General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Not liking an offensive movie is not an excuse to riot and kill people. [View all]coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)of the NLF attacked and briefly occupied portions of the American embassy in Saigon. Were those 'vermin' by your standards? Or maybe you would have used the term then in fashion, i.e., 'gook'. Oh sure, you could have said, I wasn't using 'gook' to refer to all Vietnamese, only to those who attacked our embassy. No matter that the term 'gook' dehumanized then, just as the term 'vermin' does today and back in the 30s.
No, your use of 'vermin' was not referring to Islam, but it was referring to Muslims (those who observe Islam).
Rather than dehumanizing them by calling them 'vermin,' you might want to consider what might possibly enrage a people to the point where they are willing to violate Western diplomatic norms. I'm not holding my breath though. Calling them 'vermin' is so much easier and requires so much less work.