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Moderator Guidelines
To say that Hitler wasn't human is to pretend that no human could ever do the same, making way for another human to step up and do the same.
Accepting that Hitler was human means putting processes in place to prevent another human from doing the same.
And to take it a step further: recognize that everyone in Nazi Germany was human. Humans built the gas chambers and the crematoriums. Humans designed the walkways to the gas chambers to look like a normal pathway to a shower facility so the victims wouldn’t panic, as they had at earlier tests.
Humans architected the whole damn thing. Not just a few. It was thousands of people working throughout the Nazi regime. To fully acknowledge their humanity is to recognize that all of us (given a bad enough set of circumstances) are capable of participating in horrific crimes. When dehumanization is widespread and brutality is normalized, we suppress or even lose our moral centre.
Some people find this fact so horribly unpleasant to contemplate that they go to great lengths to deny it. They must have been monsters, psychopaths, deviants. No, what was wrong was that they were in the throes of ideology. Recognize for yourself the seductive and dangerous power of ideology.
everyone in Nazi Germany was human
So is every MAGA. In exactly the same way.
When we are serious about fixing America, we will have a credible program of de-Nazification
Ding ding ding ding
Go talk to all the pet play enthusiasts
The secret ingredient is consent
slowly raises paw
Mammal, mammal
Mammal, mammal
Their names are called
They raise a paw
The bat, the cat
Dolphin and dog
Koala bear and hog
I would add to that: It is also vitally important to see horrible, monstrous, evil people as human. It's a hell of a lot more important than the (also vital) virtue signaling "homeless people / ethnicity people / etc are people too" brand of refusing-to-dehumanize.
For one thing, if you understand why they bombed this city, polluted that river, cheered for this insurrection, whatever they did, then you're a hell of a lot further ahead towards stopping them in the future. You can see how they operate, you can understand it. Even if it's horrible and evil, you can grasp it, come to grips with it, start to work to limit the damage in an effective way, instead of just the "abstinence-only" approach to criminality that is so popular in cities that don't fight their crime very effectively.
For another thing, being evil and doing horrible things is very much a part of being human. It's how we operate. If you can't see that and accept it, if anyone who does something horrible or is just lazy, dirty, crooked, whatever, becomes "not human," then you can't really understand yourself, either. The version of morality where everyone "allowed" to exist in the world doesn't contain some evil is just not useful, in the real world. The Nazis were absolutely human, they were doing human things. They're indicative of a problem with humans. They're not some wild outlier you can safely place outside of "humanity" because they don't count.
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Solzhenitsyn
I seriously hate this debate for the sole reason that FAR too many people take, "don't dehumanize" to mean, "you cannot do 'bad' things to 'bad' people, period." That is a fucking STUPID position to hold, and again, far too many people view, "do not dehumanize" to mean, "you would become a Nazi if you said punching Nazis is good."
Yes, we must remember every human is a human. Good job with the tautological obvious facts of reality! We must also remember many humans betray humanity and do not deserve honor or respect. Sometimes, they don't even deserve life.
It is wholly about how you judge someone else and over what criteria, not about some mystical concept of togetherness. "Dehumanize" is far too generic of a term to create absolute rules with like this. It's just difficult to communicate an exact interpretation with. (see: the many interpretations people are assuming in the rest of the comments)
Look up the trial of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz.
For what he did, there would have been every justification to shoot him in the head and leave his body in a ditch on the side of the road. But instead, we put him on trial, and we got the following statements out of the guy:
My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the 'Third Reich' for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness. In Polish prisons I experienced for the first time what human kindness is. Despite all that has happened I have experienced humane treatment which I could never have expected, and which has deeply shamed me. May the facts which are now coming out about the horrible crimes against humanity make the repetition of such cruel acts impossible for all time.
...and (in a letter to his wife before his execution):
Based on my present knowledge I can see today clearly, severely and bitterly for me, that the entire ideology about the world in which I believed so firmly and unswervingly was based on completely wrong premises and had to absolutely collapse one day. And so my actions in the service of this ideology were completely wrong, even though I faithfully believed the idea was correct.
...and (in the same letter, to his children):
Keep your good heart. Become a person who lets himself be guided primarily by warmth and humanity. Learn to think and judge for yourself, responsibly. Don't accept everything without criticism and as absolutely true... The biggest mistake of my life was that I believed everything faithfully which came from the top, and I didn't dare to have the least bit of doubt about the truth of that which was presented to me. ... In all your undertakings, don't just let your mind speak, but listen above all to the voice in your heart.
We wouldn't have any of that if we had treated Höss like an animal, rather than a human being.
