with broader acceptance later.