To say that Hitler wasn’t human is to pretend that no human could ever do the same, making way for another human to step up and do the same.
Accepting that Hitler was human means putting processes in place to prevent another human from doing the same.
And to take it a step further: recognize that everyone in Nazi Germany was human. Humans built the gas chambers and the crematoriums. Humans designed the walkways to the gas chambers to look like a normal pathway to a shower facility so the victims wouldn’t panic, as they had at earlier tests.
Humans architected the whole damn thing. Not just a few. It was thousands of people working throughout the Nazi regime. To fully acknowledge their humanity is to recognize that all of us (given a bad enough set of circumstances) are capable of participating in horrific crimes. When dehumanization is widespread and brutality is normalized, we suppress or even lose our moral centre.
Some people find this fact so horribly unpleasant to contemplate that they go to great lengths to deny it. They must have been monsters, psychopaths, deviants. No, what was wrong was that they were in the throes of ideology. Recognize for yourself the seductive and dangerous power of ideology.
everyone in Nazi Germany was human
So is every MAGA. In exactly the same way.
When we are serious about fixing America, we will have a credible program of de-Nazification
It’s why I prefer AI to humans.
“AI” is nothing more than a tool built by humans and is therefore liable to spit out the same dehumanizing and cruel sentiments that were fed into it. It’s not objective or intelligent. It’s an algorithm that can be manipulated by the people that made it. Just look at Grok suddenly talking about being “mecha hitler”
Yeah, it managed to hurt my feelings once, despite having no attachments to it whatsoever.
prefer AI to humans
What are you, a clank-lover?
I just hate them slightly less
Hmmm a very fair take tbh.
Username checks out
Ding ding ding ding
He WAS human. Then he chose to abandon it. He could choose to recover it, but it would be hard to convince anyone of your moral changes.
Any human could do what he did and abandon humanity, but no human could do the things he did and remain human.
Nah. Phrase it as he gave up or betrayed his humanity. He IS, factually and inalliably still a human. That doesn’t mean he deserves to be treated as some rando off the street.
I would add to that: It is also vitally important to see horrible, monstrous, evil people as human. It’s a hell of a lot more important than the (also vital) virtue signaling “homeless people / ethnicity people / etc are people too” brand of refusing-to-dehumanize.
For one thing, if you understand why they bombed this city, polluted that river, cheered for this insurrection, whatever they did, then you’re a hell of a lot further ahead towards stopping them in the future. You can see how they operate, you can understand it. Even if it’s horrible and evil, you can grasp it, come to grips with it, start to work to limit the damage in an effective way, instead of just the “abstinence-only” approach to criminality that is so popular in cities that don’t fight their crime very effectively.
For another thing, being evil and doing horrible things is very much a part of being human. It’s how we operate. If you can’t see that and accept it, if anyone who does something horrible or is just lazy, dirty, crooked, whatever, becomes “not human,” then you can’t really understand yourself, either. The version of morality where everyone “allowed” to exist in the world doesn’t contain some evil is just not useful, in the real world. The Nazis were absolutely human, they were doing human things. They’re indicative of a problem with humans. They’re not some wild outlier you can safely place outside of “humanity” because they don’t count.
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” -Solzhenitsyn
This is an excellent comment, capped off by a great quote
I find that quote to be insanely stupid. Yes, we’re all tempted by evil thoughts, but not all of us gleefully go along with those urges… We are all, in fact, not the same.
I’m struggling to think of a way to fit this heavy hitting comment into its own Spongebob meme, but I guess this is just the nature of même threads: pithy in the op, scholarly in the comments.
Go talk to all the pet play enthusiasts
The secret ingredient is consent
slowly raises paw
Mammal, mammal
Mammal, mammal
Their names are called
They raise a paw
The bat, the cat
Dolphin and dog
Koala bear and hogCRANKING MAH HOGGG AROOOO
Miauuuuuu :3
Woof c:
right? i’ve got a footstool who would disagree with this
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
was going to say :3
I seriously hate this debate for the sole reason that FAR too many people take, “don’t dehumanize” to mean, “you cannot do ‘bad’ things to ‘bad’ people, period.” That is a fucking STUPID position to hold, and again, far too many people view, “do not dehumanize” to mean, “you would become a Nazi if you said punching Nazis is good.”
