Autocratic dictators (“strongmen”) depend on their dehumanization playbooks to take action against specific internal and external groups to gain and retain ever-increasing rates of power. Dehumanization is the process and practice of denying others their full humanity, making them appear less than human, subhuman, targeting everyone the regime defines as “outgroups” (or as German fascists called them, subhumans, “untermensch,” plural untermenschen).
Within postcolonial studies and in critical theory, these dehumanized groups are referred to as “subalterns”: the colonial populations who are socially, politically, and geographically excluded from the ranks of power and privilege by an imperial colony and from an empire’s homeland.
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The dehumanization of these outgroups requires the power structure to mutate them into animals lacking essential human qualities and mental capacities, such as culture, civility, and rationality, thereby placing them on the outer extremes of morality. The power structure transposes them into a sort of living machine, denying them the human qualities of warmth, love, emotions, and individuality.
As Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda, boasted, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Throughout history, people have believed these lies, as many powerful, dominant groups depicted or represented subordinated groups in a variety of negative ways to maintain control or mastery. The oppression of subordinated groups is expressed through myths and stereotypes: in proverbs, social commentary, literature, jokes, epithets, pictorial depictions, and other cultural forms.
Also, throughout history, we can notice many clear and stunning connections between historical representations, dehumanizations, and oppressions of subordinated groups. I highlight here these connections in the representations of Jewish people and LGBTQ people.
As John Boswell noted in his book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (1980):
“The fate of Jews and gay people has been almost identical throughout European history, from early Christian hostility to extermination in concentration camps. The same laws which oppressed Jews oppressed gay people; the same groups bent on eliminating Jews tried to wipe out homosexuality. The same periods of European history which could not make room for Jewish distinctiveness reacted violently against sexual nonconformity…,and even the same methods of propaganda were used against Jews and gay people — picturing them as animals bent on the destruction of the children of the majority.”
LGBTQ+ people & Jews are blamed for diseases
Over many centuries, LGBTQ+ people and Jews have been accused of spreading and creating deadly diseases. In 2020, conspiracy theorists argued that Jews, Zionists, or the state of Israel created COVID-19 to profit from developing costly vaccines. Other internet sites warned that Jews were the chief spreaders of the virus, just as they were accused of doing with the plague during the Middle Ages.
For example, Rick Wiles, founder of extreme-right Christian news channel TruNews, claimed that Jews were bent on murdering as many Christians as they could on their way to impeaching President Trump — he termed the impeachment trial a “Jew coup.”
The former Bulgarian Trade Minister Krassimir Ivanov Ivandjiiski asserted that “scientific researchers and investigative journalists alike throughout the Middle East appear to be fully abreast of the ‘who’ and ‘why’ behind this bioengineered coronavirus pandemic…Zionism always wins, while everyone always loses.”
A University of Oxford study found that one in five people in England believed that Jews created the COVID-19 virus for the purpose of ruining the British economy for their own financial gain.
Several conservative Christian Evangelicals placed responsibility on LGBTQ+ people and women who have abortions for bringing about the novel Coronavirus. For example, Steven Andrew from the USA Christian Church dubbed March 2020 “Repent of LGBT Sin Month” to protect “the USA from diseases, such as the Coronavirus.”
Additionally, right-wing pastor E.W. Jackson warned his radio talk show listeners that the “homovirus” has infected America.
Televangelist Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s 700 Club agreed that abortion and marriage for same-sex couples are partly to blame for COVID-19, which caused horrific deaths and enormous social and economic cataclysm in the US.
The ravages of the Black Death throughout Europe, which wiped out an estimated one-fourth to one-half of the population in the 12th and 13th centuries, were blamed on Jews, who were accused of poisoning drinking wells.
Jews have been charged with transmitting other diseases as well, most notably syphilis, which was called “the Jewish disease” throughout Europe in the 19th century, even though the incidence of syphilis within the Jewish community had been no higher than in the larger population.
Medical literature of the time alleged that syphilis was spread to newly circumcised Jewish infants through the practice of metzitzah, the sucking on the penis by the mohel (the ritual circumciser) to stop the bleeding. Fellatio thus became not only a marker of “perversion” but also a sign of the Jewish transmission of disease.
Those engaging in same-sex sexuality were likewise viewed as working in league with the Devil and were accused of bringing evils into the world. In 538 A.D., for example, the Roman emperor Justinian issued a law which declared that, due to the crime of men having sex with other men, “there are famines, earthquakes, and pestilences; wherefore we admonish men to abstain from the aforesaid unlawful acts, that they may not lose their souls.”
