Dehumanization and tyranny are joined at the hip. The sense of superiority held by “rulers”, the phony paternal attitude towards the masses, the constant pressure to conform all serve different degrees of dehumanization of the person.
Democrats suffer from a strange schizophrenia. On the one hand they craft nice sounding language to gain public support, but they turn around and the public in horrible ways.
The net effect though is to engage in a wide ranging war against independent thinking individuals.
Dehumanize: You are not human, you are a slave
The KKK was a democrat enterprise for the purpose of terrorizing blacks and “keeping them in their place”. References to blacks being apes, and subhuman are common. This justified the cruelties taken out on blacks. Moreover, it did not matter to Democrats that you were a freeman. You would still be dragged into slavery.
Is there a more subtle way to look at slavery which is an effective tool for dehumanization? How about yes? Fear is one of the most powerful psychological tools for manipulating the behavior of individuals and groups. A little bit of fear, some fear, a lot of fear. Chaotic fear, carefully timed fear, coordinated fear. Take your pick. There is a developing school of thought that the pandemic was a carefully planned exercise in creating public fear and lots of it. Dehumanizing? You bet it was. Wear masks, or else. Social distance, or else. Get vaccinated, or else. Follow our orders or suffer the consequences.
The hard part was how so many people became enforcers of this dehumanization regardless of political affiliation or ideology. That is when your lust for power has reached its fullest expression.
Dehumanize: You have no individuality, you are part of a group and must all think and act the same
Democrats and Communists are also joined at the hip. The reader is referred to the op-ed above. Not only does the use of group identity politics serve to make individuals meaningless, but the whole process of reasoning and logic is eliminated because it works against their ability to rule over you. They believe they know what is best for youb- not you.
p.s. Sexual identity is not individual identity, no matter how hard they try. The froth, the heat, the spleen generated by the so called LGBTQ community is just another way to shame people without regard to the true nature of any given person. They like it, they feel satisfaction by having “those people” in a corner. So, tell me they care about who you really are. It is just more dehumanization.
Dehumanize: Abortion – it is just a clump of cells and not a person
What happens when you decide the life growing inside you is NOT a clump of cells? How does that change your world view? It is a disturbingly simple concept which means nothing to an astonishingly large number of women. Moreover, the hatred directed at pro-life people is itself another form of dehumanization.
Since the debate over abortion has devolved to the states, the issue of personhood for a fetus has only become stronger. Meantime, several states are edging closer to rewriting their constitutions to enshrine abortion as a state-given right.
Dehumanize: Steal Your Vote
An unspoken motto of the democrat party is “Screw you, we want our power.” Steal your vote, make up votes, create non-existent addresses, and write vote stealing algorithms. So, guess what? Not only is your vote nullified, but also overwhelmed by all the phony votes. Oh yes, I forgot all the dead voters too. Dehumanizing.
Dehumanize: Demonizing Conservatives
Extra-chromosome, knuckle dragging bigoted racist homophobes. That pretty much sums of the attitude of many liberals towards conservatives. Such terminology makes no allowance for the possibility that conservative ideas are in any way valid and relevant. Logically, they are just ad hominem attacks to suggest you are inferior and sub-human.
The cherry on top came when Hillary in 2016 referred to conservatives as “deplorables”. It was a clumsy attempt on her part. But she will never know how many votes she lost because of the careless comment. Regardless of whether conservatives return the favor or not, this is just one more tool in the toolbox of dehumanization.
The Ultimate Dehumanization: War
War requires hatred of the enemy. Krauts, Gook, Jap, and other derogatory terms were part of the tool box for dehumanization that justified doing cruel things to fellow humans. When it comes to military psy-ops, one of the first missions of propaganda is to dehumanize your enemy. Make him horrible, make him inferior, make him worthy of death at your hands.
In the run up to the Jewish Holocaust, the Nazis had much propaganda to make Jews appear less than human. The really horrible part is how all the propagandizing seemed to gain broad and deep support in the German population to the point that killing Jews was all in a day’s work.
The rancor, name calling, and increasing leftist violence by Antifa, BLM, The John Brown Club and crazed individuals erroneously tagged as “right wing” has led to the concern that this behavior on the left will continue to escalate.
So, the message to the Democrats is that you need to spend a lot of time in front of a mirror. There are too many examples where dehumanization was inflicted on millions of people for your own party-centric gains. We all have something to learn.