Yes, we must remember every human is a human. Good job with the tautological obvious facts of reality! We must also remember many humans betray humanity and do not deserve honor or respect. Sometimes, they don’t even deserve life.
It is wholly about how you judge someone else and over what criteria, not about some mystical concept of togetherness. “Dehumanize” is far too generic of a term to create absolute rules with like this. It’s just difficult to communicate an exact interpretation with. (see: the many interpretations people are assuming in the rest of the comments)
Look up the trial of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz.
For what he did, there would have been every justification to shoot him in the head and leave his body in a ditch on the side of the road. But instead, we put him on trial, and we got the following statements out of the guy:
My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the ‘Third Reich’ for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness. In Polish prisons I experienced for the first time what human kindness is. Despite all that has happened I have experienced humane treatment which I could never have expected, and which has deeply shamed me. May the facts which are now coming out about the horrible crimes against humanity make the repetition of such cruel acts impossible for all time.
…and (in a letter to his wife before his execution):
Based on my present knowledge I can see today clearly, severely and bitterly for me, that the entire ideology about the world in which I believed so firmly and unswervingly was based on completely wrong premises and had to absolutely collapse one day. And so my actions in the service of this ideology were completely wrong, even though I faithfully believed the idea was correct.
…and (in the same letter, to his children):
Keep your good heart. Become a person who lets himself be guided primarily by warmth and humanity. Learn to think and judge for yourself, responsibly. Don’t accept everything without criticism and as absolutely true… The biggest mistake of my life was that I believed everything faithfully which came from the top, and I didn’t dare to have the least bit of doubt about the truth of that which was presented to me. … In all your undertakings, don’t just let your mind speak, but listen above all to the voice in your heart.
We wouldn’t have any of that if we had treated Höss like an animal, rather than a human being.
Yes. I never said to treat them like a rabid dog coming at you. (unless they are coming at you, of course)
Like I said, it’s about how you judge someone (such as a proper trial vs flippant execution) and on what criteria.
The main thrust of my point is: Policing language while there are people out there gleefully murdering children and rigging the economy so that more suffer for their gains is pathetic pedantry and only a practice of self-fellatio at best, and running interference for these despicable monsters at worst.
Some people do, in fact, deserve to be called absolute trash monsters for betraying humanity, and do, in fact, deserve to be treated differently. Permanent incarceration (if they are the irredeemable type) after due process is still treating someone differently.
Except it’s not pedantry. It’s an extremely serious issue. Dehumanization makes it easy to forget who the enemy truly is. It makes it easy to lose face, justify the ones you know as “one of the good ones”, just because you see they’re human. It makes it easy for that hatred to get redirected onto people who should not be part of your hatred by manipulative 3rd parties.
It’s not language policing, it’s an important thing to keep in mind so you do not become what you hate.
People need to see everyone is human so they don’t think the atrocities are only as such because they are the target(see Israel – I’m not saying that you should let people off for the horrors they do).
It’s only difficult if ones’ memory is as pathetic as a goldfish, forgetting who threw the first punch over what reasoning.
And people’s memories are. Hence, important
Yeah… Sadly I can only agree with that!
I’m curious though, what value do these statements have?
There is a separable argument about whether we should have due process vs vigilante justice and I think due process is better. Vigilante “justice” is hard to call justice at all.
With due process though he could have been tried and convicted and executed without being allowed to make these statements. The argument you seem to make is that the statements themself are valuable and meaningful.
I mean I’m certainly not looking to the commandant of Auschwitz for any mora guidance, what that person thinks is of little value to me.
His statements are, at the very least, important to those closest to him. He spent his life as a monster, poisoning the thoughts and beliefs of his family and friends. He was able to recognize his errors and given the chance to explain himself.
Humans don’t exists in vacuums. We all make ripples in the lives of those around us. If he was executed without the chance to recognize his errors and apologize to his family they might have viewed him as a martyr and continued his mission.