Six years later, following a devastating plague in Constantinople, Justinian demanded that his citizenry resist evil temptation, particularly same-sex sexuality, “that abominable and impious conduct deservedly hated by God” and warned, “If, with eyes as it were blinded, we overlook such impious and forbidden conduct, we may provoke the good God to anger and bring ruin upon all — a fate which would be but deserved.”
In more contemporary times, the 1940 Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew and the 1992 U.S. radical right propaganda film The Gay Agenda portray Jews and LGBTQ+ people, respectively, as spreading infection and degeneracy, which, if allowed to continue, would result in the eventual collapse of civilization and its institutions.
In The Eternal Jew, Jews are said to commit 47% of all robberies and to make up 98% of those involved in prostitution. “The Jews,” according to the film’s narrator, “are only 1% of the population,” but they know how to “terrorize a great, tolerant nation” by controlling finance, the arts, education, and the media.
In The Gay Agenda, the narrator claims that 17% of gays consume human feces for erotic thrills, and 28% engage in sodomy with over 1,000 partners, thereby spreading diseases that imperil the entire society.
Although AIDS existed in epidemic proportions among heterosexual populations in parts of the African continent prior to its entry into many Western countries, the blame for it has come to rest upon gay and bisexual men.
In fact, medical researchers in the United States initially gave HIV the name “gay-related immune deficiency syndrome” (GRIDS), but soon changed it to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) following objections from activists, who argued against naming a syndrome of unknown origins after an already stigmatized group.
During his first year in office in 1981, Reagan spoke flippantly of AIDS when he stated that “maybe the Lord brought down the plague because illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments.”
When AIDS was perceived by many as a disease of primarily gay and bisexual men, Pat Buchanan, who served as Reagan’s Chief of Communications, was quite outspoken, referring to AIDS as nature’s “awful retribution,” and saying it did not deserve a thorough and compassionate response.
Writing in 1986, Buchanan claimed, “The poor homosexuals — they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution.”
In 2007, Evangelist Jerry Falwell extended the blame, saying, “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals, it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”
Some even fault gays for ultimately bringing about the total destruction of human life. In his annual “State of the World” address at the Vatican delivered to diplomats from 179 countries, Pope Benedict XVI, on January 9, 2012, released a dire warning, stating that marriage for same-sex couples “undermine the family, threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself.”
The pontiff stated earlier on December 22, 2008, at a Christmas address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration, that saving humanity from homosexual and gender-variant behaviors was like saving the rainforest from destruction: “[The Church] should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed….The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.”
The Pope warned that humans must “listen to the language of creation” and understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior outside heterosexual relations as “a destruction of God’s work.”
Colorado radio talk show host and pastor, Kevin Swanson, asserted in 2015 that God gives HIV/AIDS to homosexuals as “retribution to their sexual habit.” This, he said, is a sign of God’s kindness because having the virus makes it more likely that they’ll renounce their homosexuality, thereby saving them from eternal damnation.
Dehumanization of the immigrant
Throughout history in most countries around the world, the dominant power structures have dehumanized immigrants (documented and undocumented alike) with accusations of posing similar dangers to native populations as were levied against Jews and LGBTQ+ people. Immigrants are treated as animals, vectors of disease (including sexually transmitted infections, leprosy, the Black Plague, and more recently, COVID-19), and as criminals, human traffickers, invaders, “illegal,” and as “aliens.”
Donald J. Trump, throughout his political career, exposed the underlying truth that immigration policy of the United States has forever rested on the foundation of social constructions of “race” and of socioeconomic class.
In just the first month of his second regime, Trump mandated his newly designated “Border Czar” Tom Homan to oversee the deportation of literally millions of undocumented immigrants, primarily brown and black people, from our southern border. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security even constructed several “camps” for incarcerating detainees.
Though Trump vowed to deport “criminal elements” back to their native lands, the round up has been indiscriminately arresting people with no criminal backgrounds.
As reported by the watchdog group, American Progress: “The Trump administration’s theatrical websites’ boasts about securing the border and deporting immigrants who have committed serious crimes tell a very incomplete story. Although framed under the banner of security, President Donald Trump’s rash actions harm public safety and national security while providing no actual solutions to fix the broken US immigration system.”
On his first day of his second takeover of the Oval Office, he signed an executive order closing US doors to immigration. He issued a new order only 18 days later, however, making an exception for primarily white Afrikaners from South Africa.
