Junior Trump and the Skittles of Doom

Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday September 20, 2016 · 5:58 AM PDT

2016/09/20 · 05:58

A Syrian refugee child walks at the Zaatari refugee camp, located close to the northern Jordanian city of Mafraq near the border with Syria, on July 14, 2016..Zaatari camp, 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the capital Amman, is home to some 80,000 refugees from the brutal war in neighbouring Syria. ... / AFP / KHALIL MAZRAAWI (Photo credit should read KHALIL MAZRAAWI/AFP/Getty Images) — Junior Trump wants you to believe this child is poison

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On Monday evening, Junior Trump demonstrated once again how he has inherited all of his father’s deep respect for diversity and understanding of complex issues.

This image says it all. Let's end the politically correct agenda that doesn't put America first. #trump2016 pic.twitter.com/9fHwog7ssN
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 19, 2016

Uh huh. Syrian refugees undergo the most intense vetting process of any group arriving in the United States. You might even call it … extreme. But there’s a bigger issue with Junior’s Skittle comparison. This kind of “poison candy” argument can be, and has been, used to defend racism against any group.

Because it can be used to prop up any kind of harmful stereotype about groups such as genders, ethnicities, religious and political communities without having to engage the objections to unfair generalizations. In reality, the poisonous M&Ms analogy is a more manipulative version of the general tactic known as the “I know not all X are Y, but [flawed generalization]”.

And where might Junior, or the Trump campaign in general, be finding these poisonous memes? Well…

Here are some examples from the white supremacist website Stormfront:

Tuesday, Sep 20, 2016 · 5:11:33 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

The metaphor used by Junior Trump literally had it’s origins in Nazi propaganda.

The concept dates back at least to 1938 and a children’s book called Der Giftpilz, or The Toadstool, in which a mother explains to her son that it only takes one Jew to destroy an entire people.

The book’s author, Julius Streicher, also published a newspaper that Adolf Hitler loved to read, Der Stürmer. The newspaper published anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Communist, and anti-capitalist propaganda. In 1933, soon after Hitler took power, Streicher used his newspaper to call for the extermination of the Jews.

Julius Streicher was hanged at Nuremburg for crimes against humanity.

The poison candy analogy is a favorite of the racist Alt-Right. Starting with the same set up as the Junior tweet, Stormfront has included as a punchline such winners as

So, it’s true that not all blacks are criminals, but apparently, all (or at least, most) blacks support criminal behavior.

and

So let me state again not all blacks are criminals but they are more prone to criminal behavior than any other race.

This brightly-colored bit of illogical idiocy masks real statistics and makes even the most unlikely event more frightening. Would you grab a handful of Skittles if even one would kill you? Well, thousands of people die in cars each year, so just think of each candy as a ride to the corner market. But showing you one bowl of candy and intimating that there’s a Skittle of doom waiting for you hardly represents the single fatality that occurs for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled.

Where did Uday Trump get the number three? That would be the total number of refugees — the total number — of refugees taken into the United States since 9/11 who have been convicted of involvement in any terrorist plot. And by the way, none of these men was from Syria. But the number of refugees admitted over that 16 year period is 784,000.

We’re gonna need a bigger bowl. In fact, you’d need about a 200 gallon container to hold enough Skittles to accurately represent the number of refugees who have entered the United States over that period.

And the analogy would still be racist way of stereotyping the behavior of a whole group by the rare behavior of a very few.

Or, as Mars, Inc. replied …

Statement from Mars, Inc. on Donald Trump Jr tweeting a meme comparing Syrian refugees to Skittles. pic.twitter.com/VHak3XbLrR
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) September 20, 2016

Junior Trump and the Skittles of Doom

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