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Does Dehumanization Cause Violence or Follow It?

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 5, 2024

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This video discusses complex relationships among dehumanization, propaganda, and violence, particularly in contexts like the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. The author presents three common assumptions about the link between dehumanization and violence:

1. **Propaganda leads to dehumanization, motivating violence.** Historical examples highlight how propaganda characterized certain groups as vermin, leading people to see their neighbors, whom they previously knew and cared for, as threats. The author challenges this notion, arguing that many were not influenced by propaganda, especially in Rwanda where literacy and access to media were low.

2. **Long-term cultural perceptions play a role in dehumanization.** Research indicated that societal views on certain groups are ingrained and may predispose individuals to act violently, but the author counters this by showing how interpersonal relationships complicate this view. Many perpetrators remembered the humanity of their victims, indicating that early violence was a deeply traumatic decision rather than a product of dehumanization.

3. **Dehumanization might not matter at all.** The author argues that some violence occurs when subordinate groups gain power, despite the perpetrators recognizing them as human threats. This video implies that violence can arise from societal dynamics rather than an inherent dehumanization process.

The analysis reveals that rather than being a primary cause of violence, dehumanization is a process that can facilitate continued violence over time, rendering it mundane. The author emphasizes the need to understand the nuances of perpetrators’ motivations and the significance of personal relationships in shaping their actions.

Furthermore, the text contrasts hatred with dehumanization, noting that hatred motivates action, whereas dehumanization often leads to routine or habit. The author concludes that recognizing these differences is crucial for meaningful intervention and understanding societal violence.

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Here are five key points from the video discussing the relationship between dehumanization, propaganda, and violence, particularly in relation to the Rwandan genocide:

1. **Complex Role of Dehumanization**: The video argues that while dehumanization is often linked with propaganda, this relationship is more nuanced. Dehumanization may facilitate continued violence but does not necessarily motivate individuals to engage in it initially. People may start killing not because they see their victims as subhuman, but rather due to other factors such as perceived threats to their dominance or social order.

2. **Cultural and Social Convideo**: The author emphasizes that the convideo in which violence occurs is crucial. In Rwanda, many perpetrators had intricate relationships with their victims, often intermarrying and living side by side. The common belief that propaganda was the primary motivator for violence is challenged by evidence showing that many people did not have access to such media or that it surfaced after the violence had already begun.

3. **Emotional Response to Violence**: Early participants in violent acts often expressed horror and regret afterward. This suggests that their perception of victims was not entirely dehumanized at the outset. As killing became routine, the initial emotional responses diminished over time, indicating a complex relationship between emotional desensitization and continued violence.

4. **Psychological and Routinization Processes**: The video discusses how repeated exposure to violence can render it mundane for perpetrators. The normalization of violent acts leads to desensitization, making future acts of killing feel less meaningful and morally significant. This relates to broader research on human habits and emotional adjustments to new practices.

5. **Implications for Understanding and Intervention**: The implications of these findings are significant. Recognizing that dehumanization is not a prerequisite for violence can inform interventions against hate rhetoric and propaganda. It suggests that such language can be countered effectively, and that violence can arise from various sources, emphasizing the need for proactive measures in social and political discourse to prevent escalation into mass violence.

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Here are some key quotes extracted from the video, reflecting its main ideas and themes:

1. **Relationship Between Dehumanization and Violence**:
- "there's a really close relationship between dehumanization and propaganda... people often look to the history of the Holocaust and they'll see how the Nazis characterize Jews as vermin.”

2. **Cultural Perceptions Over Propaganda**:
- "another way to think about them is less with the emphasis on propaganda and more sort of this long-term cultural perceptions of people, intergroup relations whereby people might be more likely to see different minority populations typically, as more closer to less human than more human."

3. **Different Motivations for Participation in Violence**:
- "the third argument is that dehumanization actually doesn't matter at all, and that people tend to wanna participate in violence, when they see a group that is a minority group, a subordinate group, sort of increasing in power, and they wanna participate in violence to reassert their dominance."

4. **Complex Decision-Making Among Perpetrators**:
- "the first few times people participated in genocide, they were horrified by their actions. They threw up, they ran away. They said, I'm never gonna do that again.”

5. **Trauma and Memory**:
- "they remembered all these details with remarkable clarity... which as psychologists who study trauma will tell you, is really an indication that this was a traumatic event for them."

6. **Routinization of Violence**:
- "the more I killed, the more I got used to it. The details fell away... It stopped meaning anything to me."

7. **Dehumanization as a Facilitative Process**:
- "In my argument, I suggest that it's a facilitative process that allows violence to continue, but it's not what pulls people into violence in the first place."

8. **The Role of Moral Sociology**:
- "morality isn't just about evaluating actions, but it's evaluating people."

