What Protesters Know About Human Nature That Trump Doesn't

In Los Angeles, protesters are standing between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and families. In Chicago and New York, all around the country, they're refusing to let children be torn from their communities. They're risking arrest to protect their neighbors, doing what humans have always done: refusing to give up on each other.

These protesters understand something that Trump's administration, and Elon Musk, fundamentally don't: We are not monsters. When President Donald Trump releases lists of "killers, rapists, and drug dealers" to justify mass deportations and disappearances of our beloved community members, when politicians paint entire communities as threats to our survival, they're selling us an ancient lie about who we are. And everyone taking to the streets knows it's a lie.

What the Protesters Understand

The protesters know that Trump's attack on immigrants isn't just inhuman, authoritarian policy, it's also outdated and genuinely bad science that contradicts the very reason our species continues to exist. They understand that when one of us is under attack, we all are.

The lie Trump tells goes like this: Humans are fundamentally selfish, competitive creatures living in a "dog eat dog world" where survival means stepping on others. It's a story that despots have told throughout history because it makes their cruelest policies seem inevitable. If we're all potential monsters, then we need strong leaders to protect us from each other. If compassion is naive, then brutality becomes wisdom.

Every despot in history has had to first convince people that other humans aren't worthy of moral consideration.

Elon Musk made this explicit recently when he called empathy "civilizational suicidal" and claimed that empathy is "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization." The tech mogul and unelected government official described caring for others as a "bug" that's being "exploited" and "weaponized." Musk is attempting to reframe our greatest evolutionary strength as our fatal flaw.

But if this were true, you wouldn't be reading this right now and I would not be writing these words. Our species would have gone extinct long ago. The protesters know this instinctively, and science proves them right.

We Are the Descendants of Carers, Not Killers

What do the protesters understand that Trump doesn't? They know the real story of human evolution isn't about the strongest or most ruthless individuals surviving. Instead, our story is about cooperation and empathy. Early humans knew that we cannot tear ourselves apart because our strength comes from being in community with one another. The humans who shared food during famines, who cared for the sick, who worked together to solve problems, they are our ancestors. Influential early psychologist Sigmund Freud could not be more wrong when he said that we are the descendants of murderers. No, you and I, all of us, are the descendants of carers.

Our caring nature is something we have been able to gather empirical facts about, confirming this across multiple scientific disciplines. Anthropologist Kristen Hawkes has shown how grandmothers caring for offspring allowed for more descendants and drove longevity in our species. Primatologist Frans de Waal has documented empathy and fairness in our closest evolutionary relatives. Even among nonhuman species, generosity is the norm: vampire bats share blood with unrelated bats to prevent starvation, and sparrow-like pied flycatchers will risk their lives to help drive away predators from non-relative birds.

We don't have to look to the past or to other species to see the evidence of our inherent compassionate nature being our strength, not our weakness. We can look at our own children. Toddlers as young as 14 months will spontaneously help others—handing objects to people who can't reach them, picking up dropped items, sharing resources equally even when they could keep more for themselves. This happens before any cultural conditioning, before they're taught to be "good." Research shows that 18-month-olds will help unfamiliar adults regardless of parental presence or encouragement; these fascinating studies suggest that this instinct to help is intrinsic to who we are.

This is our default mode. Cooperation isn't something we have to learn, it isn't a weakness, it isn't destroying civilization. Cooperation and solidarity led to our evolution and are our greatest strengths.

When We Believe We're Monsters, Monsters Win

So why do we keep hearing a different story about our human nature from people like Trump and Elon? Because the lie serves those who hoard wealth and power. When they want to justify policies that violate our moral instincts, they first have to convince us that morality itself is naïve, that empathy is a weakness.

Trump's rhetoric about immigrants is more than dangerous white supremacy in action, it's strategically designed to make us forget who we are. By flooding the media with dehumanizing language about people "poisoning the blood" of America, by claiming immigrants are "not humans" but "animals," by deploying Marines against protesters in Los Angeles, his administration is trying to override our natural empathy and tendency toward care for one another with manufactured fear.

The protesters in Los Angeles and around the country are refusing to dehumanize themselves by allowing anyone in our community to be dehumanized.

Trump's approach is not new, and criticisms of it are not either. As labor organizer Emma Goldman wrote over a century ago, "The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature." Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are charlatans selling us a lie about people in our communities being inherently dangerous. Just like Hitler, who used similar language about "blood poisoning" to justify his atrocities. Every despot in history has had to first convince people that other humans aren't worthy of moral consideration.

The current administration's approach follows historical patterns predictably. First, criminalize an entire population with selective statistics and inflammatory rhetoric. Then, when people naturally recoil from the cruelty of family separations and mass deportations, send in troops to suppress that moral instinct. Finally, frame any resistance as evidence that society is breaking down and needs even harsher measures. Trump has been orchestrating the chaos he needs to justify martial law.

Why This Matters Now

The protesters in Los Angeles and around the country are refusing to dehumanize themselves by allowing anyone in our community to be dehumanized. They are standing up for immigrants, refusing to let children be abducted from schools, because they understand that a society that abandons empathy for some will eventually abandon empathy for all. They know that when we allow the dehumanization of any group, we weaken the very bonds that make civilization possible.

Resisting the lies Trump tells us about human nature is urgent. If we believe the lie that humans are fundamentally selfish, we may become passive in the face of policies that violate our deepest values. We accept mass deportations and disappearances because we're told those who are being removed are monsters. We support militarized responses to peaceful protests because we're convinced our neighbors are our enemies.

But those are all lies. We have to hold on to the truth of who we are. We see that policies based on fear and division make us less safe, not more. We understand that our liberation truly is bound together. We see that people protesting the disappearances of beloved community members are fighting for all of our freedoms and rights. They represent the truth of who we are.

We are not a species of monsters barely held in check. We are not doomed to destroy each other when resources get scarce or when we encounter people who look different from us. We are the species that figured out how to care for each other across genetic lines, how to cooperate with strangers, how to build civilizations based on shared values rather than shared DNA. We have 14-month-olds who instinctively help others, brains that reward us for fairness, and genes that predispose us toward generosity. Moving toward collective liberation is our true nature.

This is what our true nature looks like in action. Not Musk's "bug" to be eliminated, not Trump's weakness to be exploited, but our species' greatest strength. When we stand up for each other, refuse to dehumanize anyone in our communities, and build futures where everyone can thrive, we're not being "suicidally empathetic." We are being magnificently, dangerously, revolutionarily human.

And every act of solidarity proves what despots fear most: that true power is our commitment to one another, our refusal to dehumanize and discard anyone in our community. This is the power that topples empires. Not by denying humanity as they do, but through the simple, revolutionary act of affirming it for everyone.