{"id":254358,"date":"2024-02-12T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=254358"},"modified":"2024-02-10T09:59:31","modified_gmt":"2024-02-10T09:59:31","slug":"friedmans-vermin-analogies-echo-ugly-pro-genocide-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/02\/friedmans-vermin-analogies-echo-ugly-pro-genocide-propaganda\/","title":{"rendered":"Friedman\u2019s Vermin Analogies Echo Ugly Pro-Genocide Propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"

6 Feb 2024<\/em> – New York Times <\/em>columnist Thomas Friedman had a piece in the Point<\/b> (2\/2\/24<\/a>), an online Times<\/b> feature the paper describes as \u201cconversations and insights about the moment,\u201d that compared the targets of US bombs to vermin. It\u2019s the sort of metaphor that propagandists have historically used to justify genocide.<\/p>\n

\"NYT:<\/p>\n

Thomas Friedman (New York Times<\/strong>, 2\/2\/24<\/a>): \u201cSometimes I contemplate the Middle East by watching CNN<\/strong>. Other times, I prefer Animal Planet<\/strong>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Friedman\u2019s piece compared the nation of Iran to \u201ca recently discovered species of parasitoid wasp,\u201d which (according to Science Daily<\/b><\/a>) \u201cinjects its eggs into live caterpillars, and the baby wasp larvae slowly eat the caterpillar from the inside out, bursting out once they have eaten their fill.\u201d Friedman asks:<\/p>\n

Is there a better description of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq today? They are the caterpillars. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the wasp. The Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and Kataib Hezbollah are the eggs that hatch inside the host\u2014Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq\u2014and eat it from the inside out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is there a better way to describe distinct political movements in four different Mideast nations, each with a social base in a minority or majority population of those countries, than by comparing them to flesh-eating parasites injected by a foreign insect? Well, yeah\u2014lots of them.<\/p>\n

But Friedman\u2019s framing of Iranian allies as vermin naturally leads him to call for an eliminationist<\/a> solution: \u201cWe have no counterstrategy that safely and efficiently kills the wasp without setting fire to the whole jungle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Analogies from the natural world\u2019<\/h3>\n
\"Der<\/p>\n

Likening Hamas to a spider, Friedman followed in the footsteps of the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer<\/strong> (2\/1930<\/a>), which in this cartoon suggested that gentiles were \u201csucked dry\u201d by Jews.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Friedman was not done with his vermin analogies. Hamas is not only a parasitic wasp larva, he wrote, but is also \u201clike the trap-door spider,\u201d since they are \u201cadept at camouflaging the doors of their underground nests, so they are hard to see until they\u2019re opened.\u201d (Elsewhere\u2014New York Times<\/b>, 12\/1\/23<\/a>\u2014Friedman has argued that the war against Hamas has already succeeded, since Israel has made its point that if \u201cyou destroy our villages, we will destroy yours 10 times more\u201d\u2014a suitable message for the Middle East, he suggested, which \u201cis a Hobbesian jungle\u2026not Scandinavia.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Comparing various Muslim political movements to creepy invertebrates was part of Friedman\u2019s musings about how he \u201csometimes prefer[s] to think about the complex relations between [Mideastern] parties with analogies from the natural world.\u201d Strikingly, however, the comparisons to loathsome arthropods were reserved for nations and militant groups\u2014like Hamas, Yemen\u2019s Houthis, and Iranian allies in Iraq and Syria\u2014that US-made bombs are currently falling on.<\/p>\n

The US itself appears in the column as an \u201cold lion,\u201d \u201cstill the king of the Middle East jungle,\u201d but with \u201cso many scars from so many fights\u201d that \u201cother predators are no longer afraid to test us.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Benjamin Netanyahu, who as prime minister of Israel is responsible for killing<\/a> more than 27,000 people, most of them<\/a> civilians, and wounding nearly 67,000 more, is compared to a lemur, because he\u2019s \u201calways shifting side to side to stay in power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conceived as subhuman<\/h3>\n
\"Cartoon<\/p>\n

Captioning the antisemitic cartoon \u201cVermin,\u201d Der Sturmer<\/strong> (9\/28\/1944<\/a>) described Jews as \u201cthe parasite, never satisfied as it creeps about.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The comparison of official enemies to vermin is a hallmark of propaganda in defense of genocide. The group Genocide Watch<\/a> lists \u201cdehumanization\u201d as the fourth of ten stages of genocide, in which members of a targeted group \u201care equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases\u201d in a process that \u201covercomes the normal human revulsion against murder.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult, psychologically, to kill another human being,\u201d David Livingstone Smith, author of a book on dehumanization called Less Than Human<\/i><\/a>, told NPR<\/b> (3\/29\/11<\/a>). \u201cWhen people dehumanize others, they actually conceive of them as subhuman creatures,\u201d Smith said, allowing would-be genocidaires to \u201cexclude the target of aggression from the moral community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus the Nazis compared Jews to an array of despised creatures, including spiders<\/a> and parasitic insects<\/a>. In Rwanda, the radio station RTLM<\/b> paved the way for mass slaughter by repeatedly referring to the Tutsi minority as \u201ccockroaches\u201d and \u201csnakes\u201d (Atlantic<\/b>, 4\/13\/19<\/a>). In Myanmar, the anti-Rohingya agitator Ashin Wirathu compared Muslims to snakes, dogs and invasive catfish (Daily Beast<\/b>, 10\/13\/17<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Surely editors at the New York Times<\/b> are aware of this history. Given that the International Court of Justice recently ruled that it\u2019s \u201cplausible\u201d that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza (NPR<\/b>, 1\/26\/24<\/a>), shouldn\u2019t the Times<\/b> avoid echoing the arguments that have historically been used to make genocide more palatable?<\/p>\n

**************************<\/p>\n

ACTION ALERT:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Please ask the New York Times<\/b> why it allowed Thomas Friedman to use analogies that have repeatedly been used to justify genocide.<\/p>\n

CONTACT:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Letters: letters@nytimes.com<\/a>
\nReaders Center: Feedback<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original – fair.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 Feb 2024 – NYT columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a piece that compared the targets of US bombs to vermin. It\u2019s the sort of metaphor that propagandists have historically used to justify genocide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":112002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[2314,865,1643,1855,1232],"class_list":["post-254358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-corporate-media","tag-genocide","tag-genocide-convention","tag-mainstream-media-msm","tag-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254358"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254361,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254358\/revisions\/254361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}