“Jews are rats” (Nazis).
“Tutsis are cockroaches” (Hutus).
“These aren’t people, they’re animals!” (U.S. president, 2018).
My fellow comrades! God bless our glorious leader for telling it like it is. While his rhetoric doesn’t have the same sting of truth as rats or cockroaches, he’s making America Great Again by reminding us that our enemies are to be thought of as all types of animals, not just vermin.
So, remember — the next time you see someone who doesn’t look the way you do, or makes you feel uneasy, your feelings are perfectly justifiable if that person can’t prove they were born on American soil, because that “person” is less a human than you.
Opinion writer from The New Times, Kennedy Ndahiro, writes: “For genocide to occur, it must be preceded by the dehumanization of a group. To dehumanize means to deny the humanity of someone, reducing them to sub-humans.”