By Brigitte L. Nacos
For many of the slave masters of old African Americans were less than human, which was reason enough to mistreat their slaves.
For Hitler and his Nazi followers Jews were “Untermenschen” or subhuman beings, such as rats, which was reason enough to kill more than six million Jews in gas chambers.
Obviously, mankind does not learn the lessons of the past.
Least of all, President Trump!
The other day, he called undocumented immigrants “animals.” “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are,” he said. “These aren’t people. These are animals.” As Elise Foley wrote in the Huffington Post, as presidential candidate and as U.S. president Mr. Trump called undocumented immigrants repeatedly animals. According to the report, last year,”he said ‘criminal aliens’ were ‘animals’ and then made a gruesome claim that they are murdering ‘young, beautiful’ girls.”
First, there is dehumanization. Then, the declared “sub-humans” are mistreated.
How else can one explain that mothers and children from Central America, Mexico, Africa, and other places deemed “shit-holes” by Trump are separated if they manage to cross into the United States?
Would that happened to blond and blue eyes illegals from Scandinavia or other “desirable” countries in Europe?
In Trump’s world, bigots are given starring roles.
At the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem last week, Pastor Robert Jeffress from Texas delivered the opening prayer. Never mind that he said in the past that all Jews will go to hell and that the Jews cannot be saved. He also has denigrated Catholicism, Islam, and Mormonism.
At the same occasion, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, spoke at a reception in Jerusalem in honor of Americans attending the ceremonies. Earlier this year, as New York Magazine reported, he used “a derogatory Hebrew word for black people, in a sermon, and comparing them to monkeys.”
After an immigrant from Uzbekistan, a legal U.S. resident, killed eight persons in a horrific Halloween truck-ramming last year, Trump called him an “animal” that deserved to be sent to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. There, many of the post-9/11 terrorists or alleged terrorists were tortured in so-called “enhanced interrogation” sessions. Often, the detainees were called “animals” or were told that they had to work themselves up to the status of a dog—meaning, they were considered sub-animal…
Dehumanizing human beings, using animal metaphors in public without repercussions has bad consequences. Bigots encourage other bigots.
That’s what came to my mind when I read the other day about a Manhattan lawyer who berated Spanish restaurant workers because they spoke in their native language to each other.
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