Photo Essay: Something Evil (Perhaps) This Way Comes

Not long ago, a homeless woman named Sonya was sitting on the ground next to a bench in Sylvester Park in downtown Olympia, Washington. Her clothing was strewn across the wet grass; her appearance was disheveled; her speech chaotic.

“Why bother with her?” a man said as he walked by. “She’s nothing more than a drain on society.”

I realized the gravity of his comment when on September 10 Fox News host Brian Kilmeade commented that euthanizing homeless individuals with mental health issues should be allowed if they refuse treatment for their illness.

One of Kilmeade’s “Fox and Friends” co-hosts, Lawrence Jones, had stated that mentally ill homeless people who refuse treatment should be “locked up.” It is at that point Kilmeade stated, “Or involuntary lethal injection, or something. Just kill them.”

The two men’s comments speak of evil and are not without precedent.

In 1933 the Nazi Party passed the Law Against Dangerous and Habitual Criminals, and prior to the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, the German police rounded up thousands of people deemed as such and sent them to concentration camps. Many were homeless individuals.

At the time, German citizens viewed homeless individuals and people with mental and physical disabilities as being “useless” to society and thus “unworthy of life.” By the time the Second World War began in Europe in 1939, the Nazis had initiated a “euthanasia” program to rid society of these individuals.

In the terminology of National Socialism (the far-right totalitarian ideology of the Nazi Party), the government redefined citizens who were jobless, homeless or panhandlers as “Community Aliens.” As such they – as well as many others – were to be eliminated because they were a drain on German society.

There is no attempt here to dishonor or trivialize the suffering endured by the victims of the Holocaust; the fate of the homeless in America does not compare to that of the homeless in Nazi Germany.

And yet ….

The Nazi Party’s actions toward the poor, the homeless and the disabled are a clear warning that in this country’s current divisive and destructive political climate we are but a stone’s throw away from an executive order that redefines the homeless as an economic liability that this society should no longer allow.

Let us hope the comments made by Brian Kilmeade on national television and the unknown man in Olympia, Washington are not harbingers of the evil that could occur to individuals like the ones you see here.

JM Simpson is a documentary photographer who for the past two-and-a-half years has talked with and learned about the homeless in Olympia, Washington.

Allen Sonya

CharlotteDiane

KatZacharyJimmyRobbie

Dennis, a homeless man in downtown Olympia, was surprised to learn that free speech in this country is not as free as the First Amendment says it is.”