Dehumanization Examples

Power and Impact of Dehumanization
“The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” In this quote, Aldous Huxley clearly illustrates the power one group of people strive to obtain by disregarding another group’s existence as equals. Through political and social systems that use fear, force, and disinformation, they aim to gain more domination through dehumanization. This mindset can be defined as the utter denial of the fact that a human being possesses needs, emotions, thoughts, and desires. Dehumanization is often a systematically constructed tool of those in power to remain in power. Creating new identities within a made-up hierarchy, it can easily make people forget their true

and original self.
Nazi Germany used dehumanization to its full advantage during The Holocaust.

Primo Levi, a survivor of this genocide, included in his written account of the time (Survival in Auschwitz), an incredibly insightful observation of they way that Nazis beat their prisoners. After witnessing several of instances of the soldiers’ use of force on Germany’s prisoners, Levi wondered, “How can one hit a man without anger?” (16) Despite the fact that the answer was never made entirely clear in the passage, one can, without much hesitation, assume that this quote demonstrates how these officers did not need any specific reason to hit another human being. To them, these acts were nothing more than a daily task such as brushing teeth or taking out trash. According to the author, these soldiers did not consider the people they were hitting human. Brainwashed by Hitler’s agenda, Germany’s military not only abused and tormented homosexual, Jewish, disabled, Roma, Slavic, etc. people, but did so without malice. Nazi beliefs were so deeply ingrained within Germans’ minds in the late 1930’s and early to mid 1940’s, that they felt it a duty to torture people of these non-Aryan and “unhealthy” categories. It became part of who they were. One simply cannot persecute another without any specific disagreement or conflict between the two, without seeing them as less than a person, without

dehumanization.
Acts against people’s identity as humans are sadly not a thing of the past.

Dehumanization still thrives today. Written by Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy graphically illustrates the numerous instances of injustice within the United States legal system. Stevenson describes an event where racist judges and juries condemn a man to death, without proper evidence of his guilt, simply because this man was African-American. Again, this complete oblivion to his emotions, his needs, his life, cannot be given any other name than dehumanization. Years ago, with the arrival of slaves, white supremacy was established in the United States. Certain Caucasian individuals still hold on to this outdated and inhumane belief of superiority over minorities due to the fact that the American system has not yet made the full transition into justice for all people regardless or race, gender, religion, etc. Therefore, some black Americans still have this sense of subordination to whites as part of their identity. They may see themselves as an African-American under the rule of another race, before seeing themselves as simply

people.
Despite the fact that in history, the white man mainly oppressed people of different races, the social situation could have been very easily reversed under appropriate circumstances. Malorie Blackman wrote a series called Noughts and Crosses, where the blacks had power over the whites. Blackman’s books give lots of perspective over how much society can be altered by those with power and great strategy skills. After taking a look at the vivid examples in Levi’s, Stevenson’s, and Blackman’s works, one can come to the conclusion that it is alarmingly simple to fall victim to, or even unconsciously support, a system that uses dehumanization as a tool to enforce control.