Zero Tolerance, Even Less Humanity
Trump/Sessions Immigration Policy Separating Children from Parents is Racist and in Worst Traditions of Our Own — and World — History
Trump/Sessions Immigration Policy Separating Children from Parents is Racist and in Worst Traditions of Our Own — and World — History
Kids penned in like cattle. The president calls it an infestation. // He says it’s their own fault. He says they broke the law. He says it’s the Democrats. He says a lot of things. He lies. All the time. Two thousand children separated from parents, the natural but inhumane outgrowth of a zero-tolerance policy. Not his fault. Never his fault. He’ll make us great again. White again. That’s what he really means. //
Donald J. Trump is a racist and a liar. That may be impolitic, but it’s true. Verifiable. It’s in his language. The Blacks. The Jews. Mooslums, stretching out the first syllable into a long “u.” Mexicans send us their rapists. Shithole countries. Animals. Infesting the nation. //
David A. Graham’s analysis in The Atlantic rips the facade away, bares the meaning behind the code. Trump tweeted that Democrats “want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country.” Graham writes:
“Infest” is the essential, and new, word here. (Also popping up in the tweets is the older coded word “thugs.”) It drives full-throttle toward the dehumanization of immigrants, setting aside legality in favor of a division between a human us and a less-human them. What are infestations? They are takeovers by vermin, rodents, insects. The word is almost exclusively used in this context. What does one do with an infestation? Why, one exterminates it, of course.” //
A cartoon on a December 1927 front page of the Nazi propaganda newspaper, Der Stürmer, that seems far too relevant today. Its caption translates as “When the vermin are dead, the German oak will flourish once more.” Vermin. Infestation. Animals. The image, writes Randall Berwerk, a professor emeritus at Calvin College who hosts an archive page of Nazi propaganda, shows an extermination, with a Nazi “pumping poison gas into the base of a tree,” which is labeled Germany. The dead rats, a threat to the nation, represent Jews and are “labelled ‘stock exchanges,’ ‘the press,’ and ‘trusts,’”all of which the Nazis said we’re under the control of and being manipulated by a vast Jewish conspiracy. Nazis cast the Jews as an infestation. “What does one do with an infestation? Why, one exterminates it, of course.” //
An infestation of dark forces. From the shithole countries. Animals. // Families fleeing war, poverty, environmental disaster. Political corruption. Gang violence. Drugs. Forced prostitution. They travel long distances through dangerous conditions to arrive here, to seek something better, stability, peace. The American Dream. // But they are illegal. Another word used to dehumanize and delegitamize. They are illegal, as if their very existence breaks the law. Illegal, as if they are counterfeit bills or stolen property. // Blame Trump. Blame Sessions. // “We are not going to let this country be overwhelmed.” // The rhetoric is not new. Italians lynched in New Orleans, 1892, “the worst classes of Europe,” worthless, filthy. Jews. Russians. Poles. Undesirable. This is the language of hate. The language that shut the door. // The language of fences and walls, of cages and raids and the image of a child alone, penned in like a dog.
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