9. **Human Adjustment to Killing**:
- "dehumanization renders violence mundane, and that's what makes it easy to do."

10. **Implications of Dehumanization and Violence**:
- "The good thing is anytime we hear it, we can intervene... genocide is not inevitable. Dehumanization doesn't cause it."

These quotes encapsulate the complex interplay between dehumanization, propaganda, personal and cultural relations, and violence, as discussed in the video.

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I think there's a couple of different

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ways to think about it.

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Um, the first is sort of the most common assumption,

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which is that there's a really close relationship

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between dehumanization and propaganda.

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Um, so people often look to the history of the Holocaust

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and they'll see how the Nazis characterize Jews as vermin.

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Um, they'll look to the Randan genocide.

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They'll see that Tootsie were characterize as cockroaches.

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And they'll say, or they'll argue,

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and they'll assume that there's a direct link

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between this dehumanizing propaganda put forth

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by government extremists

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or media extremists work in favor of the government

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and people's perceptions of their neighbors,

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that people they've long lived beside, known,

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had close relationships with.

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They'll listen to the radio,

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they'll hear these characterizations of them,

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and they'll become convinced that it's true

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and that will motivate them to wanna kill them.

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So I may have a Tootsy brother-in-law,

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but the radio keeps saying,

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tootsy are cockroaches, tootsy are cockroaches.

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And suddenly I start to see my brother-in-law that way.

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And it's one other step before I find myself killing him.

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Um, so that's like really, if you distill it down,

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what those kinds of arguments are claiming,

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I challenge them in my article.

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But another way to think about them is less

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with the emphasis on propaganda

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and more sort of this long-term cultural perceptions

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of people, intergroup relations

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whereby people might be more likely

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to see different minority populations typically, as

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more closer to less human than more human.

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So there's sort of like this ascent of human scale

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that people often use in this kind of research.

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And then they'll take that

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and they'll do a behavioral analog test,

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whether it's proclivity to rape, proclivity to kill,

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speed with which someone presses a button on a computer test

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to see whether or not they'll kill them.

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They find that there's a correlation between certain modes

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of perception that are closer to dehumanization

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and willingness to enact harm.

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Um, and the third argument is

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that dehumanization actually doesn't matter at all,

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and that people tend to wanna participate in violence,

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when they see a group that is a minority group,

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a subordinate group, sort of increasing in power,

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increasing in authority,

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and they wanna participate in violence

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to reassert their dominance, to remind victims

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of their rightful place in the social order.

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So they actually perceive them as humans,

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but as threatening humans.

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And so they wanna push them back down.

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Um, those are three common assumptions about how the link

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between dehumanization and violence works.

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And I challenge each of those three in my research,

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looking very specifically at Rwandans

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who participated in the genocide.

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Um, and I break it down into different time periods to try

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and understand very closely how their perceptions

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of the people that they were killing changed over time.

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Um, so I actually start before the genocide.

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I look at one particular community

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because to me it helps to sort of narrow the focus.

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'cause different communities have different histories.

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The one that I looked at in particular wasn't all

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that different from most of Rwanda,

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which is a majority rural country.

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Um, and as anyone who's been to Rwanda will tell you,

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even when I was last there, which I guess now is, you know,

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2009, about over a decade ago, we is

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even now, there's still not radio

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access throughout the whole country.

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Um, before the genocide, the majority

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of the country wasn't literate.

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So they weren't reading some of the dehumanizing propaganda

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that was being put forth in newspapers.

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Um, they weren't listening to the radio.

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They didn't have radio access.

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But not only that, scholars have studied the timing

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of the propaganda that is often said

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to have caused the genocide,

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whether it's calling Tootsie Cockroaches,

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or calling for people to organize

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and participate violence against them.

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And a lot of that, not only did it re not reach the majority

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of the country, but it actually aired

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after the killing had begun.

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So that's an important thing to keep in mind,

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is people weren't hearing it

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and they weren't receiving it when it's commonly assumed

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that they did, if they did.

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Um, but then when you break it down

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and you look in these individual communities

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where you have high rates of intermarriage, long histories

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of people living side by side with each other, you know,

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it was a densely populated country.

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Um, the whole country is the size

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of Maryland and the United States.

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Um, before the genocide, people would say, you know,

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I had heard about these characterizations of, you know, Hutu

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and Tootsie as us being enemies,

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or that there were problems between us in the past.

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But I didn't really feel that way among my friends.

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It wasn't really relevant to me.

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Um, that was more elite stuff, elite politics.

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It wasn't relevant to my personal life.

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Um, and this is a very common thing.

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Um, and again, if you consider high rates of intermarriage,

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people loved each other.

