On the one side stand Silicon Valley moguls and leaders of corporate America; on the other, longstanding Donald Trump loyalists and supporters of the Maga (“Make America great again”) movement. One side claims to be building America’s bright new future by recruiting the best talent from across the globe, the other to be defending US workers from the depredations of global capitalism. One side portrays itself as challenging racism and bigotry, the other is outraged by bigoted views of American culture.

The H-1B visa – which allows US companies to hire foreign workers with “highly specialised knowledge” – might seem an unlikely spark for a mini civil war among Trump supporters. Yet the bitter feud that has gripped the Trumpsphere over the past week has exposed many of the fissures of US conservatism. There is little to admire on either side and much to deplore. Both sides are right in certain respects, but usually for desperately wrong reasons.

The fallout began when Laura Loomer, a far-right activist with the ear of the incoming president, described as “deeply disturbing” the appointment by Trump of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-born US venture capitalist, as policy adviser on AI. She was alarmed by “the number of career leftists … appointed to serve in Trump’s admin” whose views “are in direct opposition to Trump’s America first agenda”.

Then Vivek Ramaswamy published a long post blaming “American culture” for the need to import foreign engineers. A former presidential rival turned Trump supporter, and Trump’s pick to run, with Elon Musk, the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, Ramaswamy claimed that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long”. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the maths olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian,” he added, “will not produce the best engineers.”

The post inevitably enraged Maga loyalists and........

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