By Joshua Plutchik

One of the most surprising outcomes of the 2024 U.S. presidential election was the degree of support Donald Trump received from Latino voters. For someone who built a political persona on hostility toward minority communities, this support seems baffling. His first administration promoted divisive immigration policies—such as promising to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, putting immigrants in detention centers as they awaited trial, and challenging the authority of "sanctuary cities" (Dwyer, 2020). Moreover, Trump is famous for his incendiary rhetoric toward Latinos (Ward, 2024).

Historically, Latino voters have aligned with the Democratic Party on issues such as immigration reform, social services, and minority rights (Manuel Krogstad et al., 2022). Yet, CNN exit polls estimated that 43 percent of Latinos voted for Trump in 2024 (up from 35 percent in 2020 and 28 percent in 2016). Although Kamala Harris won more Latino votes than Trump, the substantial plurality who backed Trump signals that narratives about Latino voters being overwhelmingly Democratic are oversimplified. This raises a compelling social-psychological question: Why would a group that has faced targeted discrimination readily endorse a candidate who seems to be against them? One promising explanation comes from system justification theory (SJT; Jost, 2020).

SJT aims to explain a widespread but often perplexing phenomenon: People are genuinely motivated—often unconsciously—to defend, justify, and uphold the existing social order—even when that order thwarts their interests (Jost & Banaji, 2004; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Jost, 2020). SJT proposes that motivation extends beyond passive acceptance; individuals may actively engage in behaviors and cognitive processes that reinforce the status quo. SJT offers several reasons for why someone would support a social system that works against them—system-justifying behaviors are motivated by three psychological needs: the need for knowledge and certainty (epistemic), the need for safety and security (existential), and the need for social connectedness (relational). The comfort of these factors may outweigh any potential benefits of challenging the status quo.

In Nazi Germany, the systematic normalization of anti-Semitic rhetoric played a pivotal role in desensitizing the public to the genocide of Jewish people. This process was orchestrated by the Nazi Party's infectious propaganda that infiltrated every facet of daily life, gradually eroding resistance to discriminatory ideologies (USHMM, 2023).

As history often repeats itself, Trump has been widely criticized for his strongman and anti-Latino rhetoric (Nawaz & Popat, 2024). However, many of Trump's once-controversial statements have become normalized. This phenomenon has been described as "sanewashing," whereby media outlets treat inflammatory language as just another everyday political stance (Bauder, 2024; Molloy, 2024). Consistent with SJT, this normalization process suggests a form of cognitive reappraisal that converts uncomfortable realities into accepted—even inevitable—features of the sociopolitical landscape.

Religious beliefs often correlate with higher system-justification tendencies, especially among Catholics and Protestants (Jost et al., 2014). Many Latinos are culturally and religiously........

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