Querying the Historical Antisemitism Hive Mind
July 27, 2017 8:30 AM Subscribe
A passage from the Tr*mp rally this week in Ohio was classic, medieval blood libel, repurposed for use against immigrants of color. I have a nagging suspicion this passage was plagiarized wholesale from an older text. Can anyone help me identify it?
Here is the text in question: "The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people. These beautiful, beautiful, innocent young people. Will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. And you've seen the stories about some of these animals. They don't want to use guns because it's too fast and it's not painful enough. So they'll take a young beautiful girl, 16. 15. And others. And they'll slice 'em and dice 'em with a knife. Because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we've been protecting for so long. Well, they're not being protected any longer, folks."
The reference to well poisoning and specifically kidnapping children and torturing them with knives is classic blood libel. A lot of this doesn't even sound like native English grammatical construction to me, like it was poorly transliterated. Steve Bannon has done a lot of plagiarizing passages from works he likes (the Bane lines in the inaugural speech, sneaking "useless eaters" into Breitbart articles) and this feels to me like a case of the same. I know this speech was an incitement to mob violence no matter who wrote it, but I just have a nagging sense that this was lifted from somewhere. Is anyone familiar enough with blood libel propaganda that they recognize this?
Here is the text in question: "The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people. These beautiful, beautiful, innocent young people. Will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. And you've seen the stories about some of these animals. They don't want to use guns because it's too fast and it's not painful enough. So they'll take a young beautiful girl, 16. 15. And others. And they'll slice 'em and dice 'em with a knife. Because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we've been protecting for so long. Well, they're not being protected any longer, folks."
The reference to well poisoning and specifically kidnapping children and torturing them with knives is classic blood libel. A lot of this doesn't even sound like native English grammatical construction to me, like it was poorly transliterated. Steve Bannon has done a lot of plagiarizing passages from works he likes (the Bane lines in the inaugural speech, sneaking "useless eaters" into Breitbart articles) and this feels to me like a case of the same. I know this speech was an incitement to mob violence no matter who wrote it, but I just have a nagging sense that this was lifted from somewhere. Is anyone familiar enough with blood libel propaganda that they recognize this?
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As for the talk about immigrants slashing up girls with knives, that is almost certainly a reference to a very vicious and notorious gang, Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a transnational criminal organization dubbed “the most dangerous gang in the world.” Their motto is "kill, rape, control".
posted by Lunaloon at 9:32 AM on July 27, 2017