There’s also something to be said about his words imposing future generations. There are still those alive today who believe in the mission of those European fascists. Perhaps reading his words of regret will change their minds even just a small amount.
Kinda gross how obvious it is that some people don’t actually believe that certain actions are bad because they inherently violate personhood or your moral beliefs, but because they were done to them. And that the real desirable thing is to use it against The Enemy, not to eliminate it altogether.
I have sympathy for the position. It’s easy to get frustrated by an “enemy” who is already dehumanizing you and wishes to remove you from society for existing openly as you are. It can be damn hard to not sink to the same level of thinking… but it’s part of why we had trials at Nuremberg and we took the time to treat the monsters with the human dignity they deserved and would deny to others. We didn’t just hang them all by their necks because we knew they were Nazis and that was enough, they were given trials because holy fuck it matters. (There is a valid argument to be made that we didn’t have enough trials for enough Nazis) Further, it helped solidify our understanding of fascism and what leads to fascism… a lack of empathy. If we allow ourselves to completely lose our empathy for those who strike against us (especially those who are uneducated and have essentially been tricked and deceived into their positions, which are the majority) we will eventually become just as monstrous as them.
I keep empathy for people who are misled and have been intentionally confused, but the line I see gets drawn when they have been educated and still choose to be a fascist/Nazi. If they’re fully versed in it and are still advocating for it and taking actions on behalf of it, then I lose empathy.
The problem becomes making that determination. But while I draw a line for dehumanization there, I still support death penalty just for being one (as in taking actions that are clearly intended to support or promote the belief. Keeping a known and verified Nazi alive will never be beneficial in any way at all to anyone but other Nazis.
The only real benefit to dehumanization at all is having a way to tell yourself that you’re not included in a species with that possibility.
But setting a burden of evidence for and being convicted of just being a Nazi/fascist should be grounds for execution in every country.
I feel similarly.
Fully aware nazis/fascists are humans. They’re humans who have made the choice to act with malice and selfishness and to be honest that’s way worse a condemnation than to imply they are animals who are “just that way.” They could choose kindness and respect, and don’t.
Im not really disagreeing with you, but kind of sharing some perspectives that are related.
I think humanity is something spiritual that can be lost and regained. What makes us human isn’t just that we belong to a certain animal species. Dehumanizing happens to both the oppressors and the oppressed. Paulo Friere goes into detail about how the illiterate peasants he worked with, who are like oppressed for generations, need to like have their humanity restored or returned to them before they will want to start to read and improve themselves. And the process he uses to do this is his pedagogy, and its very unconventional. He’s not saying they aren’t human, but that they have had their humanity stolen from them, they’ve internalized through occupation that their lives don’t matter, even less than animals, and so behave accordingly.
In Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon details how the colonizers lose their humanity, and how they end up taking it from the colonized, leaving both groups in a dehumanizing cycle of repression that quite literally destroys peoples ability to feel remorse or have any kind of self-reflective internal mechanisms. People become quite literally haunted by death and trauma.
Friere actually is so confident however in peoples ability to change, that he believes it is the historic mission of the oppressed to restore the humanity of their oppressors.
Some of these fascists indeed are just evil, others know what they do is wrong and somehow do it anyway, but others I think have had something taken out of them by their experiences. Some may get it back in the revolutionary process of transforming society, but others will need to be defeated and face some kind of justice before they can begin their process. So how we might accomplish this without reproducing the conditions that robbed people of their humanity in the first place?
But fascism is such an incredibly insidious objective condition. Its not even like a set of beliefs, which is why rationalists struggle to define it. I often think about Anders Brevik (but perhaps I shouldn’t) who carried out a mass murder spree claiming over 75 lives, many children, and the reason he did it supposedly is he wanted to influence Norwegian courts to adopt a stricter standard of carcerial justice. He wanted to make things worse for everyone, especially himself, by carrying out an act of terrorist carnage. Idk if a person like that wants to be reformed, he wants and chooses to be a dead eyed monster. But he’s probably influenced a lot of people who can be reformed. But that’s not a job I’m capable of carrying out, since such a transformation of people won’t happen before truly revolutionary change to society.
