It all begins with de-humanization

The ghastly potential of Donald Trump's dehumanizing rhetoric about immigrants

Nazi propaganda poster

The Nazis didn't devise, build, and put into operation the gas chambers in Poland and Germany overnight. They were conceived and constructed, instead, on a foundation of hateful rhetoric and religious bigotry that began a decade or more earlier.

A civilized population must be systematically de-civilized to reach the point that ordinary people will support or look the other way while their leaders vilify, persecute, imprison, and exterminate an entire class of people.

That work of preparation was vital to Hitler's "final solution." And that preparation involved persuading a nation that a specific type of person — in Germany's case, the Jewish people and other religious and ethnic minorities — were dangerous and a threat to the peace and well-being of a country.

The German public had to be persuaded that the Jews in their midst were less than human (untermeschen) before they would abide by Hilter’s program to arrest and relocate millions of them to the concentration camps that eventually became the places where 6 million were murdered.

“Nature is cruel,” Hitler said in 1942, “therefore we are also entitled to be cruel. When I send the flower of German youth into the steel hail of the next war without feeling the slightest regret over the precious German blood that is being spilled, should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?”

That is the historical context — seeing an entire group as “vermin” — that is necessary to fully understand Donald Trump’s vicious attacks on immigrants over the past 10 years or more.

But it is also, in a terrifying way, how we might understand how far Trump’s actions may go if he is returned to power.

We already know that Trump — using much the same ideology and rhetoric as other fascists throughout history — plans to round up millions of immigrants and place them into concentration camps. Remember the hundreds of signs printed by the Trump campaign and waved proudly at the Republican National Convention in July: “Mass Deportation Now.”

Trump claims he only wishes to deport them. But to where? What happens when Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras refuse to accept the millions of humans that Trump plans to ship back to their countries?

This would create a serious political problem for Trump. If the countries of origin won’t take them back, Trump will not release these immigrants back into the American communities from which he rounded them up.

What to do with the millions of souls Trump has arrested and is keeping in the camps?

That quandary will require a “solution” of sorts.

But back to the rhetoric that Trump uses to prepare Americans to accept and support his inhuman policies.

It was on display this past week.

First, Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, repeated a disgusting racist lie about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, stealing and eating the cats and dogs of the city’s residents. Vance was forced to acknowledge he may have spread disinformation.

And then, at Tuesday’s presidential debate, Trump pushed the same baseless claim.

"In Springfield, they're eating the dogs — the people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating — they're eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame," Trump said. 

Trump’s and Vance’s rhetoric had their intended result. As CBS News reported:

His comments sent the topic "THEY'RE EATING THE DOGS" trending on social media following the debate, spawning thousands of posts discussing the false claim.

The House Judiciary GOP, Sen. Ted Cruz and Elon Musk, the owner of X, had posted Monday on social media about the claim. Cruz, a Texas Republican, posted a meme on X showing two cats holding each other, with text that reads "Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don't eat us." 

But the city's spokesperson told CBS News there have been "no credible reports or specific claims" of pets being harmed by migrants. 

"In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community," said Karen Graves, strategic engagement manager for Springfield.

Within hours of the debate, Trump had even bent some GOP leaders to his will, forcing them to lend credence to the story lest they incur his wrath.

Take, for example, Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty, who went on CNN on Wednesday night and speculated that Trump may have been correct about the migrant-eating-pets tale. Presented with the fact that there is no credible evidence to support this story, Hagerty did his best to avoid offending Trump and, in the process, lent credibility to the racist lie.

Nazi poster

You'd look hard to find a leading Republican member of Congress willing to stand up this week (or any week) and denounce Trump’s dangerous, racist rhetoric.

Leaders like House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy are not stupid and unaware of world history. They know where this rhetoric of dehumanization is headed. They know where Trump will take the country if he’s elected. They understand the ground that Trump is laying may soon be soaked with blood.

And they are silent, tacitly supporting Trump’s racism and inhumanity.

Now is the time that their decency, mixed with a bit of courage, might save the nation from a calamity — and the fires of hell.

But these men and others like them care more about holding onto their offices than stopping a fascist march to genocide. They care more about their standing in the GOP councils of power than how history or God might assess their disgraceful cowardice and appeasement.

Because Trump has always been able to count on the moral cowardice of people like Johnson, Scalise, Cassidy, and Kennedy, he will continue to prepare his supporters for the violence and inhumanity that is sure to come in a second Trump presidency.

So, every time you hear Trump rail against immigrants, listen to what he is really saying: He wants them and other groups dehumanized and eliminated from our country.

Here’s Trump on immigrants from last December: “They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done.”

Shortly after that, Trump repeated the charge on his social media website Truth Social, writing that “illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world.”

As NBC News noted at the time: “The term ‘blood poisoning’ was used by Hitler in his manifesto ‘Mein Kampf,’ in which he criticized immigration and the mixing of races. ‘All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,’ Hitler wrote.”

And immigrants aren’t the only oppressed group in Trump’s sights.

“Today, especially in honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” he said in a speech last November. “The real threat is not from the radical right. The real threat is from the radical left and it's growing every day, every single day. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”

Of those remarks, Jason Stanley, a Yale professor and author of “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them,” observed, “It doesn’t echo ‘Mein Kampf,’ this is textbook ‘Mein Kampf.’”

Historian Jon Meacham agreed. "To call your opponent 'vermin,' to dehumanize them, is to not only open the door but to walk through the door toward the most ghastly kinds of crimes.”

Today, “rooting out” those that Trump finds undesirable means deportation. In two or three years, however, it could mean extermination. Such a shift in policy dealing with “undesirables” is not without precedent.

I’m not suggesting Trump today has in mind gas chambers for immigrants.

But I am pointing out the obvious fact that there is a straight and dreadful line from the German gas chambers to the aggressive dehumanization of those who were herded into those chambers.

We would be naïve to believe that what happened in Germany just a few decades ago could not happen here. It could.

And it all starts with dehumanization.

Far too many journalists and pundits have refused to see Trump's campaign against immigrants for what it is. Covering this as a clever but questionable political strategy designed to win an election is lazy and ignorant of history.

It is true that Trump’s attacks on immigrants have always been primarily about winning votes. But by now, it should be clear that he is also preparing his supporters for some version of a final solution for immigrants that some of his most depraved advisors have always envisioned.

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