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People had children with each other, people had family.

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I actually think it's stripping the very real validity

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of those relationships to dismiss them

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and say that radio just changed their minds.

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Um, but then also what I find is

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that the first few times people participated in genocide,

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they were horrified by their actions.

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They threw up, they ran away.

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They said, I'm never gonna do that again.

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They made really difficult decisions.

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I actually, have a different article

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about this decision making process that I published in 2015,

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where sometimes they would say, look, I,

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I will kill these people if you protect my brother-in-law.

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I'll kill this person if you protect my brother-in-law,

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or my wife or I will kill this day, but not kill that day.

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So people early on were making really complicated choices

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about who to kill and who to save,

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which is another indication that they didn't see all Tootsie

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as this dehumanized, subhuman, monolithic mass,

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totally devoid of meaning.

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They were still distinguishing,

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which means they were still seeing them as people.

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Um, the other thing is not only did they throw up

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or feel horrible the first few times

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that they killed someone, but also they

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remembered it vividly years later.

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So they would say, the first time I

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killed someone, it was a mama.

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It was a baby. It was two children in a corner.

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It was a man in the marketplace.

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So they remember all these details with remarkable clarity,

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which as psychologists who study trauma will tell you,

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is really an indication that this was a traumatic event

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for them, that it was meaningful for them

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because it stuck with them.

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Um, but the more they killed, the more they got used to it.

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And then they totally stopped remembering the details.

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They'll say that, they'll say,

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the more I killed, the more I got used to it.

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The details fell away. You know, it got murky in my mind.

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Um, it stopped meaning anything to me.

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I would just wake up, I'd go, I'd kill.

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I didn't even pay attention to

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how many people I was killing.

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And then I'd go home and the the direct

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quotes really show this.

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Um, so to me, breaking down the timing

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is really crucial for showing when dehumanization matters

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and how it matters.

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And in my argument, I suggest

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that it's a facilitative process that allows violence

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to continue, but it's not

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what pulls people into violence in the first place.

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If anything, dehumanization is demobilizing

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'cause it strips things of meaning and content.

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It's, it's a product of routinization.

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Being in Rwanda is incredibly complex situation.

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Um, it's a fairly authoritarian government.

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And so when I was there, I was

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traveling around the country.

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I was interviewing people who participated in the genocide,

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people who were incarcerated.

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So it was a very difficult,

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for me, a very difficult dynamic.

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I write about this at length in the appendix to the paper,

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which I'd recommend anyone read, for people working with

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what we would call sort of sensitive populations.

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Um, and one of the things that sort of stood out

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to me most is when I was talking to people, they,

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they would describe this, they would describe

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how they made these difficult choices.

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And that went really against my assumptions about

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how dehumanization matters for violence.

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Because they would tell me, you know, I,

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I admit I killed someone.

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I admit I killed many people.

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Um, but I made, you know, on Monday I killed two people.

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On Wednesday, I saved someone on Thursday, I killed again.

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Friday, Saturday, Sunday I killed some more.

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The next day I refused, and then I did it again.

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And that, those interviews, those conversations

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to me really challenged a lot of what I assumed

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caused genocide, which was sort

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of these deep seated hatreds, or dehumanization.

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Hatred and dehumanization are not the same thing.

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I talk about that in the paper as well.

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Um, and so

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because of that, I got really interested in like,

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what's really going on here?

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Um, and trying to pinpoint really,

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like looking at these interviews, I did some myself

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and then I also drew from a lot of secondary sources.

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So interviews that other people had done

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with Rwandan at different time periods, also interviews

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with survivors, interviews with rescuers.

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And they all were saying the same thing,

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but I found that it was getting ignored in the overwhelming

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focus on why do people join?

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Because there's so much research on why perpetrators kill.

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Um, but when people ask why do perpetrators kill, they tend

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to look at why do they join in killing, as opposed to

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how do they feel about killing?

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And how do those feelings change over time?

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Because why people kill at time A

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might be very different than why people kill at time

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B and time C.

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And that's what I found,

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and that's what I got really interested in,

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is looking at the beginning, at the middle

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as genocide progressed and tracking those changes.

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So instead of joining and killing

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and looking at that, can you tell us about

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how cultural moral sociology concepts helped, helped,

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sort of explain that?

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And can you also speak to that h

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and dehumanization the difference?

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Yeah, absolutely. So really quickly, you know,

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there's a lot of really fascinating research on this,

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especially in neuroscience, neuropsychology,

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cognitive psychology at the moment, on the difference

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between hatred and dehumanization and hatred is motivating.

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You know, hatred is a strong feeling.

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It pushes people into action most often.

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Um, and people who do research, you know, do FMRI scans,

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look at people who hate other groups.

