"These are savage monsters"
Trump Doubles Down on the Dehumanization of Migrants
Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.”
In a speech at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on August 17, Donald Trump told his audience that migrants crossing the southern border of the United States “are not just illegal aliens, honestly, they are monsters. These are savage monsters.” Monsters are fictional, but if the MAGA faithful take his words to heart, they may end up performing monstrous acts.
History teaches us, again and again, that when people in positions of power and authority convince their audience that others are monsters, this sets the stage for atrocity. I describe this process in detail in my book Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization. I call it “demonizing dehumanization.” There are many examples of this kind of dehumanization. I concentrate on two of them inn my book . One is the dehumanization of Jewish people in Europe. The other is the dehumanization of African Americans in the United States.
Christians and Jews had always had an uneasy relationship in Europe. But by the 12th century, Jews had been literally demonized in the Christian imagination. As Joshua Trachtenberg writes in his classic work The Devil and the Jews. Trachtenberg writes:
Here in this region of the mass subconscious we…uncover the source of many a weird notion—of the horned Jew, of the Jewish thirst for Christian blood, of the Jew who scatters poison and disease broadcast, of the secret parliament of world Jewry, meeting periodically to scheme and plot, of a distinctive Jewish odor, of Jews practicing black magic and blighting their surroundings with the evil eye….But, more important, here we shall uncover the spring of the general conviction that prompts Jew hatred: of the Jew as an alien, evil, antisocial, and antihuman creature, essentially subhuman, indeed, and therefore answerable for the supreme crime of seeking to destroy by every subversive technique the fruits of that Christian civilization which in his heart of hearts he despises and abhors….The most vivid impression to be gained from medieval allusions to the Jew is of a hatred so vast and abysmal, so intense, that it leaves on gasping for comprehension.
Centuries later, people of African descent1 were also transformed into monsters, particularly after the ostensible abolition of slavery (“ostensible,” because de facto racialized slavery persisted in the US long after the American civil war). Here’s an example from Hinton Rowan Helper’s vile 1867 book Nojoque: A Question for a Continent.
If, in a spirit of rebellion against the laws of nature, we love the negroes and other black things, we shall only thereby gain the low distinction of gratifying the devil; but if, on the other hand, assuming attitudes of antagonism toward the imps of Africa, toward the prince of darkness, and toward all the other monstrous representatives of blackness and abomination, “we hate them with perfect hatred,” as they deserve to be hated, and as we are required and expected to hate them, we shall thereby render highly acceptable and pleasing service to the Diety….
In both cases, the monsterization has persisted to the present time. The image of the monstrous Black male—the superpredator—is still part of the American ideological bestiary. And the imaginary demonic Jew, revived and weaponized by the Nazis, is today common currency amongst antisemites.
It’s no accident Jews and African Americans are both racialized groups. Groups of people that are dehumanized as monsters are almost always racialized first. And the monstrous other is almost always male.2 Of course, women are also dehumanized, but they are hardly ever dehumanized as monsters. I don’t know of a single example of Nazi portrayals of Jewish women as monsters, whereas there are plentiful examples of monstrous Jewish men. This accords with patterns of genocode. Males are the primary targets for extermination, and when females are killed it is often on the grounds that they can produce more males.3 At least 97% of the people lynched in the American south were African American males.
These racial and gendered characteristics fit Trumps dehumanizing rhetoric. It is directed at racialized people (from “shithole countries”), and when the monsters’ gender is specified, they turn out to be male.
Trump’s rhetoric of dehumanization is nothing new. We’ve seen it before. But the move from animalistic language to the language of monstrosity takes the MAGA discourse to a new level. Monsters are not simply “unhumans” (a term coined by Republican activist Jack Posobiec to characterize progressives in a book praised by Donald Trump Jr., J. D. Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Michael Flynn).4 They are embodiments of evil that must be destroyed in self defense. Trump made this clear at Wilkes-Barre, when he said that if he is not elected “our country is going to die.”
In the past, media outlets expressed alarm at Trump’s dehumanizing language. On each occasion, my inbox was flooded with messages from journalists requesting interviews. But his dangerous speech seems now to barely raise an eyebrow. Indeed, it’s tempting to dismiss Trump’s words as nothing but cheap political talk. But that is to greatly underestimate their sinister power, whether he wins the upcoming election or whether he loses it.
I abjure terms like “Black” and “White” on the grounds that these seem to endorse the reality of race, and are therefore part of the ideology of racism. Those interested can consult the article “The trouble with race and its many shades of deceit,” coauthored with Subrena Smith at https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-trouble-with-race-and-its-many-shades-of-deceit/
See Tommy J. Curry’s Race, Class, Genre and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood.
See Adam Jones’ excellent Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction.
See this article about it in Current Affairs magazine by Nathan Robinson. I don’t want to advertise the damn book!