{"id":116,"date":"2003-11-10T21:26:17","date_gmt":"2003-11-11T02:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=116"},"modified":"2003-11-10T21:26:17","modified_gmt":"2003-11-11T02:26:17","slug":"dehumanization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=116","title":{"rendered":"Dehumanization"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A reader, responding to the suggestion that we call the Baathist<br \/>\nholdouts in Iraq <a href='http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/esrblog\/index.php?m=200311#85'><br \/>\nwerewolves<\/a>, asked rhetorically whether the intent was to dehumanize<br \/>\nthem. Lurking behind this question was the theory that war supporters<br \/>\nlike me need to make our enemies into un-persons in order to justify<br \/>\ncontinuing to kill them.<\/p>\n<p>This question displays a kind of self-absorption by a person who<br \/>\ncannot really imagine a moral stance different from his\/her own.  In<br \/>\nsuch tender-minded thinking, the world is neatly divided into humans<br \/>\nthat one must treat pretty much as though they were one&#8217;s next-door neighbor,<br \/>\nand non-humans who are not part of the moral community.  The possibility<br \/>\nthat a human being could be outside the moral community is essentially<br \/>\nignored.<\/p>\n<p>But there are human beings who are outside the moral community by nature.<br \/>\nWe call them psychopaths.  They lack the wiring for empathy and reciprocity<br \/>\nthat makes it possible for most human beings to cooperate; they can (and<br \/>\noften do) commit sickening atrocities for pleasure.  Fortunately, most<br \/>\npsychopaths have other kinds of neurological deficits as well and are<br \/>\ntherefore not very bright.  <\/p>\n<p>Some people who probably were not born with psychopathy make themselves<br \/>\ninto psychopaths.  Consider, as a relevant example, Saddam Hussein and<br \/>\nhis sons.  They fed living people into shredders for amusement.  No semantic<br \/>\ndebate over whether that sort of monster is &#8220;human&#8221; or &#8220;dehumanized&#8221;<br \/>\nis going to change my judgment that that it deserves a violent<br \/>\ndeath as quickly as that result can be arranged.<\/p>\n<p>The Baathist holdouts in Iraq are the hench-monsters of the<br \/>\nHusseins &mdash; the men who tore infants&#8217; eyes out and strapped women<br \/>\nto tables in rape rooms.  Calling them &#8220;werewolves&#8221; or &#8220;orcs&#8221;  is not<br \/>\nan attempt to dehumanize them; that would be pointless, since they<br \/>\nhave already dehumanized themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A reader, responding to the suggestion that we call the Baathist holdouts in Iraq werewolves, asked rhetorically whether the intent was to dehumanize them. Lurking behind this question was the theory that war supporters like me need to make our enemies into un-persons in order to justify continuing to kill them. This question displays a&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=116\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Dehumanization<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}