"These aren’t people. These are animals."

yakov_a_jerkov — 18.05.2018 Вчера Трамп принял участие в беседе на тему иммиграции, и, как обычно, удачно получилось.

Полный транскрип этой беседы здесь -- Remarks by President Trump at a California Sanctuary State Roundtable.

Много было сказано о том, что слова Трампа -- те, которые я вынес в заголовок, -- вырваны из контекста, так что я приведу максимальный контекст -- весь разговор с Sheriff Mims.

SHERIFF MIMS: Thank you, Mr. President. You know, sheriffs in California are now in an untenable position when it comes to trying to figure out — now, we have state law, we have federal laws, and here we are stuck in the middle. Sheriffs, especially, because most of us run our county jails.

When there became a legal challenge to the 48-hour holds for ICE, it was very frustrating for us. So what I did is I invited ICE to put their officers in my jails so they’re able to do their work. We didn’t have the staffing to be able to help figure out who they wanted to talk to or didn’t. I said, come on in, work with our people to keep our community safe. Two weeks later, Mr. President, Kate Steinle was murdered.

Now, I wasn’t the only sheriff to do that. Sheriff Youngblood did, Sheriff Christianson. And it was perfect — because we didn’t have to take our time, with our staff, to do anything. ICE was in there doing their work in a safe, controlled, environment. And then, the initiatives started happening — the TRUST Act, the TRUTH Act, and finally, SB 54, the Values Act. And that is causing us all kinds of turmoil.

So here we are, stuck in the middle, trying to decide. We have federal law, we have state law. And that’s why I welcomed Attorney General Sessions’s lawsuit, because that will provide us the clarity that we need and direction that we need. What do we do? Because here we are.

And I appreciated Mr. Homan and ICE. We had a great relationship; we still do. But now ICE is the only law enforcement agency that cannot use our databases to find the bad guys. They cannot come in and talk to people in our jail, unless they reach a certain threshold. They can’t do all kinds of things that other law enforcement agencies can do. And it’s really put us in a very bad position.

THE PRESIDENT: It’s a disgrace. Okay? It’s a disgrace.

SHERIFF MIMS: It’s a disgrace.

THE PRESIDENT: And we’re suing on that, and we’re working hard, and I think it will all come together, because people want it to come together. It’s so ridiculous. The concept that we’re even talking about is ridiculous. We’ll take care of it, Margaret. We’ll win.

SHERIFF MIMS: Thank you. There could be an MS-13 member I know about — if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.

THE PRESIDENT: We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before. And because of the weak laws, they come in fast, we get them, we release them, we get them again, we bring them out. It’s crazy.

The dumbest laws — as I said before, the dumbest laws on immigration in the world. So we’re going to take care of it, Margaret. We’ll get it done. We’re going to ask that man right there, because that man can do it. (Laughter.) Right now he’s the most important man in the room. Kevin can do it.

Kevin? Please.

Примем для начала позицию трампистов -- Трамп говорил исключительно о членах MS-13. (И, кстати, не только трампистов. Я вчера видел обсуждение этого высказывания на CNN, которое продолжалось, может, минуту, и состояло в "nothing to see here".)

Так вот президент США обращается к шерифу и говорит, что члены такой-то банды не являются людьми. Это что, приемлемо что ли? Это позиция государства США состоит в том, что членство в violent gang лишает тебя статуса человека?

По-моему, данное высказывание Трампа, если его трактовать, как высказывание исключительно об MS-13, это серьезный следующий шаг после его же обращения к полицейским, о том, что не нужно беспокоиться о том, чтобы задержанные не ударились головой, когда их сажают в машину.

Пресс-секретарь Трампа, Сандерс, сегодня сказала примерно так: если демократы хотят защищать MS-13, то ради бога, мы только рады. "Shameless shit", как он есть.

Дальше. Трамп, конечно, говорил не только об MS-13. Он реагировал на слова шерифа, которая упомянула MS-13, но Трамп говорит не только об MS-13. Ни буквально -- он говорит о "people coming into the country", даже не "some people", если уж быть предельно формальным -- ни по сути.

