There is a point in the exercise of power at which scandal ceases to be an accident and becomes a method. A point at which provocation no longer seeks applause and instead measures impunity. A point —deeply dangerous— at which power no longer needs to disguise itself as civilization because it has verified that nothing, absolutely nothing, happens when all limits are crossed.
The image published by Donald Trump is not a mistake. It is not a slip. It is not a tasteless joke nor a social media excess. It is a symptom. And like every symptom, it reveals a deep illness: the certainty that one can humiliate, dehumanize and degrade without real consequences.
Portraying Michelle Obama and Barack Obama as apes is not merely explicit racism. It is the conscious reactivation of one of the oldest and most brutal devices of colonial power: the animalization of the other in order to justify their exclusion from the human realm. There is no innocent metaphor here. No cultural ambiguity. There is a historical line that connects this image with centuries of slavery, lynchings, human zoos, segregation and symbolic extermination. Anyone who denies this is not confused: they are lying.
That the post was taken down twelve hours later, only under pressure, does not mitigate the act. It worsens it. Because it proves there was no remorse, only calculation. No conscience, only cost assessment. The message was launched, tested, measured. The monster stepped onto the stage to verify, once again, how far it can go before someone attempts to stop it.
And here lies the core of the problem: Trump is not an individual anomaly. He is the concentrated expression of a power structure that has normalized cruelty, commodified hatred and turned racism into a legitimate political tool. Trump did not invent this logic. He embodied it with unprecedented obscenity and, precisely for that reason, made it visible.
When power feels absolute, it undresses itself. When it believes itself owner of the world, it stops pretending to be human. Not because it has changed, but because it no longer needs to hide. Prolonged impunity produces this: the certainty that everything is permitted, even that which destroys the most basic moral fabric of a society.
Racism is not just another insult in the repertoire of symbolic violence. It is a technology of human destruction. One does not play with it because one does not play with what has no replacement. Every racist act does not only wound a person or a group: it erodes the minimal pact that makes coexistence possible. It introduces the idea that some lives are worth less, some bodies matter less, some dignities can be crushed for entertainment or political calculation.
Who and whom does the most powerful man in the world represent today? That is the question the image forces us to ask. He represents those who confuse strength with brutality. Those who believe that humiliating others confirms their own greatness. Those who have decided that democracy is an obstacle, empathy a weakness, and human dignity a nuisance.
Trump is everything that is wrong with humanity today not because he is unique, but because he is successful. Because millions see in him not an accident, but a model. Because his rise confirms that barbarism does not arrive all at once: it installs itself slowly, normalized, defended, justified, until one day it displays itself without shame and still finds excuses.
The true horror is not the image. The true horror is the network of silences, relativizations and complicities that surround it. The “it wasn’t that bad,” the “there are more important things,” the “it happens on the other side too.” No. There is no possible symmetry here. What exists is an abuse of power aimed directly at the heart of the human.
How much pain can a man like this cause while in power? History has already answered that question too many times. Every time racism was tolerated as opinion. Every time dehumanization was treated as provocation. Every time symbolic violence was minimized before becoming real violence.
This is not about Trump as an individual. It is about the world that allows Trump to exist, govern and feel immune. A world that has confused freedom of expression with a license to destroy the other. A world that has forgotten that civilization is not measured by the power it accumulates, but by the limits it imposes on itself.
When the monster reveals itself, it is not enough to look away or wait for it to tire. It must be named, pointed at and confronted. Not out of moralism, but out of ethical survival. Because a humanity that normalizes the animalization of the other has already begun to decompose.
And because racism is not a game. Ever. There is no margin. No permission. No second chance for what is irreparable.
