Dehuman Race (Updated) 1
Although Donald Trump has backed away from his policy of ripping immigrant families apart, the impulses that led to it are no doubt still there. At Psychology Today Blogs, Paul Thagard explores one of them: Dehumanization. Only by thinking immigrants less than human can some justify separating children from their parents.
And, really, you don’t have to read many comments from the supporters of Donald Trump’s actions towards immigrants to see dehumanization in full force.
Here’s a bit of his piece:
The transferred emotions include disgust, fear, hatred, and anger. These form a hideous package that can be used to inspire and justify extreme measures against despised groups, ranging from separating children from their parents to slavery to gassing. Dehumanizing groups of people produces a kind of emotional Gestalt shift, replacing the respect and compassion that normally go with recognizing people as human, with a different emotional package that applies to threatening subhuman species. Propaganda campaigns were used by the Nazis, Hutus, and other aggressive parties to bring about this kind of emotional shift.
Addendum, Later That Evening:
Noz passes along Josh Marshall’s suggestion that there’s more to this than meets the eye. Even though subtlety is not generally a Trump quality, it is worth noting that the architect of the ripping families apart was Steven Miller.
(Misconfigured link fixed.)
June 21, 2018 at 8:33 am
[…] line of the theme of dehumanization that I mentioned yesterday, David Pakman finds that Donald Trump’s language has precedent. […]