When Cruelty Becomes Our National Character
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities" - Voltaire
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump toured a remote migrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz,” a symbol of his administration's increasingly dehumanizing approach to immigration enforcement. The very name, chosen deliberately by Florida officials, tells us everything we need to know about the intent behind this facility. This isn't about practical immigration policy. This is about spectacle, terror, and the systematic degradation of human dignity.
During the visit, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shared a bizarre and disturbing story about an immigrant she claimed was a cannibal who "started to eat himself" during a deportation flight, requiring medical intervention. "These are the kind of deranged individuals that are on our streets in America," Noem declared. "We're trying to target and get them out of our country because they are so deranged they don't belong here."
The story is so outlandish, so perfectly tailored to provoke revulsion and fear, that its veracity matters less than its purpose. Noem's claim about the alleged cannibal has yet to be verified, but verification was never the point. The point was to paint immigrants not as human beings seeking refuge or opportunity, but as literal monsters, subhuman creatures so dangerous and depraved that any treatment, no matter how cruel, becomes justified.
This tactic of spreading grotesque, unverifiable stories to dehumanize a targeted group has a dark historical precedent. The Nazis made effective use of "blood libel" accusations, false claims that Jews ritually murdered Christian children for their blood, with Julius Streicher's newspaper Der Stürmer making frequent use of ritual murder imagery in its antisemitic propaganda. These accusations that Jews engaged in ritual murder were used as proof of the depravity of the so-called Jewish race, becoming a cornerstone of Nazi propaganda in the 1930s and 1940s. Like Noem's cannibal story, these accusations were almost always followed by intense persecution and violence against the targeted community.
The parallels are chilling: both involve accusations of cannibalistic behavior, both lack credible evidence, and both serve to strip the targeted group of their humanity in preparation for systematic cruelty. Research into Nazi propaganda reveals that dehumanization tactics progressively denied targeted groups' capacity for experiencing fundamental human emotions and sensations, leading to disengagement of moral restraints.
Florida Republicans have embraced the project, with the state GOP now selling "Alligator Alcatraz"-branded T-shirts, trucker hats, and beer koozies on its website. Conservative podcaster Benny Johnson posted videos from the center wearing an "Alligator Alcatraz" hat that he said was "provided to us by the state of Florida." They have turned human suffering into merchandise, transforming cruelty into a brand.
The facility itself is designed for maximum psychological impact. Situated 37 miles from Miami in a vast subtropical wetland teeming with alligators, crocodiles, and pythons, the location was chosen not for its practical benefits but for its "fearsome imagery," as one report noted. Trump joked during his visit that "we're going to teach them how to run away from an alligator if they escape prison." He dismissed environmental concerns, saying the wetlands' wildlife would outlast the human species.
This is the language of deliberate cruelty. When officials boast about placing human beings in conditions surrounded by dangerous predators, when they joke about teaching people to flee from alligators, they are not describing a detention facility; they are describing a torture chamber designed to terrorize.
This latest grotesque tale follows a familiar pattern. During the presidential campaign, Trump falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents' dogs and cats. This baseless accusation led to bomb threats against schools and government buildings. The lie was quickly debunked, but the damage was done. The image of immigrants as literal predators consuming beloved pets had been planted in the public consciousness.
Trump said he'd like to see similar facilities constructed "in many states." During Tuesday's tour, Trump, DeSantis, and Noem urged the leaders of other states to develop their own models for detention centers. This isn't a one-off facility born of necessity; it's a template for the nationwide expansion of deliberate cruelty.
Voltaire once observed that "those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." The Trump administration's rhetoric about immigrants has crossed that line. When people are described as cannibals who eat themselves, as creatures so deranged they "don't belong here," the groundwork is laid for public acceptance of any level of brutality inflicted upon them.
Noem insisted the mass deportation program was designed to get rid of "the worst of the worst," yet recent immigration arrests cast doubt on the administration's narrative that they're exclusively targeting dangerous criminals. The reality is that the administration is casting the widest possible net, then using the most extreme cases, real or fabricated, to justify treating all immigrants as dangerous predators.
The controversial detention facility features rows of bunk beds lined up behind chain fences, and officials say it's poised to start filling its beds within hours. The complex could house some 5,000 people and is estimated to cost $450 million annually. Florida will initially pay for the facility, then submit reimbursement requests to FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, seeking to recover costs through federal emergency management funds.
This funding arrangement is particularly striking given the Trump administration's simultaneous assault on FEMA itself. The administration's budget proposes slashing non-discretionary FEMA grants by $646 million, while reducing staffing by 84 percent at the office that oversees long-term recovery funding for housing and community development. The administration has ended key disaster preparedness programs, including the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program that provided $133 million to about 450 communities across the country for disaster mitigation. Twenty-two states have accused the Trump administration of illegally freezing FEMA aid, with the administration claiming it's merely conducting "reviews" of funding allocations.
So, while Florida seeks federal reimbursement for its detention facility in the swamps, the very agency being asked to pay, FEMA, has been systematically gutted, its disaster preparedness programs terminated, and its funding frozen or slashed. This is not a temporary emergency measure; this is permanent infrastructure of dehumanization, funded by cannibalizing the nation's disaster response capabilities.
The messaging is clear and intentional. Part of the aim, Trump said, would be for undocumented immigrants to be so deterred by the prospect of entering Alligator Alcatraz that they self-deport. "We're surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland and the only way out is deportation," he declared. Terror is not a byproduct of this policy; terror is the policy.
When government officials openly embrace names like "Alligator Alcatraz," when they merchandise human suffering, when they tell stories designed to strip immigrants of their humanity, they are not trying to solve immigration challenges. They are trying to normalize cruelty. They are conditioning the public to accept the unacceptable by making the monstrous seem reasonable through repetition and spectacle.
Critics holding signs reading "Say no to concentration camps" and "I like my ICE crushed" protested outside the facility, understanding what many Americans refuse to acknowledge: this is not about immigration policy. This is about power exercised through cruelty, about the deliberate infliction of suffering for its own sake.
The cruelty is indeed the point. It's the point when officials choose the most hostile environment possible for detention. It's the point when they joke about teaching people to outrun predators. It's the point when they fabricate or amplify stories of cannibalism to justify any level of brutality. And it's the point when they turn human suffering into branded merchandise.
Voltaire's warning echoes across the centuries: once we accept the absurd—that human beings can be reduced to dangerous animals worthy only of cages in swamplands—we open the door to atrocities. The path from dehumanizing rhetoric to dehumanizing action is shorter than we imagine, and we are already walking it.
History will judge not only those who designed and built these facilities, but also those who stood by and let the rhetoric of dehumanization become the policy of a nation. The choice before us is simple: we can resist this descent into cruelty, or we can watch it become the new normal. There is no middle ground when the cruelty itself becomes the point.
Very powerful writing, Mike, we've normalized atrocity so much that it takes pieces like this to remind us of what's really going on. In practice, my guess is that this camp will be filled with Haitians and Venezuelans who have just had their TPS revoked, that is, people here legally until yesterday, with no criminal records. NYT today and LAT continue to document the fear in LA. How does this end?
As much as I am alarmed by the very real dangers of an AI "arms race" unleashing mis-aligned (with human goals) AGI and ASI agents, it is getting harder and harder to argue that we would be worse off if AI takes over the world.