The day Donald Trump first descended the escalator in his golden tower, his head held high as he held court at his press conference, announcing his run for the presidency on June 16, 2015, he tossed down the bodies of Mexican people as if they were Trump steaks, as bloody red meat on his march to the White House.
“[Mexico is] sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us,” he said. “They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and they’re rapists.”
Then Donald Trump declared war on Islam at a campaign stop on December 7, 2015, with news reports stating, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
Trump attempted to appease his base of supporters, especially conservative Christian Evangelicals, with his continuing attacks on Muslims in its various incarnations of executive orders.
After two of President Trump’s travel bans from majority Muslim countries were struck down in the courts, on June 26, 2018, the Supreme Court approved Trump’s September 2017 ban barring travel into the US from five majority-Muslim countries: Somalia, Iran, Libya, Yemen, and Syria (plus North Korea and senior government officials from Venezuela).
In the 2018 ruling of Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. Hawaii, et al., by a narrow 5-4 decision the Supreme Court ruled that “The [Trump] Proclamation [banning travel] is squarely within the scope of Presidential authority [on national security grounds].
In a blistering dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, she wrote, “The majority here completely sets aside the President’s charged statements about Muslims as irrelevant. That holding erodes the foundational principles of religious tolerance that the court elsewhere has so emphatically protected, and it tells members of minority religions in our country ‘that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community.’”
In a January 11, 2018 Oval Office meeting, Trump became frustrated with legislators when they proposed restoring protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration plan.
“Why are we having all these people from sh**hole countries come here?” Trump said, referring to African countries and Haiti. He then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries like Norway.
The Trump regime has since separated children from their families, deported undocumented and documented immigrants to foreign countries not of their birth, established massive concentration-like prison camps, and sometimes shot and killed people without cause.
Moving targets & sitting ducks: It’s all a game to them
Following a regime’s dehumanization propaganda campaigns, the power structure and the larger “in-group” population transforms entire groups of people into appropriate objects of abuse, as if they had become targets of an animal hunt or a carnival game.
To further its propaganda against immigrants of color to the masses, the Trump White House has launched an online arcade on a government-sponsored and -funded website, featuring several retro-style video games. It has, thereby, gamified its immigration enforcement policies:
- Rio Run: An adaptation of the classic game Snake in which players control a figure (resembling border official Tom Homan) patrolling the Rio Grande to intercept and “deport” migrants for a high score. Captured figures appear in orange jumpsuits and follow behind the player. Directions: “Patrol the line along the river. Pick up crossers in the lot. Never double back over the line.”
- Build the Wall: A Tetris-style block-stacking game where players stack bricks to block a “zombie border siege” and protect the border. (The Trump administration later removed this game from the site after the Tetris Company noted it was not involved and took copyright concerns seriously).
Trump has virtually never truly created anything original. Most likely, his advisors took these gruesome games from the German Nazis.
For example, the 1938 Nazi-era German commercial board game Juden Raus! (Jews Out!) for children simulated the forced roundup, confiscation of property, and expulsion of the Jewish population. The advertising portrayed the game as “entertaining, instructive, and solidly constructed.”
It was a cross and circle-style game published by Günther & Co., a Dresen-based company, and distributed by merchant Rudolf Fabricius in 1938 following the November pogrom of Kristallnacht (before the “Final Solution” ending in the murder of an estimated 6 million European Jews).
The Wiener Holocaust Library wrote of it: Using crude antisemitic stereotypes and imagery, the game’s themes reflect racial hatred, forced deportations, and confiscation of Jewish property. The board shows a walled town, through which players move to round up Jews and deposit them outside the city walls, where a slogan reads “Auf nach Palästina!” (English: “Off to Palestine!”) The winner is the first to remove six people. | The Wiener Holocaust Library
The pieces of the game included a pair of dice, the map game board, and several figurines with large pointed hats meant to represent Jews. Each player took turns rolling the dice and moving their “Jews” across the map toward the “collection points,” which existed outside the city walls for deportation to “mandatory Palestine.” Written on the game board it says: “If you manage to send off six Jews, you’ve won a clear victory!”
Like Hitler, Donald Trump based his political philosophy on the 3 Cs of the strongman: cruelty, contempt, and corruption. These so-called “games” are based on these 3 Cs and more malevolent formulations, wherein regimes in power construct and scapegoat entire groups of people as “subhuman.”
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