How Trump’s dehumanizing language promotes white supremacy

“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” President Donald Trump declared this week while surrounded by six members of his administration. “This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re gonna take our capital back.”

Much of the conversation in the days following has centered on Trump’s obsession with using the military to demonstrate power and instill fear. Others have focused on how much of his reasoning for utilizing the National Guard in D.C. is flawed, much like his overreaction in Los Angeles earlier this summer.

But there’s another lens through which we need to consider what Trump said during his press conference — how his dehumanizing language promotes white supremacy.

Language of dehumanization and exile

Notice the words in this article’s opening sentence: “bedlam, squalor and worse.” According to Merriam-Webster, the term “bedlam” means “a place, scene or state of uproar and confusion.” It also means “an asylum for the mentally ill.” For example, “French physician Philippe Pinel was instrumental in the transformation of bedlams from filthy hellholes to well-ordered, humane institutions.”

Synonyms for squalor and squalid include, “dirty, filthy, foul, nasty” in the sense of describing despicable, obscene or loathsome behavior.

When these definitions are considered in light of Trump’s words about Washington, D.C., it would appear he’s claiming the city has essentially become an insane asylum for dirty, loathsome people.

And if that’s not bad enough, Trump adds, “and worse.”

“He’s claiming the city has essentially become an insane asylum for dirty, loathsome people.”

But that’s not all. Trump’s rambling continued by describing Washington as being overrun by, “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people.”

“We’re getting rid of the slums too. We have slums here. We’re getting rid of them,” he continued. Then acknowledging how racist this language feels in describing the majority Black city, he admitted, “I know it’s not politically correct.”

“Some of those people are from different countries, different parts of the world,” he later said. “But they’ll not be allowed to turn our capital into a wasteland for the world to see.” Then he continued talking about cleaning up the trash, graffiti, grime and dirt.

Prior to the press conference, he posted on social media that he was going to send the homeless, “FAR from the Capital.”

And this isn’t the first time Trump has used this type of language. For years, he’s talked about “shithole countries” and described people as “vermin” or “animals.”

Taming the filthy ‘savages’

Back in March, Trump signed an executive order that accused the Smithsonian Institution of coming “under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.” According to the order, the Smithsonian “has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” It also put Vice President JD Vance in charge of ensuring these narratives come to an end.

Now this week, the Wall Street Journal reported: The White House plans to conduct a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of America’s 250th anniversary to ensure the museums align with President Trump’s interpretation of American history.”

Given Trump’s attacks on historians, it’s worth noting how historians recognize the way white supremacists have used language to control their nonwhite neighbors. One major way this happens has been by comparing untamed land to untamed people.

“The White House plans to conduct a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions.”

In Heathen: Religion and Race in American History, Kathryn Gin Lum adds, “American Protestants explained the fundamental unproductiveness and unprofitability of heathen landscapes as a result of the wrong religious orientation of their inhabitants.” She shows how white supremacists believed: “Having corrupted the true God by turning his image into the likeness of creeping and crawling things, so too did the heathen corrupt their bodies by engaging in ‘filthy’ acts that turned them into little more than animals.”

By referring to native and nonwhite immigrants as filthy, unproductive animals, they considered their neighbor in need of taming or punishment. In Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide, George E. Tinker explains, “This European/Euroamerican notion of superiority works its way out in … an excuse for punishing the ‘hostiles’ in the Western United States in order to tame their perceived savagery.”

In Trump’s words, this appears as talking about squalor and bloodthirsty vermin from shithole countries turning our cities into wastelands and needing to be punished with exile or prison. And regarding law enforcement, Trump said, “Now they are allowed to do whatever the hell they want.”

Contrast with white beauty

In contrast to the filthy vermin who supposedly need to be rooted out, Trump was fascinated with beautifying the city: “We’re also talking about beautification. We have the most beautiful potentially capital in the world.”

To do this, Trump promised, “We’re going to be removing homeless encampments from all over our parks, our beautiful, beautiful parks, which now a lot of people can’t walk on. They’re very dirty.”

He said his father used to tell him to notice how clean the front door is before entering a restaurant. “If the front door is dirty, the kitchen’s dirty also. Same thing with the capital,” he reminisced. “If our capital’s dirty, our whole country is dirty, and they don’t respect us.”

In recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security has been posting images of white fathers and sons signing up for service as ICE agents, white Uncle Sams calling Americans to defend their country.

One video features a white mother and child walking through a farm, a white family strolling through a field, a white woman hiking in the mountains, a white family playing on the beach during a beautiful sunset, white soldiers saluting, and a white woman riding a horse, all set to the lyrics, “This land was made for you and me.”

And of course, all these videos and images of white people enjoying beauty are interspersed with videos of nonwhite immigrants being hunted down and taken away.