Sounds like you’re describing sympathy, not empathy. Empathy doesn’t require compassion and it doesn’t require forgiveness.
The main thesis of this entire comment section is the vital importance of empathizing, but not necessarily sympathizing, with those who have crossed any line of social or moral depravity to better understand what led them there. Just saying “they’re monsters by some inherent flaw of character that I couldn’t possibly possess and they don’t deserve to live” is just sweeping the problem under the rug and denying its potential in every other person.
I don’t see the terms as mutually exclusive. They’re pretty closely related.
As for the last bit, that’s exactly what I was getting at. Denying the potential for that is what I said was what the only perceived point/reason of denying their humanity.
That said, forgiveness is the last thing I’m willing to offer. I do believe they don’t deserve to live. They’re the quintessential group that I wouldn’t piss on em if they were on fire.
I don’t know how to work out exactly what grounds to use for it, but it should be up there with mass murder with sentencing. I’m not even opposed to using them for medical research for things that would be unethical in any other way. The opportunity for corruption though is so high I don’t think that’s practical.
The antidote is class consciousness and solidarity. Some may think that this just replaces one enemy with another, but fascists blame the powerless, while my side blames the powerful.
I think our side should put more focus on the structures. If a system e.g. let’s Taylor Swift fly around in a private jet and even rewards her with more money from concerts and increased brand value, I can obviously still blame her (because she didn’t have to do it). But if I want things to change, I need to change the system.
But how do you change a system in which everyone capable of changing the system won’t do it because they would lose power?
The small guys are capable of changing the system by organising. We greatly outnumber them.
But the big guys have the propaganda machine on their side and the channels for distribution.
So organizing seems to be the solution in an ideal world. But we don’t live in an ideal world.
Organizing is always the solution. Ideal world or not, how could you possibly change structures as an individual. Of course it is an uphill battle, but it’s still a battle we have to fight.
I’m not saying that organizing isn’t part of the solution. I’m saying, in this world, getting organized to a degree that it would help is near impossible.
better to try and fail than not try at all
Gotta try.
France, of all countries, taught it can be done.
Never doubt the people who discovered snails make fine cuisine.
in this world, getting organized to a degree that it would help is near impossible.
Relevant user name ;)
Replace those who wouldn’t change the system, by force. Some guillotines can do the job.
Dehumanizing AI is a good thing.
You can’t dehumanize what was never human to begin with.
Which, kind of drags the entire thing from the meta level down to the object level. There were cases of dehumanization in not-that-ancient history where the dehumanizers explicitly claimed the victims are not humans. American slavery is one example. The Holocaust is another. MAGAs (still) won’t claim explicitly that the minorities they dehumanize are not human. If we stay at the meta level, wouldn’t that make them worse that than slavers and actual Nazis who can say they are not dehumanizing because their victims were never human to being with?
It shouldn’t.
We humanize lots of non-human things all the time. Pets, animals used as meat, 1 month old fetuses, fictional characters, religious figures, etc.
It is as human to humanize as it is to dehumanize because it’s in our nature to attempt to define what is and isn’t us.
When you attribute value to a being because you see humanity in it, you are making a value statement that a being has worth because it has humanity, not because it has life which is precious.
Ultimately, dehumanizing ourselves is how we can extend our compassion to other beings. When we accept that we are no more alive than pigs are, we accept that pigs, too, are living being with their own thoughts, subjective experience, and suffering.
You can absolutely dehumanize things that were never human, because what it means to be human is neither universal nor static. AI is human to people who don’t understand how LLMs work. There’s a thought experiment called Roco’s basilisk (trigger warning as it can induce anxiety) that entirely banks on people’s tendency to humanize AI. You can argue that people are dumb and just don’t understand that that’s not how AI works, but how something works often has no bearing on how it is perceived by people.
More people than ever are asking what it means to be human in the face of something that almost communicates like one. We are not dehumanizing AI because of it’s race, gender, or color, because that is not clearly defined in AI. We’re dehumanizing AI because we are asking what it means to be human outside of superficial context.
I mean… I get your point, but AI is literally not human.
