I have a confession to make. I am the child of immigrants, one of whom crossed our southern border a century ago, and so I am extremely sympathetic to the many people arriving at our southern border in search of a better life.
The demonizing of migrants for political ends by Donald Trump and other political figures angers me. The demonization needs to stop. This dehumanizing strategy is all about creating fear of others in an effort to manipulate people to support him as he promises to protect them from the demonized. It is a classic political manipulation technique. As a journalist, I witnessed how such demonization unfolded in the Rwandan genocide, and I wrote a book on Al Qaeda in eastern Africa, in which I recounted how Osama bin Laden and his subordinates used demonizing techniques to make people fearful, positioning them to commit violence against the “others.” We, Americans, can do better than this.