the theme of unwanted minorities spreading contagion was a standardized soliloquy of totalitarianism, most notoriously Hitler’s stoking of public fears of tuberculosis to incite bigotry toward Jews: “There was always this undertone of bigotry with AIDS. I don’t think we can dismiss as coincidence that the population that they targeted for their toxic concoctions were gays, Blacks, Hispanics, and Africans.”
