Presented By: Department of Philosophy
How Dehumanization Makes Monsters
David Smith (University of New England)
Nazis described Jews as vermin. White Americans described Black Americans as beasts. And today, the militant Buddhists of Myanmar characterize the Rohingya as subhuman animals. These are all examples of dehumanization, a phenomenon that often paves the way to mass atrocity. In my 2011 book Less Than Human I described dehumanization as the attitude of conceiving of others as less than human. However, some scholars have objected that this view is not consistent with the fact that dehumanizers often acknowledge the humanity of their victims, and have suggested that dehumanization, as I have described it, does not occur. In this talk I will explain why this concern should not lead one to reject the reality of dehumanization. Using two examples of spectacle lynchings—extremely gruesome lynchings of African Americans that were attended by hundreds or thousands of spectators—I will explain how this problem can be addressed in a way that leads to a deeper, more nuanced, and more disturbing account of what dehumanization is and how it works.
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