The Trump Administration’s attacks against immigrants may be unprecedented in its willingness to push legal boundaries, but the intense rhetoric used to justify its policy has a long track record.
For more than a century, politicians and powerbrokers have used incendiary language to aggressively respond to threats abroad. They’ve labeled non-white natives who’ve challenged American interests overseas “bandits,” “savages,” or “terrorists. ” Now, similar terms are being applied to perceived enemies at home, especially to describe undocumented migrants.
There is a crucial utility to this framing. American leaders and commentators often portrayed international adversaries in unflattering and discursive brushstrokes. Using loaded descriptors not only intimate cultural distinctions that reinforced a sense of American superiority but also justified bending or breaking established rules of engagement against foes who were described as morally deficient. Today, the Trump Administration is using similar rhetorical tropes to defend its aggressive deportation efforts.
One of the earliest examples of this phenomenon occurred in the Philippines. At the turn of the 20th century, Emilio Aguinaldo led an armed resistance against U.S. colonization, which started a conflict that would kill some 4,200 Americans and as many as 200,000 Filipinos. U.S. officials and chroniclers often depicted the rebels as “savages” for using sneak attacks, booby traps, and torture—tactics supposedly considered beyond the pale of “civilized” warfare.
Read More: Prohibition Exposes the Dangers of Trump’s Immigration Rhetoric
This depiction justified to the broader American public brutal acts of retaliation, including razing villages and employing the infamous “water cure” to captives. American officials defended these actions by claiming that military personnel were merely reacting to the conditions around them. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge said, “I think they have grown out of…
