More Dehumanization in the Magasphere

Some striking episodes from the past week

There have been some striking examples dehumanizing rhetoric in the magasphere this week.

I recently suggested in my posting“Blood libels old and new,” that the charge by Vance and Trump that Haitian migrants are abducting and eating dogs and cats is a new edition of the ancient Blood Libel—the centuries-old charge that Jewish people kidnap Christian boys to ritually consume their blood. My argument rested on the claim that dogs and cats have a special status. These companion animals are family members, surrogate children.

Some readers found this claim very far-fetched. But just a few days ago, Rosanne Barr made it explicit. Joining Tucker Carlson on the stage in Fort Worth, Texas, she claimed, “Do you know they ate babies….It’s not just the dogs and the cats. There are full-on vampires! And everybody still thinks I’m crazy. But I’m not crazy. They’re full-on vampires. They love the taste of human flesh, and they drink human blood.” Barr seemed to be referring both to “liberals elites” (à la Qanon) and to Haitian migrants.

It’s easy to dismiss Barr’s remarks as nothing more than the delusions of someone who is mentally ill, as several journalists have already done. This is a mistake. Barr might well be mentally ill, and her stated beliefs might well be symptoms of her illness, but her claims give voice to an ominous dehumanizing fantasy that is simmering in the background of the MAGA mind.

Four days later, in Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin, Donald Trump delivered what even he called a “very dark speech”—an hour and a quarter-long rant about how migrants are destroying the United States, in which referred to violent gang members as “monsters” and “vile animals.” If you think that these terms are excusible expressions of moral outrage in response to heinous acts, then think again. Trump reserves them for racialized migrants from Latin America and Africa.

All of this was disturbing, but the most chilling moment in the former president’s tirade occurred when his anti-migrant speech was interrupted by a fly buzzing around the podium. Swatting it away, he causally remarked "Oh, there's a fly. Oh, I wonder where the fly came from. See, two years ago, I wouldn't have had a fly up here. You’re changing rapidly. We can’t take it any longer."

Much of the social media chatter about this disquieting interlude took it as evidence of Trump’s cognitive decay. But what makes it so disquieting is not that it was incoherent or bizarre. Quite the contrary. Trump went well beyond his customary racist and xenophobic shticks. Spontaneously identifying migrants with flies that can be swatted away revealed the true depth of his dehumanizing commitments.