"On September 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. Fifteen years earlier, he penned Mein Kampf “to describe my own development,” he explained in the preface, and “to destroy the evil legends created about my person by the Jewish press.” To that end, he described Jews as “like a harmful bacillus,” “bloodsuckers,” “vermin,” “vampire[s]” and “parasites.”
As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt noted on Twitter, an “us” versus “them” mindset “often leads to comparing one’s enemies to infectious parasites.” It results in using metaphors that evoke the moral emotion of disgust. Disgust, according to psychologists Buckels and Trapnell “appears to have the unique capacity to foster the social-cognitive dehumanization of outgroup members.”
Hitler understood this perfectly, and with his dehumanizing rhetoric, promoted an anti-Jewish exterminationist mentality across Europe. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler, whose mission was to make Jews “disappear from this earth,” declared that “Anti-Semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology. It is a matter of cleanliness.” "
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The main point I took away from the linked article is that certain forms of namecalling have a disgust-inducing dehumanizing effect which bolsters in-group/out-group divisions that can lead ordinary people into supporting atrocities against the dehumanized.
This form of dehumanizing name-calling, a form of propaganda, "destroys 'norms of mutual respect'"
I think that's a critical part. Mutual respect is *the norm* and that norm gets destroyed by dehumanizing propaganda.
Why would someone want to dehumanize another group, destroy the norm of mutual respect, and cast that group into a separated out-group? We can look to history for some examples. Why did Hitler do it to the Jews? Why did the Americans do it to the Japanese? Why did the Hutu do it to the Tutsi?
Here's a list of names I've been called, called others, or seen others called on this forum:
troll, robot, toad, wannabe guru, insect, self anointed messiah, polluted garbage, asshole, idiot, monkey, bootlicker, lackey, cultist, buddy
As you can see, some of these names are dehumanizing, some aren't. Can you spot the differences?
Here's a list of questions for the readers:
1.) Have you ever used dehumanizing language? How did you feel when you did it? After reading this article, do you think you'll continue to use dehumanizing language? If so, why?
2.) Have you ever been on the receiving end of dehumanizing language? How did you feel when it happened? After reading this article, do you think you'll handle dehumanizing language differently in the future? If so, how?
Here's some tricky ones:
3.) Do you think that, by using speech that destroys norms of mutual respect, unapologetic users of dehumanizing language have sacrificed their privilege to participate in a forum that depends on maintaining norms of mutual respect?
4.) How should we, as a community interested in maintaining norms of mutual respect, handle dehumanizing propagandizers? In other words: Do you think that dehumanizing language should be a bannable offense?
Finally, a question for the unapologetic users of dehumanizing language (I'm looking at you, /u/essentialsalts, and others, you know who you are) :
5.) Why do you choose to follow in the footsteps of history's most notorious genociders by using dehumanizing language?
Submitted September 02, 2019 at 08:21AM by Fatty_Loot https://ift.tt/2NLXmyy
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