Members of immigrant groups who support Trump and illiberal exclusion of other migrants represent a long-term phenomenon where those who have achieved stability seek to exclude new arrivals by invoking threats to community stability, as also occurred during the Great Migration.

Hitler praised American immigration policy and saw westward expansion as the American version of 'Lebensraum' (living space), and Nazi and American scientists shared work on eugenics, operating as part of a joint project.

Jackson represented the interests of white Americans in the trans-Appalachian West seeking to expand population and settlements at the expense of Native peoples, and had strong support from southern states because he was a slave owner committed to maintenance of slavery.

Societies historically organized around slavery and personal domination of enslaved people, and later 'authoritarian enclaves' in the South and elsewhere where hierarchies of power were long-standing and supported by people because they perceived benefits, demonstrate that illiberalism has genuine appeal beyond coercion.

Illiberalism is a way of life that continues in prosaic ways until threatened, then erupts; understanding it requires recognizing not just the disruptions but the day-to-day lives and meaning that illiberal participation creates.

Liberalism as a coherent political tradition is a recent invention of the 1940s-1950s; de-centering liberalism means understanding that it is one tradition among others and that it emerged recently, not that it is transhistorical or inevitable.

Historically important moments where social movements gained power include abolitionism, particularly Black abolitionism, which took on the most intractable power in the United States (plantation slavery) and managed to dismantle a system that created the wealthiest people in the US with disproportionate power.