Monday Morning Thoughts: Nietzsche’s Warning Is Coming True

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Friedrich Nietzsche’s most chilling warning reads like a prophecy now: “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

That line was never meant as abstract philosophy. It was a recognition of something deep and dangerous in human nature: our tendency, once convinced of our righteousness, to justify cruelty in the name of self-defense. And nowhere is that more evident today than in the policies and rhetoric driving the current Trump administration’s second term.

The idea of “fighting monsters” underpins so much of our politics now. Opponents aren’t merely wrong—they’re monsters, existential threats, enemies of civilization itself. Whether it’s “radical Marxists,” “vermin immigrants,” or “terrorist sympathizers,” the narrative is clear: destroy them before they destroy us.

But the more that logic takes hold, the more we adopt the very inhumanity we claim to oppose.

Dehumanization isn’t just an ugly byproduct of political discourse anymore—it’s a governing philosophy. Consider the immigration policies rolled out in just the past few weeks. On March 21, the Trump administration revoked temporary legal status for more than 530,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—many of whom had lived and worked here peacefully under legal parole.

Then came something even more chilling: the administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—yes, the same law used to justify the internment of Japanese Americans—to begin deporting Venezuelan migrants en masse, some to Guantánamo Bay. Officials admitted that many of those sent to Guantánamo have no criminal record and that, shockingly, “because we don’t know much about these people, that justifies denying them due process.”

Think about that. The government is now openly arguing that ignorance about a group justifies stripping them of basic rights. That’s not law enforcement. That’s monster-making—defining entire groups as less than human, undeserving of the protections we demand for ourselves.

These actions aren’t isolated. They fit a pattern. Just this past week, it was reported that Columbia University agreed to a series of sweeping changes—under threat of losing $400 million in federal funding—after the Trump administration accused it of tolerating antisemitism. Whatever the merits of specific concerns, the message was clear: dissent from administration orthodoxy, and you will be punished. Even elite universities will be forced to bend.

Meanwhile, lawsuits challenging the administration’s 132 documented illegal actions continue piling up. Among the most egregious constitutional violations are clear assaults on free speech, due process, and equal protection. But that is the point: once a government starts seeing enemies everywhere, rights become obstacles, not principles.

And perhaps the most haunting example yet: migrants being sent to Guantánamo Bay, a place synonymous with indefinite detention and the abandonment of due process. The administration claims these are dangerous gang members—but admits it has no evidence. In fact, it argues that the absence of evidence is itself cause for suspicion.

This is how democracies turn dark—not overnight, but step by step, policy by policy, with each new justification based on fear.

If this feels familiar, it should. Nazi propaganda labeled Jews as “vermin.” Rwandan radio described Tutsis as “cockroaches.” American politicians once called Black children “super-predators”—language that paved the way for mass incarceration.

In his book Less Than Human, philosopher David Livingstone Smith argues that the worst human atrocities always begin the same way: by convincing ordinary people that their enemies aren’t human at all.

The Trump administration isn’t just flirting with that process—it is institutionalizing it.

Terms like “poisoning the blood of our country” are no longer fringe—they’re part of official rhetoric. Policies once unimaginable—indefinite detention, mass deportation, forced labor—are now daily headlines. Each justified by the same argument: We must protect ourselves from these people. We don’t know who they are. Therefore, they deserve nothing.

What Nietzsche understood, and what we seem determined to ignore, is that dehumanization doesn’t just destroy the target—it destroys the society that wields it.

Every time we embrace cruelty in the name of safety, every time we strip rights from a group because they are “monsters,” we change ourselves. We become the very thing we feared.

This is the trap. Dehumanization feels good. It feels righteous. It turns every political battle into a moral crusade. But it is also corrosive—eating away at the values we claim to defend.

We see it online, where social media algorithms reward outrage and amplify hate. We see it in statehouses, where lawmakers push bills designed not to govern, but to punish. We see it at the border, where families are torn apart and children held in cages.

And, increasingly, we see it in policy—where entire groups are denied rights not because of what they’ve done, but because of who they are.

The truth is, this doesn’t end well. It never does.

When you define yourself by the monsters you fight, you start needing bigger monsters. The bar for what counts as a threat gets lower. The cruelty gets easier. And before long, the system itself becomes monstrous.

Nietzsche knew that too. “If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

We are there now. Gazing into the abyss. And the abyss is gazing back.

The Trump administration justifies Guantánamo Bay for migrants, indefinite detention for the unknown, and stripping citizenship from people whose ancestors fled persecution. What happens next? What new abyss will we create to justify the next round of cruelty?

History suggests that by the time most people wake up to what’s happening, it’s too late.

So what do we do? The answer isn’t easy—but it is simple: We fight the right monsters.

That means calling out dehumanization wherever it appears—not just when it targets our allies. It means defending the rule of law even when it’s inconvenient. It means refusing to let fear dictate who deserves rights and who doesn’t.

Yes, the world is dangerous. Yes, there are real threats. But the test of a democracy is not how it treats the safe and the known—it’s how it treats the vulnerable and the feared.

We can be a country that defends human dignity. Or we can be a country that sends the unwanted to Guantánamo.

We cannot be both.

There is still time to choose. Still time to reject the abyss.

That means demanding accountability for policies that violate basic human rights. It means rejecting the language of infestation, invasion, and criminality used to describe desperate people seeking a better life. It means understanding that the real threat to our democracy isn’t the stranger at the border—it’s the slow erosion of the values that made this country worth defending in the first place.

Nietzsche wasn’t writing for our moment—but his words were meant for it.

If we don’t listen, we may wake up one day and find that the monsters we thought we were fighting are the ones we’ve become.

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