‘The vermin have struck again’: dehumanizing the enemy in post 9/11 media representations

Abstract

Much of the scholarly attention surrounding the media’s treatment of the so-called ‘war on terror’ has focused on its uncritical replication of the Bush administration’s rhetorical framing of the conflict, in which the September 11 attacks were seen as acts of war initiating a retaliatory war on terror. While this dominant, martial framing is now being challenged, an equally significant framing remains largely unexamined, one as significant to media rhetoric and public perception as the war trope itself. This article identifies the consistent pattern of dehumanizing metaphor that dominates Western media’s coverage. It focuses on newspaper headlines as influentially compressed narratives replicating and recycling key metaphors that systematically figure the enemy as animal, vermin, or metastatic disease. These dehumanizing media representations, which have historically prefigured abuse, oppression, and even genocide, are being circulated as uncritically through newspaper media headlines as Bush’s war framing was initially and, we argue, now requires the same critical dismantling.