Two out of five Trump backers think rounding up Japanese Americans was a good thing, favor bombing Aladdin’s fictional homeland

As if The Dai­ly Show’s recent focus group with Don­ald Trump sup­port­ers was­n’t scary enough, Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (which peri­od­i­cal­ly does pub­lic opin­ion research for NPI) has now pub­lished the results of its lat­est nation­al poll, which finds that Don­ald Trump’s pop­u­lar­i­ty among Repub­li­can vot­ers con­tin­ues to grow, and that many of those vot­ers are unin­tel­li­gent, proto-fascists.

Let’s start with how vot­ers feel about the pro­posed ban on Mus­lims enter­ing the Unit­ed States — which is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al as well as un-American:

A lot of peo­ple thought Don­ald Trump’s sup­port might come crash­ing down after he announced sup­port for a ban on Mus­lims enter­ing the Unit­ed States last week but that posi­tion, as well as a lot of the oth­er things Trump has said recent­ly, is broad­ly pop­u­lar with­in the GOP. 54% sup­port Trump’s pro­posed Mus­lim ban, to only 25% who oppose it. Among Trump’s own sup­port­ers there’s ⁸²⁄₅ sup­port for it. Cruz vot­ers favor it as well, ⁵⁷⁄₂₅. Rubio vot­ers are pret­ty even­ly divid­ed on it with 39% in favor and 40% opposed, while Bush vot­ers oppose it ²¹⁄₃₇.

And that’s just the beginning.

46% sup­port a nation­al data­base of Mus­lims, to only 37% opposed. Trump vot­ers sup­port this ⁶⁶⁄₁₅ but vot­ers for the oth­er top can­di­dates are more close­ly divid­ed- Cruz’s (40/41) and Rubio’s (44/45) nar­row­ly oppose it while Bush’s (36/49) do by a wider spread.

Fig­ures on the right wing have stoked base­less fears for years about a nation­al gun reg­istry, which con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists claim is a pre­req­ui­site to inevitable gun con­fis­ca­tion. But it seems some of the same peo­ple who oppose a gun reg­istry are OK with the idea of the gov­ern­ment keep­ing track of all Mus­lims. Islam­o­pho­bia pro­duces some pret­ty strik­ing dou­ble standards.

36% think thou­sands of Arabs in New Jer­sey cheered when the World Trade Cen­ter col­lapsed to 35% who don’t think that hap­pened. Sup­port­ers of Trump (49/24) and Cruz (47/22) both pret­ty firm­ly think that occurred while Bush (37/51) and Rubio (22/46) vot­ers don’t think it did.

There is zero evi­dence — zero — that the event described above ever took place. It’s not even an urban leg­end. It’s pure, made-up Islam­o­pho­bic nonsense.

It’s been said that truth is stranger than fic­tion. What’s even stranger (and dis­heart­en­ing) is the phe­nom­e­non of fic­tion becom­ing truth in the eyes of thou­sands or mil­lions of peo­ple who live in a free soci­ety who have had access to an edu­ca­tion. War is peace, free­dom is slav­ery, igno­rance is strength.

Only 28% of GOP pri­ma­ry vot­ers go so far as to think mosques in the Unit­ed States should be shut down to 47% opposed to that. Trump vot­ers are on an island on that issue- they sup­port it ⁴⁵⁄₂₈ but back­ers of Cruz (23/40) and espe­cial­ly Rubio (18/66) and Bush (14/68) are strong­ly against it.

Only 28% think the First Amend­ment applies only to them and not any Muslims!?

To put some of these find­ings about real mod­ern day issues and Trump vot­ers in con­text, 41% of his vot­ers think Japan­ese intern­ment was a good thing, to 37% who don’t.

And 41% of his sup­port­ers would favor bomb­ing Agrabah to only 9% who are opposed to doing that. Agrabah is the coun­try from Aladdin. Over­all 30% of Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers say they sup­port bomb­ing it to 13% who are opposed. We asked the same ques­tion of Democ­rats, and 36% of them opposed bomb­ing Agrabah to 19% in support.

The word dis­turbed does­n’t even begin to describe how I felt after hear­ing about these find­ings. Ugh. Neo-fas­cism and igno­rance are alive and well in Amer­i­ca. There is a lot of work that needs doing to change that… a lot of work indeed.