INFEST: The Ugly Nazi History of Trump's Chosen Verb About Immigrants.

[LongTomH]

From Forward.com: https://forward.com/culture/403526/infest-the-ugly-nazi-history-of-trumps-chosen-verb-about-immigrants/:

When President Trump characterized immigrants as “animals,” some people waved it away, claiming he was only referring to gang members. But today’s use of “infest” in connection to human beings is impossible to ignore. The President’s tweet that immigrants will “infest our Country” includes an alarming verb choice for anyone with knowledge of history.

Characterizing people as vermin has historically been a precursor to murder and genocide. The Nazis built on centuries-old hatred of Jews as carriers of disease in a film titled “Der Ewige Jude,” or “The Eternal Jew.” As the U.S. Holocaust Museum notes on its website, in a section helpfully titled “Defining the Enemy”:

One of the film’s most notorious sequences compares Jews to rats that carry contagion, flood the continent, and devour precious resources.

What is happening now is “defining the enemy. Substitute “continent” for “Country,” capitalized, and you get the picture. The roots of the particular word “infest” are also telling. The English word comes from the French infester or Latin infestare ‘assail’, from infestus ‘hostile’. So yes, it’s a word rooted in hostility.

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For anyone familiar with Nazi history — the exhibit of “Degenerate Art,” the film “The Eternal Jew” and the persistent campaign to paint Jews as vermin or animals, and certainly not human—the word “infest” is not only remarkable, but terrifying.

Read the rest here: https://forward.com/culture/403526/infest-the-ugly-nazi-history-of-trumps-chosen-verb-about-immigrants/

This is another example of the eliminationist rhetoric coming from the right in the last few decades.

[Tanuki]

1. It also reminded me of the use of the term "cockroaches" in Rwanda

to dehumanize and incite genocide.

[nycbos]

3. Yup

[bdamomma]

2. ethic cleansing????

nt


I want them to go get Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon they are rejoicing about this. They are vile vile bastards.