I ask this question, because, as a general matter, objecting to this usage would be inconsistent with how the term has been used, and received, by the board, going back many years. A few recent examples follow; there are many more.
Posts in which Trump and his far-right loyalists are described as infesting various groups and institutions:
Posts referring to the presence of disruptive people in online fora as infestations:
Political operators of various stripes constitute an infestation:
Drug-dealing cartels infest a country:
And so on, and so on.
All of these posts are in Great Debates and Politics & Elections, not the Pit. All of these posts use the infestation imagery to refer to actual people, rather than concepts (“crime-infested”) or inanimate objects (“gun-infested”). As far as I can tell, not one of these instances attracted any attention or resulted in any sort of objection; all passed without comment.
The point here is not to call attention to these posts and expose these posters to censure under the terms established in this thread. No — the point is to observe that usage of the “infestation” concept has been non-controversial on this board when there is a general consensus that the phenomenon being so described constitutes a harmful invasion, especially by representatives of an established center of power against an oppressed minority.
For example: I would hope nobody on this board disputes the premise that the long-standing and ongoing infiltration of law enforcement by violent race-motivated terrorists is a bad thing. Which is why the following usage does not produce a single batted eye.
The “infestation” concept is certainly powerful, in how it connotes the penetration, infection, and/or destruction of an established entity by a corrupting outside force. As has been noted by prior posts up to this point in the thread, there is a well-known application of the concept which reflects a hateful and harmful dehumanization and suppression of the unwanted influence of untrusted minorities by suspicious majorities and their delegated authorities. This, clearly, is negative — racist, supremacist, etc. — and is rightfully condemned and should not be tolerated in respectful discussion.
But this is not the only possible context, as illustrated by the litany of counterexamples above. Authoritarian zealots are not, in any universe, an oppressed ethnic group or other victimized minority, and there may be legitimate rhetorical value in the perception and labeling of their nefarious shenanigans as an infestation.
From this perspective, I don’t think it’s clear at all that @XT committed an unambiguous infraction in his use of the word, as implied by the unanimous tenor of this thread. Ukraine is not a monolith of power imposing their will on their helpless Russian neighbor; and the Russians moving into Ukraine and setting up camp are not innocent pilgrims with motivations unconnected to the larger Russian political agenda. To describe these Russians as “infesting” Ukraine may be questionable, in that it treads closer to the gray center between the heretofore uncontroversial connotation illustrated by the examples above and the nasty, hateful usage connected with the subjugation of persecuted minorities. But it does not, I believe, fall all the way to that side of the continuum, and the pile-on here, in my opinion, was unwarranted.
Now — if it is the consensus of the board’s moderators, or of the membership generally, that any such usage of the word must be avoided, because (say) the previously useful and acceptable sense of the term is no longer allowed because it opens the door for malicious actors to justify deployment of the word in its more loathsome context, that seems fine to me. It may be debatable, but there’s a rational basis for it.
But it will be new. It was not previously a rule, as shown above. And any suggestion that it has always been a rule is not accurate.