“Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave”: The Triangulation of Environmentalism, Population Growth, and Immigration in the U.S

This paper reconstructs the political and discursive formation that triangulated environmentalism, population control and immigration into a troubling Foucauldian knowledge-based discourse relying on nativism, racism, and misogyny. The phenomenon of the Donald J. Trump 2016 presidential candidacy has placed this narrative formation, and its accompanying biopolitics, center stage in American politics, but its immediate roots can be traced to the manipulation of fears over resource scarcity and population growth starting in the 1960s. As a result, John Tanton created a tight-knit group of organizations that intertwined philosophically and organizationally and depended on a biopolitics and a foundational narrative that looks to control the bodies of immigrant women. It is this movement that the Trump candidacy and discourse continue to depend upon today.