Bortignoni, “Irish Peasants”
Wednesday
If you want a recent example of language designed to dehumanize, check out some of Donald Trump’s recent tweets. For a literary example, go back and reread Swift’s “Modest Proposal.”
Here are three Trump tweets that effectively characterize people as vermin:
We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country
Democrats are the problem. They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13
There is a Revolution going on in California. Soooo many Sanctuary areas want OUT of this ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept. Jerry Brown is trying to back out of the National Guard at the Border, but the people of the State are not happy. Want Security & Safety NOW!
As someone tweeted in response:
“Infest.” “Breed.” “Invade.” This dehumanizing language cannot stand. Nazis referred to Jews as “rats.” Hutu leaders called Tutsis in Rwanda “cockroaches.” Slaves were referred to as “stock.” Dehumanizing language lays the groundwork for mass atrocities. The words are no accident.
The difference between Trump and Swift’s Modest Proposer is that the latter advocates a carrot rather than a stick to solve social problems. They both focus on the image of breeding, however. For instance:
The number of souls in this kingdom [Ireland] being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders…
And:
It is true, a child just dropt from its dam, may be supported by her milk, for a solar year, with little other nourishment…
Unlike Trump, however, the Proposer thinks that breeding can be turned into money. In other words, in the problem lies the solution:
I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine…
And:
We should soon see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market. Men would become as fond of their wives, during the time of their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, or sow when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage.
Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barrel’d beef: the propagation of swine’s flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well grown, fat yearly child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a Lord Mayor’s feast, or any other publick entertainment.
The Proposer’s chilling calculations anticipate the Nazis’ Final Solution, where Jews were sometimes turned into commodities, with hair used for mattress stuffing, skin for lamp shades, fat for soap, and bones for fertilizer. We’re a long way from there, of course. But not because we have a president who respects people as people.