20 Sep Dehumanization for Fun and Profit
Over the last decade or so, I have written a great deal about dehumanization and its connection to bureaucratization and the administrative state. Most of the time, I have focused specifically on what is known as “mechanistic” dehumanization, the process whereby groups of people – in this case, bureaucrats – are denied their humanity and are likened to machines, to automatons. In the Weberian model of bureaucracy and often in reality as well, bureaucrats are denied normal human characteristics in a way that makes them seem more efficient, more calculating, less emotional than normal humans.
Among other things, mechanistic dehumanization is the foundation for the argument behind the assessment of Adolf Eichmann that Hannah Arendt gave in her famous/infamous book Eichmann in Jerusalem:
The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together . . . .
Of course it is important to the political and social sciences that the essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them.
Today, by contrast, I want to talk a little about the more common form of dehumanization, what is known as “animalistic” dehumanization.
Animalistic dehumanization is generally understood as and is classically applied to the process of scapegoating, which is the opposite of anthropomorphism. In the latter, less than human objects (animal, plants, inanimate bodies) are given human characteristics. In the former, people – those in the “out-group” – are stripped of those characteristics that make them human; they are denigrated to the point where they are perceived to be “animals” or other lesser creatures and are therefore “not human” and not deserving of basic human rights. The members of the out-group are alleged to lack higher-level intelligence, appropriate emotions, the capacity for moral behavior, etc. The Jews, for example, were considered not men, but monsters, sub-human creatures lacking souls, who killed Christians, who abducted Christian children and used their blood to make bread (the very definition of “blood libel.”) Captured Africans were considered to be less than human, to be unable to think on a human level, and thus were little more than mere “chattel,” suitable for nothing other than servitude. In this way, slavery, anti-Semitism, common discrimination, and a whole host of other evils have been rationalized and justified. If the “victim” is not human, after all, then how can he possibly be a victim?
In the contemporary political world, we see examples all the time of animalistic dehumanization that is every bit as denigrating as the traditional, scapegoating version but that is intended to achieve almost precisely the opposite political end. This form of dehumanization is meant to reinforce an ideological supposition more than to debase a specific subpopulation. Indeed, it is most often the case here that the subpopulation is stripped of its humanity and its dignity to denigrate the ideas supported by an opposing ideology. Or to put it more simply: a subpopulation is dehumanized specifically to make a political opponent or a dissenting ideology look foolish or prejudiced.
Consider, for example, the following story out of Chicago this week:
Since 2022, nearly 50,000 migrants have been bused to Chicago from the Texas border. While not all of these new arrivals have opted to stay in Chicago, many who have chosen to make the city their new home have been resettled in predominantly Black neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. Now, WGN News can exclusively report that several Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teachers who work in these communities say they were told by school administrators to give migrant students passing grades last school year.
The teachers we spoke with work in CPS elementary schools and say they spoke no Spanish, while their migrant students spoke no English, making communication virtually impossible. They also added that because their schools were located in predominantly Black neighborhoods, they offered no English as a Second Language (ESL) support. Despite this, they say they were instructed by school administrators to give their migrant students a 70 percent in every subject and pass them on to the next grade.
Teachers say this was the case even if their migrant students displayed severe academic deficiencies.
In this case, the immigrant children were not scapegoated but were used as pawns. But they were still dehumanized. They were purposefully denied the consideration that would be given to other children and should be given to all children in order to make a political point: Immigration is great; and those who say otherwise are xenophobic racists who are backward, Trump-supporting know-nothings. These immigrant children were denied human characteristics and basic human dignity so that Chicago’s educational establishment could claim ideological superiority and “demonstrate” its opposition to the “dangerously” bigoted “nativist” ideology. By dehumanizing immigrant children, the education bureaucrats believed they could show themselves to be both morally and professionally superior to those whom they detest politically.
The irony here, of course, is that the real “danger” in this type of dehumanization is that it will, inarguably, create a large and permanently disadvantaged underclass. This underclass will, almost certainly, be denied participation in the American dream, will suffer generational poverty, and will eventually lend considerable credence to the arguments made by those who favor restricting immigration and ending illegal immigration. In ten or twenty years, when the children whom the education establishment is dehumanizing today are adults, they will be poorer than the rest of the population, far more dependent on government services, and far more prone to criminal activity. This will bolster the case against illegal immigration while being exclusively the result of politically motivated decisions by the educational establishment.
This is not, of course, the only example of this reverse-animalistic dehumanization in American politics. I would argue, in fact, that it happens all the time and that it is always the process by which the ideology that professes to care most about racial and sexual minorities and their specific social concerns dehumanizes them in an effort to make a political point. Math, for example, is white supremacism. Healthy body weights are fatphobic and racially insensitive. Heck, modern medicine as a whole is mere “white science.”
The damage being done to society as a whole by this type of dehumanizing nonsense is problem enough. The fact that the overwhelming burden of it continues to fall on minority groups makes it infinitely more destructive. Rather than end racism and racial stereotypes, reverse animalistic dehumanization perpetuates them and ensures that they will persist for generations to come.
