Ominous glowing green letters appear against a dark background, accompanied by the words “aliens” and “declassified.” This evokes the release of secret government files on extraterrestrials. However, the text slowly reveals that the page is not about aliens from space but immigrant “aliens,” referring to a White House webpage unveiled last Thursday. The page implies immigrants are nonhuman invaders.
The webpage, by linking immigrants to activities like shopping and attending school, uses the narrative of human beings as invaders. Ernesto Verdeja, a genocide-prevention expert at the University of Notre Dame, describes this as “grotesque and terrifying, and juvenile.” It belongs to a set of gestures that are both menacing and adolescent, typical in Trumpian rhetoric.
The webpage allows users to see the number of immigrants arrested or charged with criminal activity in various U.S. cities and towns.
The page contains phrases like, “They do not belong here” and, “Deport them all,” which seem to incite violence against immigrants. However, according to Benjamin Valentino, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, its aim may be to promote inaction among the American populace. Valentino’s perspective is that the government wants the majority of the population to remain passive while carrying out its exclusionary policies.
Valentino, who co-founded the Early Warning Project that assesses mass atrocity risks globally, notes the use of dehumanizing language as a risk indicator for targeted violence. Although U.S. anti-immigrant violence does not reach the levels of mass atrocities, such language might be a precursor.
“It’s not that it turns normal people into murderers,” Valentino explained, “but it turns them into bystanders.” This points to the broader societal effects of such dehumanizing rhetoric.