How Language in Political Debate Can Fuel a Process of Dehumanization of Marginalized Groups
By Sara Ansari | News | January 29, 2026
Cover Illustration: Palestine Gaza Childhood War. Hosnysalah/Pixabay
“Rotten apples” is what D66 party leader Rob Jetten calls ‘unwanted’ refugees during the first RTL debate of the 2025 Dutch elections. The head of the ultimately winning social-liberal party seems to have adopted a harsh tone regarding immigration questions, aligning himself with the growing radicalization in his debate. With the rise of the extreme right in Dutch politics, anti-foreigner language is increasingly used, resulting in mistrust and xenophobia towards non-Western migrants, particularly.
In political discourse, dehumanizing terms are used to gain cultural and social consent for inhumane treatment. When marginalized groups are compared to diseases, animals or monsters this process of dehumanization begins. Degrading speech can vary considerably in intensity: Jetten’s “Rotten apples” sounds much less severe than the claim of the Islamic “monster” by Geert Wilders, the leader of the anti-islamic far right-wing party PVV that won the 2023 Dutch election. Yet both have a paralyzing effect on the empathy aspect in the refugee debate. What happens when demeaning language toward minorities becomes normalized?
The Human Beast
In a political and social sphere where anti-immigration discourse is becoming an everyday occurrence, dehumanizing words pave the way for discriminating ideologies. In ‘Animals vs. Armies’ Christopher Hart, Professor of Linguistics in Lancaster University in the UK, describes how metaphors play an important role in anti-immigration discourse, especially in the language of politicians and the press.
One well-known example Hart introduces is when former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said the following in a 1978 TV interview for World in Action: “People are really afraid that this country would rather be swamped by people of a different culture.” She used the verb “swamped” which immediately recalls connotations of dirtiness and disease.
Years later, the same meaning was implied by the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, when talking about migrants entering America: “These aren’t people, these are animals.” Reducing humans with families, jobs and cultural heritage, to beastly creatures.
Dutch society is no exception. For more than a decade Wilders has referred to the Islam as “The biggest disease of the past century”, painting Muslims an infection rather than people. Jetten’s “Rotten apples” seems to be one of many ways in which refugees are labeled as diseased objects.
Language as Propaganda Tool
Violating metaphors can completely change the way people view a marginalized group, and is therefore often used as a propaganda tool. Research shows that exposure to animalistic slurs, used to address a target group, increases the acceptance of intergroup harm. The use of dehumanizing terms indirectly leads to discrimination, abuse, and conflict.
Animalizing allegories also find their history in the Nazi ideology of untermenschen: ‘subhumans’, a theory that defines Jews as inferior. In ‘Animals vs. Armies’ Hart uses a statement of chief propagandist of the Nazi party, Joseph Goebbels, demonstrating how even in WWII dehumanizing language paved the way for inhumane treatment. After visiting Jews in the Lodz ghetto Goebbels stated: “Jews are not people; they are animals.” Jews were and are often compared to rats, a collective of vermin spreading disease. By first dehumanizing them, the Nazis made the abuse and killing of Jewish people almost seem tolerable.
Such linguistic strategies are not just something from the past. Look at the genocide in Gaza, the deportations in America. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called Gazans “human animals”, while Donald Trump went from calling non-western immigrants criminals, to aliens to animals as well. Both situations of violence stemmed from this violating language.
When a group of people is conceptualized as animalistic or diseased a process of ‘Othering’ has been initiated. A certain collective will be painted off as ‘not fitting in’, different and inferior. This ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality divides a society and facilitates the minimizing treatment of a certain group. When you treat people like animals, it becomes easier to take away their rights; violence becomes accepted. Therefore, using dehumanizing language as a politician is not merely hateful, it is strategic.
“When you treat people like animals, it becomes easier to take away their rights; violence becomes accepted.”
The Effects of Dehumanizing Terms in the Dutch Migration Debate
Through the years, right-wing parties have normalized a demeaning tone in migration debates. With the right-wing winning 47% of the votes in recent elections, dehumanizing imagery surrounding non-Western immigrants has become more common in political discussions. However, it is striking how far this ‘trend’ has spread.
Dutch politics has reached a point where populist talk of violating metaphors has caught on, even among center parties and their supporters, as is the case with D66. Although the party is not particularly anti-immigration in substance, terms such as “Rotten apples”, no matter how innocent sounding, contribute to this radicalization of the debate. When migration discourse becomes rife with dehumanizing terms, this far-right, discriminatory ideology will become normalized.
This was evident in the recent anti-immigration protests in The Hague, which quickly escalated into an aggressive riot. Police cars were set on fire and people were tasered. Xenophobic language, illustrated by the examples used in the House of Representatives, only seemed to fuel this aggression. Along with “AZC, weg ermee”, translating to “Asylum seekers’ center, get rid of them”, and other anti-Islam and anti-refugee slogans, Nazi phrases such as “Sieg Heil” were chanted out proudly. With “Defend the Netherlands” as the motto, discriminatory speech was given free rein, directed at both Jews and Muslims. This spill-over effect shows that when politicians repeatedly refer to migrants with dehumanizing metaphors, violence towards this minority starts to become socially endorsed, ‘normal’. It justifies the scapegoating of a marginalized group, blaming one group for the actions of another, and enables more hateful and discriminatory behavior.
In 2015, Frans Timmermans, former leader of the GL/Pvda party, spoke as European Commissioner on the occasion of the House of Europe-lecture in Amsterdam about his vision on the refugee debate. Here, Timmermans appears to call for a process of re-humanizing:
“We’re talking about categories. We’re talking about fortune seekers, we’re talking about migrants, all sorts of words are being used to free ourselves from the need to look. But for once, look. Who is this person, why is this person doing that? What would I do in that situation? What would we do as a society if this happened to us?”
When politicians talk about tsunamis made of migrants or of people as a disease, compassion functions as a powerful counter-movement. It may seem difficult to escape this deep-seated hate speech in our current polarized society, but recognizing inhumane language when we hear it is already one small step forward.
And in the words of the famous Ghandi: “The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.”
Sara Ansari is a university student in Amsterdam. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Amsterdammer.