White pioneer propaganda

In addition to contrasting filthy savages with white beauty, the Department of Homeland Security has been sharing white pioneer propaganda paintings on social media. On a recent episode of “The Convocation Unscripted,” Robert P. Jones explained: “One of them is this white pioneer, young pioneer couple. They’re in the back of their wagon, and they’re holding this newborn baby. They are very, very white. And in the background, you can see another wagon, and they’re on the prairie, right? So it’s clearly this westward expansion, colonizing motif. And then of course, in the foreground, not so suddenly, it is a sewing machine, and of course, a Bible, with a cross on the front of it, right there in the foreground. So it’s got whiteness, kind of pro-natalism, colonization, manifest destiny.”

Then Jones observed, “But what’s chilling about it is also how they sloganed it. They didn’t just like throw it up there. They put a slogan on it, and they said, ‘Remember your homeland’s heritage.’ Now, you know, that is a pretty dead giveaway to who they think are real Americans, right?”

Regarding a second painting posted by DHS, Jones added: “It is a painting by a guy named John Gast, who painted this painting in the mid-1800s. And it is called ‘American Progress.’ It is also called ‘The Spirit of America’ in other renditions. But they published this one with this tag, ‘A heritage to be proud of, a homeland worth defending.’”

Then Jones describes, “The painting depicts, essentially, it’s this Spirit of America that’s depicted as this very, very white Roman goddess looking woman. It’s the Spirit of Columbia, which is kind of the feminized spirit of Christopher Columbus, which is very popular in the 19th century. And she is floating above the plains. New York City is off on the righthand side. She is flying eastward over the plains. And in her right hand, she’s got a school book. And in her left hand, she has telegraph wires that she is literally stringing along from east to west. And below her … are three railroads, ferrying new settlers West, a stagecoach, the Pony Express, two wagon trains, some Midwestern farmers fencing in land and a log cabin, all of this kind of coming in her wake. And then ahead of her, in a darkened third of the frame on the other side, are these indigenous people who are leaning away from her in this kind of like fearful way and thinning herds of buffalo, including kind of bleach skeletal remains of buffalo dead on the plains with dogs picking at their bones, all running away from her.”

Re-inscribing white supremacy in the 21st century

The white supremacist dog whistles coming from the Trump administration are so obvious and so numerous that to deny that white supremacy is at the heart of this movement would be insulting to anyone with any seed of common sense.

“To deny that white supremacy is at the heart of this movement would be insulting to anyone with any seed of common sense.”

Jones goes on to explain that DHS uses the 14-word description, “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth defending, American progress, John Gass.”

While most people may not think anything of 14-word descriptions about defending our heritage and homeland, white supremacists do.

“Those of you who know anything about the far right and white supremacist groups, there is this thing called the 14 words,” Jones says. “And if you go to the Anti-Defamation League or the Southern Poverty Law Center, they have references to this. This is a known thing that 14 words is the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world. And if you just say the words ‘14 words’ in white supremacist circles, people know what that is.”

Then Jones concluded, “This is an explicitly white supremacist wink and a nod that is coming out of the official DHS. It’s really just sickening and chilling.”

There are reasons Trump is erasing our access to history, attacking journalists, referring to immigrants and people who live in Black majority cities as filthy vermin and removing them to who knows where, all while promoting white beauty and giving subtle nods that white supremacists will recognize. It’s all embodied in Trump’s words about Washington, D.C.

And all these dots are connected at white supremacy.

In response to Jones, Jemar Tisby added: “I want folks to understand that this whole immigration thing is about re-inscribing white supremacy in the 21st century. It is part of this whipped-up anxiety about white people, people of European descent in the United States, going extinct and being erased. And that’s part of the pro-natalist movement. They want people to have babies. Not everybody. No, no, no. Only the right people or the white people to have babies. And they want to use ICE and so-called border control, border security to kick out the people who they think are taking up space from the white people.

“So it’s not just about who they’re removing, who they’re abducting. It’s about who they want to expand and grow and repopulate the place. Because that is what we’ve been saying for more than a decade, for a decade since Make America Great Again came on the scene.

“When was America great? And what made it great in these folks’ opinion? Well, it’s not coincidental that it was white expansion. This idea of manifest destiny, which when you break it down, ‘manifest’ meaning obvious, apparent, clear, and ‘destiny’ meaning divinely ordained and certain. And the idea with manifest destiny, which was right along with white westward expansion, was that this is a God-ordained growth of the people, the culture they bring, and the families that they’re going to have. And this is good for not only the nation but the world.”

This is why in their recruitment of new ICE agents, DHS made as their pitch on social media, “Defend your culture!”

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a Master of Arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.

 

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