Dehumanization Through Pathogen Metaphors in Genocide

Key Insight

Xenophobic ideologies frequently link out-groups to pathogens and their carriers, stripping away the humanity of the targeted group and comparing them to entities easier to justify killing. This dehumanization justifies, encourages, and enables perpetrators of genocide. Historical instances include the persecution of Jews with lepers in 1320s France and northern Iberian kingdoms, and blaming Jews for the Black Death in 1340s Germany, leading to mass slaughter. Reformation leader Martin Luther, in 1542, called for the expulsion of Jews, describing them as 'plague' and 'pestilence'.

Centuries later, German Nazis commonly referred to Jews as a 'rat infestation.' Adolf Hitler updated this disease metaphor in 1942, describing the 'discovery of the Jewish virus' as 'one of the greatest revolutions,' comparing the fight against Jews to the work of Pasteur and Koch against bacteria. Similarly, before and during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Hutus called Tutsis 'insects' and 'cockroaches,' leveraging the fact that cockroaches spread harmful bacteria. A Hutu publication, Kangura, explicitly linked Tutsis to AIDS, stating, 'Hutus, you will be injected with syringes full of AIDS viruses because the peace accord gave the Ministry of Health to the cockroaches [Tutsis]'. Rwanda had a severe AIDS epidemic, with almost a third of the capital's 18-45 year olds carrying HIV, leading extremists to transfer fear from the pathogen to the Tutsi people.

This pattern recurred in the 2011 Libyan Civil War, where Colonel Muammar Gaddafi ordered supporters to attack 'cockroaches' and 'rats' (protestors), aiming to 'cleanse Libya house by house.' The Libyan envoy to the United Nations warned this was a 'code for his collaborators to start the genocide.' In the subsequent four months, 10,000 to 15,000 people were killed. While protestors were human, real cockroaches in Tripoli were found to carry 27 types of potential pathogens, 97% of a sample, including bacteria resistant to at least six antibiotics, reinforcing the potency of these dehumanizing comparisons. The Islamist Hamas Party has also disseminated explicitly genocidal incitement, with posters in 2002 promising 'Heaven's doors with the skulls of Jews' and a 2010 music video on Al-Aqsa TV imploring Allah to 'strike the Jews and their sympathizers' and 'kill them to the last one'.