The Persians are all monsters, a collection of deformed hunchbacks, giants, sexual deviants, and other weirdos. Persians are all bad: “Black people. Brown people. Disfigured people. Gay men (not gay in the buff, homoerotic Spartan fashion, but in the effeminate Persian style). Lesbians. Disfigured lesbians. Ten-foot-tall giants with filed teeth and lobster claws. Elephants and rhinos (filthy creatures both).”

XREF: This dehumanizing caricature of the enemy echoes other historical propaganda and othering rhetoric, both ancient and modern.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 681