A valid observation at the object level - but not at the meta level. That is - the reason why it’s okay to dehumanize AI but not okay to dehumanize <minority> is that your claim that “AI is not human” is correct while our hypothetical racist’s claim that “<minority> are not human” is incorrect - and not because of some general principle like the one in the meme.
I agree, though to “dehumanize” someone has many meanings to many different people. To many, even calling some people despicable garbage is beyond the pale.
I think the whole debate is stupid. Most agree some people deserve at least permanent incarceration; a fate worse than death depending on ones’ beliefs of an afterlife. Policing language over feefees when there are people out there gleefully murdering children is pedantic self-fellatio and completely and utterly misses the point.
Also policing language over feelings leads to the worst abusers figuring out how to play the system and getting other people policed for there fee fees.
The bullies play victim.
The Measure of a Man does a far better job of going into this than I can, but suffice to say, what package someone is wrapped in shouldn’t be the arbiter of what qualifies as a person. Does this apply to AI in its current form? I’d say no, but does it apply to whales, octopuses, pigs, possible aliens, possible AI implementations in the future? That’s a little trickier.
You can’t dehumanise things that are nowhere near human. How did you interpret this post in order to arrive at this comment??
I hate AI especially how they try to make it “humanlike” but how did this topic even come up?
Just don’t use AI gen while you’re doing it.
Please cool it with the clankphobia. ChatGpt, Claude and Gemini are as human as you or me they just live on the wire instead of inside a skull.
I agree! I’ve been trying to brainstorm how one can sort of effectively do the opposite of those dehumanizing incel memes.
We really need some viral empathy.
Take the pope’s words to JD Vance, “love doesn’t have a budget, you try to love everyone as hard as you can” (paraphrasing)
Empathy doesn’t sell.
Getting strapped sells.
I’m not concerned with profit. Just with changing hearts and minds.
What about dehumanizing billionaires and cops?
Humanity is inalienable. The most wretched, hateful human you can imagine cannot become un-human.
Think of it like calling a turd on a pedestal art. It doesn’t mean it’s good art, or even that you shouldn’t bag it up and throw it out.
Same thing.
It’s the paradox of tolerance but with violence this time.
But THE ENTIRE POINT of the paradox of tolerance is that the intolerant cannot be tolerated. That means either we understand we have to do bad things to certain other humans, or OP is straight up fucking wrong depending on what they mean by, “dehumanizing”.
You can be intolerant and violent without being dehumanizing. You can still punch a Nazi and resist fascists without dehumanizing. This whole argument has got me confused. It’s not even an argument.
Hell, you can still be a bad person without dehumanizing.
I agree. Though far, far too many people think “don’t dehumanize” means you cannot even call them despicable trash, let alone condemn them to death.
If a mean word is too far, you’ve already lost.
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance : Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies ; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most imwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force ; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
(emphasis added)
By Popper’s standards, you should not be tolerated in an open society, as you seem willing to “do bad things to certain other humans” who come under a presumably broader definition of intolerance than those who “answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols”.
Do note that this footnote is the only thing he ever wrote on the matter.
Read the rest of the fucking quote.
But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force ; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; …
How on earth do you make the leap from “suppress them if necessary” to “dehumanize”? Most imwise.
Where did I say someone wasn’t a human?
or OP is straight up fucking wrong depending on what they mean by, “dehumanizing”.
Still human. Being human has nothing to do with being a good human.
He’s talking about dehumanizing people. Not animals.
You can’t dehumanize a billionaire because billionaires aren’t human.
Or dehumanizing fascists? Though that Venn diagram is nearly circular.
You can recognise them as human and still kill them.
Or you can recognize them as human and do your best to educate and help them to be good neighbors
The morality of “Just Kill Them” belongs in pre-Enlightenment religious texts, not in modern civil society.
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 King James Version
18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die
Yeah yeah, ofc, first with the trying to help them. Obviously. But I’m imagining some Nazis at the gates type scenario beyond that.
No sense in wasting that time, effort and risk to futilely attempt to teach, when they ignored all their potential epiphanies and actively hunt, harm and kill people instead.
But why though?
