“At the end of the day this is a very sick, sick deranged human. Subhuman. He shouldn’t even be called a human….I truly, truly hope he’s found guilty, which he will be, and he gets the death penalty.”

–Eric Trump to Jeanine Pirro, 27 October 2018

I have sympathy with Eric Trump’s description of Robert Bowers, the individual who killed worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue, as a “very sick, sick deranged human.”  However, I am troubled when Trump describes Bowers as “subhuman” and arguing that he “shouldn’t even be called a human.”

Not recognizing the basic humanity of every person—even one who murders eleven Jewish congregants during their Sabbat service—is problematic for two reasons.  First, a subhuman cannot be expected to act with human nature and, as such, cannot be held fully accountable for their actions.  Second, dehumanizing individuals is at the root of antisemitism and discrimination to other groups whom are too often defined as subhuman.

If a sentient being is not human, we cannot hold that being to standards of human behavior.  We rightly condemn Bowers’ action of murdering eleven people.  But we would not consider my cat sick and deranged if she murdered and ate a rat.  Catching rats is part of her animal nature and we do not expect her to display human qualities.

Wantonly killing others is not an acceptable part of being human.  Therefore, arguing that Bowers is subhuman means that we cannot hold him accountable for his actions that would be consistent with his animal nature.

More importantly, by defining a person—or group of persons—as being subhuman dehumanize them in such a way that it becomes acceptable to discriminate against them and to justify denying them their civil rights—or even their lives.

This semester my online film students are required to watch one of several films which they then analyze in terms of society, culture, and religion.  One of their choices is Der ewige Jude [The Eternal Jew] (1940).  I explain that Der ewige Jude is an extremely anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film.  However, I argue that it is worth watching to learn more about the effects of propaganda that dehumanizes individuals as well as to better appreciate how misusing history can inappropriate justify contemporary conduct.

One section of Der ewige Jude [14:40-17:37] compares Jews to rats.  This section of the documentary concludes:

Whenever rats turn up, they carry destruction to the land by destroying mankind’s goods and nourishment and spreading diseases and plagues such as cholera, dysentery, leprosy, and typhoid fever. They are cunning, cowardly, and cruel, and usually appear in massive hoards.  They represent the elements of sneakiness and subterranean destruction among animals just as the Jews do among mankind.

The message is clear.  The subhuman rats and subhuman Jews deserve the same fate:  extermination.

When I screen this section of Der ewige Jude in my history classes, students are forced to confront the power of dehumanizing language.  They begin to realize how easy it is to justify a lack of compassion which can lead to discrimination, murder, and genocide when we begin to refer to human beings as subhuman animals.  For Trump to advocate that Bowers is subhuman and deserves to die is not that far away from Bowers advocating that Jews are subhuman and deserve to die.

The horror of Bowers’ murderous spree is not that he acted as a subhuman who deserves death.  The horror is that he is fully human and yet killed eleven people whom he considered subhuman.  To deny Bowers’ humanity is to minimize what is essentially his crime against humanity.

–Steven L. Berg, PhD

 

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