Xenophobic Rhetoric In Trumps’ Madison Square Garden Speech: A Critical Discourse Approach To Global Citizenship Erosion
Keywords:
cosmopolitanism, Donald Trump, far-right politics, global citizenship, XenophobiaAbstract
This paper is submitted for publication in the special issue of March 2026 on “Global Citizenship” Abstract: This study situates Trump’s Madison Square Garden speech within the broader rise of far-right politics and challenges to global citizenship. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the paper examines how Trump’s xenophobic populism undermines core ethics of global citizenship such as social equality, cultural respect, human dignity, solidarity, shared responsibility, and mutual understanding. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model (combining text description, discursive practice, and social practice) is used throughout the study to demonstrate how lexical choices and intertextual references are used to generate an anti-immigrant narrative that solidifies “us” versus “them”. Findings reveal that Trump mobilizes socio-economic anxiety among voters in his favor by redefining nationhood as a defensive identity against perceived destructive outsiders, transforming citizenship from a universal democratic right into an exclusionary national privilege.
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