Because they are human.
Even subhuman scum have human rights.
Also: “sociopath/psychopath/narcissist” etc. is not just another name for a horrible person.
Yes, this includes the group of people that you want to dehumanize as well. Humanity isn’t something you can take away, it’s an inherent aspect of a species. You can say “fascists aren’t human”, or “pigs aren’t mammals” and they are equally false statements.
Exactly. We don’t punch Nazis because they’re not people. Cats aren’t people and we don’t punch them. We punch Nazis because they’re Nazis.
deleted by creator
I’m not following you at all here. Is your point that dehumanizing isn’t othering?
Honestly looking at it now I think I accidentally responded to the wrong comment.
I hate ideas, I hate institutions, I hate organizations, and I hate systems, but I do not hate people.
I hate a handful of people. The world would do much better without them or their influence.
Perhaps but without the systems that empower them they are nothing but assholes
That doesn’t magically make them acceptable. To only target systems while the bad actors with more power than you are actively reinforcing and defending those systems is merely a futile act of insanity.
bullshit; of course there is. it is earned: fascists, billionaires, the IOF, the white house administration, stephen miller specifically… none of them are human beings the same way you and I are human beings. nazi lives don’t matter.
taps sign
You can’t use the fascism to beat the fascism without using fascistic tools and being fascistic yourself. Kinda gross yo
shooting someone who’s going to murder you is self defense, not murder. get out with that “oh but then you’d be no different” bullshit. yes you would. it is different.
this is why libs always fucking lose.
And this is why fascism will forever perpetuate. Because you’re too much of a coward to recognize the fact that humans can do terrible, terrible things. You want to live in a fantasy world where they are not part of this race because if they aren’t then you don’t have to confront the reality that they are just like you but with a different brain chemistry and different decisions.
I’m not saying you won’t be any better. I’m saying that if they’re so horrific because of the things they say and do then you are an utter coward to say the same things about them that they would about you. A complete coward who is terrified to confront reality and channels that into the same bitter hatred that they have.
I can beat them without resorting to the same playbook. You apparently seem to believe you need a Hitler to kill a Hitler, like it’s perfectly fine to do the terrible thing as long as you’re the one doing the terrible thing. Disgusting.
I said coward but in truth you’re just closer to a child. No understanding of the world, filled with deep fear and lashing out at anything they cannot understand.
Respond if you want or don’t. I’ll never see a word you say.
I think you could be a bit more generous in your interpretation of other peoples ideas. Unless this is a bit, in which case I think you got lost in it. I think you make a good point, its def a supportable argument, and I don’t really agree with pyre. The way you confront them though, call them a coward, a child, you’re like attacking their humanity, their autonomy and freedom. Granted it was partially a negative response to “this is why libs always lose” which is also not a great way to engage online.
I just want to draw attention to how quickly that devolved it was like one or two exchanges before you start infantalizing and displacing onto them. If you really think the other person is “a child” then maybe you would be inclined to educate them? Also I wonder if you would be willing to reckon with the fact that on certain issues there is a good chance that there are many many people who are much more advanced than you are, who might view your short fuse and quickness to retreat into a self defined humanist camp, as a sign of immaturity too.
I’m not saying I’m immune or better, I’ve committed similar, in fact much worse examples in like the past 3 weeks or so. So maybe I’m pointing out a speck with a beam in my own eye. But I think there is a tendency to mischaracterize other peoples positions as completely arbitrary and like the worst possible interpretation, in order to make our own arguments seem stronger. In my experience this can mean we are actually insecure in our own positions, and responding to feelings of insecurity, with expressions of indignance. So in my own case I’m trying to improve things about how to carry out discussions. There’s no guardrails other than shitty moderation (jk love you mods), so we have to set our own
To add to what @Stamets@lemmy.world said, calling them a child or a coward is a reference to their current state or behavior, not their intrinsic nature, which can absolutely be called out. If you can call out Nazis for being Nazis, you can call out cowards for being cowards. They can both choose to be otherwise.
