reminder rule

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.
- 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.

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.
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.

Also: "sociopath/psychopath/narcissist" etc. is not just another name for a horrible person.

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.
I hate AI especially how they try to make it "humanlike" but how did this topic even come up?
You can't dehumanise things that are nowhere near human. How did you interpret this post in order to arrive at this comment??
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 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'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.
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.

Dehumanization of groups from a position of power is bad.

Dehumanization of bad powerful individuals to make it emotionally easier to take them down may be necessary.

I don't believe in evil, but I do believe in consequences.

Yeah but here's the thing:
A good amount of people use the race of a wrongdoer to justify the dehumination and collective guilt of everyone said group. Look at how people justify the murder of Jews by pointing to Netanyahu. Look at how Islamic Terrorists justified the murder of Westerners by pointing to the crimes of America. Look at how many people justify the murder of Muslims by pointing to 9/11 or Rotherham. Look at how Terfs justify the dehumanization and extermination of transgender people, or even gender variants in general, by pointing to cases involving transgender people.
It does not prevent the collectivisation of crimes to justify the dehumanization of groups and people. It is still a slippery slope that leads to fascism.
- A good amount of people use the race of a wrongdoer to justify the dehumination and collective guilt of everyone said group.
  Its a good thing I'm not advocating for that.
  Look at how people justify the murder of Jews by pointing to Netanyahu. Look at how Islamic Terrorists justified the murder of Westerners by pointing to the crimes of America. Look at how many people justify the murder of Muslims by pointing to 9/11 or Rotherham. Look at how Terfs justify the dehumanization and extermination of transgender people, or even gender variants in general, by pointing to cases involving transgender people.
  These are all in-group out-group dynamics. They have nothing to do with the fact that people point at specific bad powerful individuals. In fact its often the other way around, people will often hate/love a leader more depending on whether they're perceived to be in any specific group.
  It does not prevent the collectivisation of crimes to justify the dehumanization of groups and people. It is still a slippery slope that leads to fascism.
  I am specifically advocating only to make it easier to pull the trigger on powerful people doing massive harm. More harm comes from letting a powerful person live if they're active in doing harm. Anything that makes it easier to take down harmful powerful people in aggregate results in a net good.
  Luigi Mangione is innocent of murder. The dead CEO is guilty of mass murder and intended to continue. The new CEO taking his place is also likely someone that should be luigi'd, as are the current stockholders.
Let me explain it this way:
I burnt out at work and lost my job a little while back, I moved in with my mother on south padre island.
This island is only half a mile wide but the rent on the ocean side is a little bit more than rent on the bayside.
As a joke I’ve decided that makes me better than bayside people. I’ve decided people who live on the other side of the one road are poorly educated troglodytes and they smell like the gross bay over there.
Obviously it’s a joke but it illustrates how arbitrary dehumanizing can be.
I do understand you’re point that it can make it easier for some people to do what needs to be done… but I’d argue if you need to dehumanize then you shouldn’t be doing part of the job. It’s bad for your mental health.
I don’t need to dehumanize bad humans to fight them. If you do then perhaps the physical fight isn’t the best place for you. There’s plenty of logistic works and none physical roles you can slide into. Leave the violence to people who can say “look, you’re human but you’re in the way of improving this world.… I have to get you out of the way now…” best to leave that job to people who don’t have to mentally justify it with “it’s only fine because they weren’t really people” no… they were people but what needed to be done still needs to be done.
I don't agree. Dehumanizing even one evil individual takes away from the severity of their bad deeds.
- OK, but I care about material consequence. Not the emotional catharsis of moral judgement.

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 hog
- Miauuuuuu :3
- Woof c:
right? i've got a footstool who would disagree with this
- (⁠ ͡⁠°⁠ ͜⁠ʖ⁠ ͡⁠°⁠)
was going to say :3

Dehumanization, tribalism, racism, religious intolerance.

Name a more iconic, perfidious quartet.

What's wrong with religious intolerance? Of someome can choose religion, I can mock them
- If they're not harming anyone, leave them the fuck alone. You're still discriminating even if it's their choice.

human monsters are still human. if you want to defeat human evil you need to acknowledge and address it for what it is, not disavow it. you won't "no true scotsman" your way to defeating fascism.

So many times I have said this to be met with "hurr durr but you can't empathize or let fascists off easy" by people just repeatedly missing the point

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?

