re: #343 Sharmuta

A lot of people like to use the “islam is a disease” meme. And while I agree with your comments, I would just add it not only dehumanizes people, it alienates them from non-muslims. Just like the radical islamists want.

Also— let’s all remember that this rhetoric of a cancer, a disease, an infection— all these exact same images were used by the Nazis from 29 onwards. Portraying the Jews as an ‘infection in the blood’ and a ‘cancer on the body politic’, and ultimately as a virus or parasite that had to be killed before it killed the host—these were all images deliberately and repeatedly invoked by the Nazis and this paved the way not only for genocide but for the specific form of the genocide: cold, mechanised, ‘hygenic’, sterile. It was portrayed as essential to the health of the German people as a people, and this nationalistic, racist ideal was grounded in very specific bodily imagery about disease and parasites and infections in the blood.