I am done treating people with childrens gloves, I am done trying to educate, I am done trying to speak to someone calmly when they’re being an antagonistic little twerp, and I am certainly not going to keep taking the high road as that’s what you’re arguing. I’ve been taking the high road for my entire life. You know where it got me?
My mother using me as a picture prop but never actually treating me like a person, no gifts, no hugs, no love until she disowned me for being gay. My foster family using me and ignoring every word I said while pretending to pay attention. The dude I love doing the same thing to me. My best friend leaving me high and dry last week with a $700 bill to figure out last second, having to rely on the generosity of the friends I do not remotely deserve so I could keep existing because she, like everyone else, has never given a singular fuck about me or anything I say. The only times I’ve ever had anyone at least listen to me instead of dismiss it outright is when I start slapping back. Because someone might hate me but they’ll remember me and they’ll at least remember the point I made. And if they want to continue being a bitter little bitch after having some common sense slapped into them, then fine. They weren’t worth the time in the first place to bother with. But anyone else with half a brain cell will just go “Okay well Stamets is a dick but he’s not wrong.” And fuck it. I am a dick. I am bitter and angry and frustrated and furious and lonely and tired and I do not have any patience left anymore, any hope left anymore or any willpower to not tell someone they’re being an idiot when they’re being an idiot. Am I going to die alone for it? Sure but I knew that anyway so who gives a shit.
So if you want to take the high road, fine. It’s a great view, don’t get me wrong but the only people who set up shop there are either people who believe themselves to be above it all and therefore beyond naive, like I was, or people who’ve paid for their spot and can ignore everything below them because they own a helicopter. No business is done. It’s just residential.
And because tone via text is hard to elaborate, the message should be read with the tone of emotional and physical exhaustion but not malice, rage or anything towards you personally.
Very fair! Earlier this year I got involved with a social movement that was incredibly exhausting. And yeah I was trying to do outreach, education, all that good shit. The people who really needed to be gotten through to just would not listen to anybody about anything. I was only ever able to organize some folx who the movement rejected, or who rejected that movement. And even then, I think when those ppl needed me I didn’t have the energy to help because I was so exhausted by peoples stubborn ignorance.
Anyway, really sorry to hear about your struggles. I’ve known people who got kicked out of their parents for being who they are, and having to fend for themselves. It takes a huge toll. But it sounds like you’ve got a really great support system too.
In any case, sorry if I came off lecture-y. Thanks for sharing your insights
No one’s saying defense isn’t ever necessary. Not dehumanizing our enemies doesn’t mean we have to sit down and sing kumbayah with them. It means that we can’t ever lose sight of the fact that even the worst evils still come from humanity.
If you fail to recognize that fascists are human, if you perceive them as nothing more than cartoon villains, then you will fail to recognize when humans become fascists. Your coworker, your uncle, your friends, you’ll fail to see the signs in front of you. Or worse, you’ll fail to see it in yourself when you start using their own tools and tell yourself it’s alright when you do it.
again you’re conflating why they dehumanize and why i do. they do it because of racism and bigotry, when they say not human they literally mean not the same species. when i say it it’s because I’ve seen them doing inhuman deeds gleefully. it does not mean they are a different species, it means they don’t deserve the dignity and respect than humans do. again “if you do it you’re no different” is bullshit.
Alright, and now you’ve dehumanized them. Now what? How do you solve the problem that is Nazis? Billionaires? Landlords? Omnivores? Breeders? You agree some or all of these aren’t really human, right? So what’s off the table for you with respect to your inhuman group of choice? What’s the limit for others who, like you, think one or all of these groups are inhuman? And what do you think the end point is? Remember, genocide was the Final Solution, not the First Solution.
It’s only self-defense if the threat is legitimate and not already neutralized. Even if a murderer has expressed their intent to escape and kill again, if they are already captured and constrained executing them is wrong.
Some deaths in the process of neutralizing threats may be unavoidable and just. That could include resistance or revolution. But, no, you don’t get to justly kill anyone based on their mere willingness to kill you.
then please accept my condolences for the unjust, cruel murder of the poor UnitedHealth CEO, i really hope the same won’t happen to every IOF soldier who’s very humanely playing a game of shooting children in the genitals for fun today, because shooting off limbs day was yesterday.
