I wasn’t even talking about his horror, to be honest. The man himself was a hot mess of being afraid of everyone different. As well as being oddly picky about who he applied it to - he was extremely antisemitic but married a Jewish woman. He hated gay people but one of his best friends was gay. It was like he hated the idea of Others but was ok with an very few individuals on a very personal level.
As for what you’ve brought up, that’s often, I think, why SF can be used to explore racism or themes of racism. By making a complete alien The Other, you can look at and explore ideas that would nowadays get folks screaming “WOKE!!!” if you tried to explore it with races of people.