Billionaires are subhuman and don't deserve to exist.

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.

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".
Still human. Being human has nothing to do with being a good human.
Or dehumanizing fascists? Though that Venn diagram is nearly circular.
- You can recognise them as human and still kill them.
- Even subhuman scum have human rights.
He's talking about dehumanizing people. Not animals.
You can't dehumanize a billionaire because billionaires aren't human.

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.

All dehumanizers are sub-literate neaderthals

sub-literate neaderthals
- HugeNerd

They are dehumanizing people right now, as we speak. It has to stop. One way or another.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people. -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

People speak out. It's not silence but silent. The zone is flooded to drown those voices. The tragedy is that people don't know whom they can trust.

Meanwhile, C level executives at companies that fund fascists and genocide:

Mountainhead (2025)

Personally I think more murder would solve a lot of our problems but you do you.

Just saying imagine how much better the world would be if the guy who shot Trump didnt miss

As much as I would like to believe that, I doubt it though. Trump isn't the mastermind behind these plans, he is merely a puppet. Puppets are easily replaceable.
- Calling Trump just a puppet is an overreach. He personally had boosting effect on the entire world right wing parties with his rethoric and charisma. With the personality cult working as the primary motivator for the right wing voters, I doubt that fascists could prop up anyone nearly as effective as Trump for that role. He IS sort of like their messiah that comes once in a century.
  I also toy with the thought that if there was any kind of propaganda ruling class would like you to believe and would try hard to influence you into believing, it would be something along the lines of the sentiment that violently removing them would be for some reason ineffectual. As opposed to playing the game THEY designed, mantain and oversee and trying to vote them out or use some sort of peaceful process to limit their power. That's also contrasted by their insistance that they deserve to rule because they are in some way special, or whatever elitist argument people believing in meritocracy use. I do get the sentiment that removing figureheads might not do anything, as something that is somehow well known and estabilished, but, I mean, french royality sure did eat that cake. That train of thought might be something we've been implanted with, since logic doesn't necessarily follow.
- That is why you keep killing

Notable exception: "Not men. Fascists."

Don't forget land lords
- I aint no tankie but I was referencing this utterly cold quote from Soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko.

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.
- I'm not following you at all here. Is your point that dehumanizing isn't othering?

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

“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”

-terry pratchett

Fascists might be human people, but I've lost faith in human people. I kinda don't even want to keep being one myself.

Check out post-humanism. There's no need to self-identify as "human". Just detach from the whole mess and identify as animal.
- I identify as whatever the hell the SCP Foundation turned into in the SCP-5000 scenario

What does it mean to you, to dehumanize someone? What is materially different about feeding an evil human who has done incalculable damage to the world into a meat grinder, vs doing so with the same person but this time, you feel bad about it because they were a human too?

I agree, we shouldn't label groups of people as good or bad if they have no mechanism to move between groups. But if you think for a second that I will regard fascists as anything more than the ravenous, hate filled maggots they are, you are mistaken. They chose to give up their humanity and they could just as easily choose to regain it. Until then, they are not human to mem

Dehumanization is denying someone human rights.
Fascists can and should be denied political power, not human rights.
You and I might disagree about the specifics of human rights, but I doubt we disagree that they exist.
- Dehumanization is can include denying someone human rights.
  Good point apart from this nitpick.

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
- 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.

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.
- 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.
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.
I agree. Their actions dehumanize them. I do not. Their actions render them unworthy of the basic kindnesses given to humans.
Agreed.

Not even for people who stand on the left side of the escalator?

Nah fuck that. Zionists have forfeit their humanity. They can burn to death for all I care.

How long until you decide Palestinians have forfeit their humanity?
- Not even a barely comparable situation.
- Not the OP you replied to, but I would say approximately 1 second after genocide. Anyone who kills people based on physical attributes like skin color, hair type, facial structure, what languages they speak, what they worship, who they love, or where they were born has forsaken humanity.

Americans don't count as people.

🤣🤣🤣🤣😘

Way too much moral relativism in here for my liking.

Morality is relative.
A Fox hunts a Rabbit.

Fox catches Rabbit & eats him. This is good for Fox, evil for Rabbit. Fox loses Rabbit & starves to death. This is evil for Fox, good for Rabbit.
- Humans are not strictly governed by instinct and do not actually have to live by eating other sentients.
  Our morality need not be a zero-sum game..