Alan Cumming warns Americans are being 'brainwashed' by Donald Trump

Alan Cumming has warned Americans to 'stand up and take heed before it is too late.'

Cumming said he believed that a generation of Americans has “lost the power of analysis" because US politics has become a “team sport” in recent years,

In an interview with the broadcaster NBC, the Hollywood and Broadway star, who was awarded US citizenship in 2008, said Americans needed to "stand up and take heed before it's too late."

Perthshire-born Cumming, one of the most high-profile cultural figures to support Scottish independence, has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump since before he entered the White House.

He said: "I really do believe that people have lost the power of analysis in this country because of the duality of the political system. It's going to take a long time before we have a generation who can regain the powers of analysis.

"It's all a multilayered effort to dumb us down, in order to be able to brainwash us and feed us propaganda. We need to stand up and take heed before it's too late.

"There's a thing in this country right now: Any dissent against the president or any disagreement with his views is seen as a red flag and people immediately respond in an aggressive way.

"People are just screaming at one another right now; it makes it very difficult to engage. And so, aside from trying to celebrate immigration, I'm trying to get people to also stand back and try to not let the tropes of this awful rhetoric blind us to what is actually going on.

"This government is trying to brainwash its citizens into believing that the very thing that has made America what it is and has made America great - immigration - is a negative thing. That is complete doublespeak."

Cumming has recently been touring the country with a pro-immigration cabaret “song and story show," Legal Immigrant. He interviewed to coincide with the launch of a live recording as an audiobook on the Audible app.

Cumming added: "The idea that if you're pro-immigrant, you're anti-America, and if you're anti-immigration, you are pro-America is completely wrong. That's not just my opinion; if you stand back from it and look at the history of this country, you can't deny that is the truth.

“America is such a young country: It’s only a few hundred years old, and no one who has been here for only a few generations is without an immigrant connection.

"So, from the outside — from a place like Europe — the idea that Americans are not connected to immigration and our immigrant pasts seems like we are denying ourselves.

"We sound very self-hating about the very notion of immigration, but we're actually just confusing racism with a desire to fix the immigration system.

"Things that are being said about immigration and the ideals of immigration are basically just being used as a thinly veiled form of racism. It's so blatant.

"The contributions of all immigrants has been so derided by our present administration, so I felt that I needed to celebrate immigration rather than have it openly derided.

"Also, I wanted to try to make people stand back and just see the anti-immigration propaganda that they were being fed, and understand instead how this country is what it is because of immigration. That was the genesis of my cabaret show.

"The whole point of the show was to tell my experience from my perspective as immigrant, but also to show that I'm feeling these negative things about being an immigrant and I'm a white man of privilege. I can't imagine what it must be like for people of colour or Muslims.

"I don't know the exact percentage, but I would say that, the day I became an American, at least 75 percent of the other people being sworn in with me were people of colour."