For the month of April, as part of the annual A to Z Challenge, I will be endeavoring to write a short personal post every day on the subject of war and peace—short because of time, War and Peace because of the times. To make things more bearable, I will endeavor to include music in every post.
Because dehumanization is rampant and I can’t bear to give it primacy, let me start by centering the positive, humanization.
Humanization is the act or process of humanizing. To humanize is
—to address or portray (someone) in a way that emphasizes that person’s humanity or individuality
—to represent (something) as human : to attribute human qualities to (something)
—to make (something) humane : to soften, civilize
Humanization is the task of a lifetime, something that we seek to develop in ourselves and that we recognize and nurture in our interactions with others. It is the process of becoming more fully human, of growing into our best selves, of flowering through and through.
Dehumanization is the process of dehumanizing. To dehumanize is:
—to deprive (someone or something) of human qualities, personality, or dignity
—to subject (someone, such as a prisoner) to inhuman or degrading conditions or treatment
Here Merriam-Webster illuminates the definition in a quote:
“… you treat people with respect, you get respect back. You treat them like animals, you strip search them, you dehumanize them, you lock them up, you don’t feed them … you are going to get that back …”— Adelina Iftene
—to address or portray (someone) in a way that obscures or demeans that person’s humanity or individuality.
Two illustrative examples:
“I’m always struck by the way language is used to dehumanize others.”— Anna Lind-Guzik
“But that approach ignores the fundamental dynamics of racism, which dehumanizes people along crude lines, ignoring any internal distinctions among those with broadly similar looks, treating them all as uniformly suspicious”.”— Sangay K. Mishra
During wartime, propaganda on both sides regularly dehumanizes the opposing side, the perceived enemy. How, otherwise, could decent people bring themselves to kill fellow-human beings? How War Dehumanizes Everyone it Touches, by Paul Tritchler, examines this process with particular reference to the devastating bombing of Dresden, Germany in the Second World War.
Dehumanization is also universally recognized as one of the precursors to genocide, a dangerous red flag. Genocide Watch, an organization that “exists to predict, prevent, stop, and punish genocide and other forms of mass murder,” has identified ten stages of genocide. The fourth stage is dehumanization, in which:
One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. At this stage, hate propaganda in print, on hate radios, and in social media is used to vilify the victim group. It may even be incorporated into school textbooks. Indoctrination prepares the way for incitement. The majority group is taught to regard the other group as less than human, and even alien to their society. They are indoctrinated to believe that “ We are better off without them.” The powerless group can become so depersonalized that they are actually given numbers rather than names, as Jews were in the death camps. They are equated with filth, impurity, and immorality. Hate speech fills the propaganda of official radio, newspapers, and speeches. The Ten Stages of Genocide.
The Perpetrator Studies Network “includes the work of scholars and educators whose research and teaching centers on perpetrators and perpetration of genocide, mass killings, and political violence.” Its website, which has an extensive bibliography of scholarship on the subject, includes Hagar Abdalbar’s summary of a book chapter by Nick Haslam, entitled, “The Many Roles of Dehumanization in Genocide” (in Confronting Humanity at its Worst: Social Psychological Perspectives on Genocide, 2020). In it Haslam argues that dehumanization is not only a precursor of genocide, but that it “is woven through the fabric of genocide and is not just a step on the path toward it.” Haslam also argues that dehumanization does not only mean “animalization” (such as referring to people as vermin, cockroaches, garbage), it can also involve lumping people together so as to erase their individuality, seeing them as disgusting, contemptible, or useless objects, or demonizing them even when they are the victims, not the perpetrators.
Whether we are considering humanization or its opposite, the process is twofold. It involves both speech and action—talking to and about groups of people in certain ways, and treating them in certain ways. It is also reciprocal. In each case, those who talk about and treat other people in these ways are themselves changed in the process, for better or worse. People—and societies—who routinely dehumanize others are themselves dehumanized. Those who are at the receiving end of dehumanization may also internalize the abuse. And those who seek to develop greater humanity and humaneness in themselves are likely to treat others in the same way.
In 3 Ways to Deal with Dehumanizing Language, the St. Louis Holocaust Museum helps us to understand why dehumanizing language is dangerous and offers some simple ways to respond to it: recognize it, question why it is being used, and call it out. Genocide Watch goes further:
Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable. Leaders who incite genocide should be prosecuted in national courts. They should be banned from international travel and have their foreign finances frozen. Hate radio stations should be jammed or shut down, and hate propaganda and its sources banned from social media and the internet. Hate crimes and atrocities should be promptly punished.
On that note, let us turn away from this dispiriting talk of demonization and dehumanization.
Here are two songs for the letter D:
Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos). Its lyrics were written by Woody Guthrie to commemorate the deaths of migrants who were recruited as farmworkers in the U.S. but subsequently sent back to Mexico. On the way home they were killed in a plane crash, and rather than dignifying them with their individual names, the newspaper coverage just described them as “deportees.” Woody Guthrie sought to re-humanize them in this song by giving them a story and a name. The song has been covered by many artists.
Woody Guthrie himself
Joan Baez, Mary Chapin Carpenter and the Indigo Girls
Arlo Guthrie, Woody’s son
Don’t Numb to This, composed by Abigail Bengson, sung here with Shaun Bengson. The title and the words speak for themselves.
Tell Me Another 