The president remains unfazed by visceral criticism of his use of the terms “infestation,” “filthy” and “rats” concerning under-privileged minorities. Where others remember, he may have forgotten those words’ source.
In Joseph Goebbels’ 1940 masterpiece of movie evil titled “The Eternal Jew,” the Nazi minister of propaganda used footage of impoverished Jews trapped in the Warsaw ghetto with the entire screen filled with rats to racistly imply that Jews were a disease. The narrator described the ghetto’s Jews as “filthy” and an “infestation” that had immigrated from the Middle East to urban centers of Germany, Poland and the United States.
Many college students of the 1960s and 1970s were exposed to this movie in film criticism and political science classes. Perhaps Mr. Trump saw the film then, unconsciously internalized its message, and years later, has unknowingly recycled Goebbels’ words from deep inside his mind.
I hope this is true, for the alternative, that he is consciously using those specific words to divide voters to further his reelection, is unthinkable for a modern American president.
Kurt A. Fisher, Salt Lake City