Yes. I never said to treat them like a rabid dog coming at you. (unless they are coming at you, of course)
Like I said, it's about how you judge someone (such as a proper trial vs flippant execution) and on what criteria.
The main thrust of my point is: Policing language while there are people out there gleefully murdering children and rigging the economy so that more suffer for their gains is pathetic pedantry and only a practice of self-fellatio at best, and running interference for these despicable monsters at worst.
Some people do, in fact, deserve to be called absolute trash monsters for betraying humanity, and do, in fact, deserve to be treated differently. Permanent incarceration (if they are the irredeemable type) after due process is still treating someone differently.
Kinda gross how obvious it is that some people don’t actually believe that certain actions are bad because they inherently violate personhood or your moral beliefs, but because they were done to them. And that the real desirable thing is to use it against The Enemy, not to eliminate it altogether.
I have sympathy for the position. It's easy to get frustrated by an "enemy" who is already dehumanizing you and wishes to remove you from society for existing openly as you are. It can be damn hard to not sink to the same level of thinking... but it's part of why we had trials at Nuremberg and we took the time to treat the monsters with the human dignity they deserved and would deny to others. We didn't just hang them all by their necks because we knew they were Nazis and that was enough, they were given trials because holy fuck it matters. (There is a valid argument to be made that we didn't have enough trials for enough Nazis) Further, it helped solidify our understanding of fascism and what leads to fascism... a lack of empathy. If we allow ourselves to completely lose our empathy for those who strike against us (especially those who are uneducated and have essentially been tricked and deceived into their positions, which are the majority) we will eventually become just as monstrous as them.
I keep empathy for people who are misled and have been intentionally confused, but the line I see gets drawn when they have been educated and still choose to be a fascist/Nazi. If they're fully versed in it and are still advocating for it and taking actions on behalf of it, then I lose empathy.
The problem becomes making that determination. But while I draw a line for dehumanization there, I still support death penalty just for being one (as in taking actions that are clearly intended to support or promote the belief. Keeping a known and verified Nazi alive will never be beneficial in any way at all to anyone but other Nazis.
The only real benefit to dehumanization at all is having a way to tell yourself that you're not included in a species with that possibility.
But setting a burden of evidence for and being convicted of just being a Nazi/fascist should be grounds for execution in every country.
The antidote is class consciousness and solidarity. Some may think that this just replaces one enemy with another, but fascists blame the powerless, while my side blames the powerful.
I think our side should put more focus on the structures. If a system e.g. let's Taylor Swift fly around in a private jet and even rewards her with more money from concerts and increased brand value, I can obviously still blame her (because she didn't have to do it). But if I want things to change, I need to change the system.
I agree! I've been trying to brainstorm how one can sort of effectively do the opposite of those dehumanizing incel memes.
We really need some viral empathy.
Take the pope's words to JD Vance, "love doesn't have a budget, you try to love everyone as hard as you can" (paraphrasing)
Also: "sociopath/psychopath/narcissist" etc. is not just another name for a horrible person.
I hate ideas, I hate institutions, I hate organizations, and I hate systems, but I do not hate people.
Dehumanization, tribalism, racism, religious intolerance.
Name a more iconic, perfidious quartet.
What about dehumanizing billionaires and cops?
Humanity is inalienable. The most wretched, hateful human you can imagine cannot become un-human.
Think of it like calling a turd on a pedestal art. It doesn't mean it's good art, or even that you shouldn't bag it up and throw it out.
Same thing.
Yes, this includes the group of people that you want to dehumanize as well. Humanity isn't something you can take away, it's an inherent aspect of a species. You can say "fascists aren't human", or "pigs aren't mammals" and they are equally false statements.
Exactly. We don't punch Nazis because they're not people. Cats aren't people and we don't punch them. We punch Nazis because they're Nazis.
“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”
-terry pratchett
eta the whole quote for anyone unfamiliar
There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example,” said Oats.
“And what do they think? Against it, are they?” said Granny Weatherwax.
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
“Nope.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that . . .”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes . . .”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”
Fascists might be human people, but I've lost faith in human people. I kinda don't even want to keep being one myself.
What does it mean to you, to dehumanize someone? What is materially different about feeding an evil human who has done incalculable damage to the world into a meat grinder, vs doing so with the same person but this time, you feel bad about it because they were a human too?
I agree, we shouldn't label groups of people as good or bad if they have no mechanism to move between groups. But if you think for a second that I will regard fascists as anything more than the ravenous, hate filled maggots they are, you are mistaken. They chose to give up their humanity and they could just as easily choose to regain it. Until then, they are not human to mem
Dehumanization is denying someone human rights.
Fascists can and should be denied political power, not human rights.
You and I might disagree about the specifics of human rights, but I doubt we disagree that they exist.