I certainly think it is possible to argue neither of those threats were/are neutralized. But that may say more about me than I really want to impose on anyone else.
“No War But Class War” ?
then i don’t know what you’re arguing here, which threat i mentioned was neutralized?
My argument is that self-defense is more narrow than your definition. At the point in the conversation when we were exchanging definitions of that term, no specific acts had been mentioned in the thread/post.
The threat of that particular CEO has now been neutralized. It was arguably legitimate at the time he was shot, tho.
There’s nothing in the middle of the road except a yellow line and road kill. Fascism has a way of forcing people into one of three camps, perpetrators, saviors, and victims. Bystanders will eventually be pulled into one of those groups and you’ll have to choose to join the perpetrators, or the savior, or be forced to be a victim. There is no center anymore, the only good fascist is a dead fascist.
I agree. Their actions dehumanize them. I do not. Their actions render them unworthy of the basic kindnesses given to humans.
You are correct. This comment section is full of the worst moral relativist, shitty- and this is a phrase I never thought I’d use unironically- virtue signaling.
Agreed.
Nazis. I don’t think there’s a way around that one. The only human nazi is a dead nazi.
Edit: I think it’s fair to dehumanize someone who killed a bunch of people before they die, as long as it’s confirmed. The Nazis enjoyed their paperwork.
Nazis are awful and horrifying, not because they’re not human, but because they are.
This was the horrifying thing about the nerenberg trials, not that the Nazis were somehow inhuman shape changers who condemned millions to slavery, torture and death, but the fact that they were regular hamuman beings with regular families, thoughts and desires who condemned millions to slavery torture and death.
It is known as “the banality of evil”, the point of the concept isn’t to excuse the Nazis but to make people aware that ordinary people in the “right” environment can absolutely become evil.
If you believe Nazis aren’t people you are avoiding the work of ensuring you don’t act like them, more critically you are avoiding the work of ensuring your friends and family and other “people” you know aren’t acting like them. I don’t mean hats with skulls on them and building has chambers, but I mean the intentional “othering” of people, in the Nazis time Jews, homosexuals, gypsies etc. today probably some other groups. The root of the Nazis evil is that they considered these people sub human and therefore any actions taken against them, no matter how vicious were morally correct so long as they benefitted “real people”.
A similar root exists behind many of the worst institutional evils in the world today, e.g. the active genocides in Sudan and Palestine.
This is why the nerenberg trials were and are important.
“It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.”
-pratchett, once again
Speaking of Pratchett; I recently re-read the last continent and I was amazed at how there was a mention of drag queens (probably alluding to Priscilla; Queen of the Desert?) but it was handled very tastefully, no obvious/lazy jokes.
This struck me since most media from 20 years back hasn’t aged nearly so gracefully.
Between that and your comment I’m starting to realise that Terry Pratchett was probably a very wise very kind man who happened to write funny books. Which makes me so happy because the bromeliad trilogy were the first books that really got me into reading as a child.
I should re-read the discord series 🙂
yeah he really is incredible, you would think across forty one books (and that’s just the ones from discworld) in the time that he came from there would be at least a couple bad takes but he never misses.
i started mort as my first from him and got halfway through it but misplaced it :(
think I’m gonna get it on my kindle i really love his personification of death as a kind being who loves cats and desperately wants to understand humans haha
I think most people take away the wrong lesson, though. Yes, they can be anyone, yes we shouldn’t willy nilly go around labeling people as sub-human.
… but when does, “some uninformed fool” become an “enemy combatant”? Far too many people think doing a “bad” thing for ANY reason is bad over humanization reasons. Yes, they’re humans, but sometimes humans deserve to die.
No one really deserves to die. Sometimes that’s the only option to stop them from harming others, or we have no capability to protect society from them in a reasonable manner. The former is usually in situations that qualify as self defense or the defense of others, the latter is more often a financial issue more dependent on the level of civilization and I would say doesn’t apply to most of the world at this point in time.
There is never a reasonable need to kill another person unless that is the only option to stop them from causing harm to others. Anything else is just lazy and/or inhumane thinking.