Вот цепочка твитов, в которой подробно разбирается используемый (регулярно) Трампом прием. Я, пожалуй, ее всю скопирую:

I’m going to try to summon the patience that wasn’t in me last night on the off chance there’s someone out there who sincerely imagines the context here to be exculpatory.

This is a textbook case of how dehumanizing and racist rhetoric works. The question references a hypothetical MS-13 member. Trump immediately pivots to a vaguer “people trying to come into the country” who we’re “taking out.”

The point of that move is precisely to conflate groups: “people trying to come in” —> gang members —> “not people, animals.” Spend five minutes on any racist message board and you’ll find a dozen instances of the trope.

There’s always some real crime by some specific member of a disfavored group that gets invoked to rationalize the move to talk about the more nebulous “they” who are animals and savages. But the specific case is always a pretext for indulging the generalization.

But, of course, MS-13 isn’t representative of either the “people trying to come in” or the people being “taken out.” The point of the dehumanizing language is to reassure you it’s not necessary to think about who those people actually are.

Finally, even if we pretend the point here ISN’T precisely to blur the distinction between MS-13 and “people trying to come in”—even if we pretend he’s really JUST talking about MS-13 members, let’s note that the equation of crime with animality here is selective.

On the occasions Trump finds time in his busy schedule to condemn murderers who aren’t brown, the focus is typically on the act, rather on what biological category it puts the perpetrator in.

When a white supremacist murdered Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, we were enjoined to remember that there were “very fine people” on his side. It’s horror at brown criminals that gets expressed in language like “not even people, but animals.”

When Rob Porter is very credibly accused of beating up women he’s dated, we need to pause and show empathy and consider how it may ruin a good person’s life if the charges are false.

But those nebulous “people trying to come into the country” don’t require that sort of individualized consideration. We can casually talk about “bad people” and then dispense with the pretense of troubling ourselves about their humanity at all.

Last thing: What’s the point of that specific question? The “threshhold” the sheriff posing it finds so burdensome? He’s talking about ICE being concerned with specific serious criminal acts rather than the sheriff’s belief someone is associated with a gang.

The point of Trump’s response is that we don’t need to fussily concern ourselves with bad ACTS when we know we’re dealing with “bad people,” and on second thought, indeed, not even really people at all.

The point of is dehumanization & deindividualization at multiple levels. Don’t worry about showing criminal conduct by a particular individual, we know he’s one of the bad people. Don’t bother yourself about distinctions between that criminal group & “people trying to come in.”

Such nice distinctions are for very fine human white supremacists and square-jawed domestic abusers with ivy league credentials. About animal herds, we can freely generalize.

There’s your context. Tell me again how unfair it is to be disgusted.

OK, one more: The question Trump was asked wasn’t “about” MS-13. The questioner made one offhand hypothetical reference to MS-13 in a much longer question that was “about” the standard for referring people detained by law enforcement to ICE.

The upshot, again, was: Isn’t it dumb that I can only pass these guys to ICE if they meet the “threshold” of being implicated in a specific semi-serious crime? The idea that Trump's response was restricted to one throwaway sentence in that very long question is just bizarre.

Now, I realize it’s not a given that whatever subsequently came out of Trump’s mouth was logically responsive to the actual question asked. But *assuming that it was*, it makes no sense to interpret it as a narrow assertion about MS-13 being bad guys.

The reading of Trump’s rant that makes it responsive to the actual question is: Yes, it’s foolish to require that sort of particularized suspicion—that “threshold”—because our presumption should be that we’re dealing with “animals.”

TL;DR 1/2: Reading Trump as narrowly condeming MS-13 requires both assuming he was free associating on one sentence rather than answering the question, and ignoring how eliminationist rhetoric always functions.

TL;DR 2/2: Even on that very implausible reading, there’s a conspicuous & ugly pattern to the condemnation of crime Trump chooses to express by denying the humanity of the perpetrator.

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