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They'll see certain parts of the brain light up

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because it is an active feeling.

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Um, and like I said, a motivating feeling,

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whereas dehumanization,

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your brain's not lighting up anymore.

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It's, like I said, it's routinized, it's habit, it's a mode

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of perception, just like anything else that is sort of

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neutral in a sense, neutral.

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Because if you're looking at a dehumanized person,

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it's the same as if you're looking at a book.

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It's the same as if you're looking at a piece of paper

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as an, this is what we say.

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It's like you're looking at an object, right?

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There's objectifying dehumanization

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and there's animalistic dehumanization,

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but you don't, your brain isn't working

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as if you're looking at a human anymore.

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Whereas when you're looking at a human,

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whether it's someone you love

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or someone you hate, you have a feeling about them.

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So I connect those, distinctions to research

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and sociology of culture research

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and the sociology of morality.

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There's a lot of really, really cool work in the sociology

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of culture on what I sort of characterize as

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how you become a person

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and new, how people take on new habits,

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or new ways of being.

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So whether it's learning to become a chef,

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whether it's learning to become a martial arts fighter,

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whether it is learning to play an instrument,

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or whether it's converting to a new religion,

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overwhelmingly in research shows that

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as you take on these new practices,

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at first it's really, really difficult.

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I mean, we can all think of, you know,

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becoming a yoga practitioner,

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things we've adopted in our adult lives, you know,

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secondary socialization,

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I guess is another way to think of it.

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Um, and how hard it is at first to get used to it.

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But then you do get used to it,

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and then it becomes like second nature.

285
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You know, you go, you're playing basketball, it's easy.

286
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You're not thinking every single move, how do I dribble?

287
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How do I pass, et cetera.

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Um, you know, when you're a chef, you're not thinking,

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how do I cut so that I don't cut my finger?

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You just end up doing it really fast,

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which is not something I still can do.

292
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Like I, you know, I'm not a chef.

293
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Um, so every time I cut an onion,

294
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I'm worried about cutting my fingers off.

295
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Um, so that's sort of about like this bodily adjustment.

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Then there's research on sort of emotional adjustment,

297
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which is that you also get used to it emotionally.

298
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Um, you know, you stop being nervous every time you stop,

299
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feeling that emotional rush every time you do it.

300
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Same when you convert to a new religion, there's a lot

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of fascinating researcher,

302
00:12:38.365 --> 00:12:40.725
and you stop feeling this sort of connection to the sacred

303
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and it becomes mundane

304
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and you're just going through the routine of new prayer,

305
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new practices, new fastings and so on.

306
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So sociology of cultural argue that there's sort

307
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of this bodily adjustment that you get used to.

308
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There's this emotional adjustment that you get used to.

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And then I tie that into research on morality, which shows

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that, moral things are things we have feelings about.

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If you, I me think the best way to put this, if you think

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of someone stealing, you might feel really upset about it

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because to you, stealing is wrong.

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If you see a car crash, you might feel upset about it

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because that's a bad thing that happened.

316
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We have strong feelings about things

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that fall into the realm of our morals and our values.

318
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Um, I think of another example.

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Well, actually there are all sorts of examples of things

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that, you know, are ostensibly bad,

321
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or ostensibly good too.

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Like when a good thing happens to someone you love,

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you feel really excited about it

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because you value that thing.

325
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But then what I add is you also value that person.

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So morality isn't just about evaluating actions,

327
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but it's evaluating people.

328
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Um, that's sort of a, a big piece of this article

329
00:13:52.225 --> 00:13:54.845
and sort of my broader project at the moment.

330
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Um, and that how we judge people

331
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and how we judge actions intersect.

332
00:14:00.625 --> 00:14:03.965
So whether or not it's right

333
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or wrong to steal depends on who is doing the stealing.

334
00:14:08.185 --> 00:14:10.605
Um, if we've, many of us have heard

335
00:14:10.605 --> 00:14:14.005
of this philosophical experiment where, it's like a,

336
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a man whose child is dying, who needs

337
00:14:16.045 --> 00:14:18.085
to steal medicine in order to save his child.

338
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Is it ethical for them

339
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to steal from the pharmacy or from wherever?

340
00:14:23.505 --> 00:14:26.805
Um, or, you know, the famous trolley experiment, you know,

341
00:14:27.345 --> 00:14:28.605
is always a really good one.

342
00:14:28.635 --> 00:14:31.325
Well, one of the things I write about in another article is

343
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that the trolley experiment is commonly characterized

344
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as there's five workmen on one track.

345
00:14:35.715 --> 00:14:37.485
There's one large workman on another.

346
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Do you switch the, you know, press the lever or push a man

347
00:14:41.485 --> 00:14:42.845
or whatever to stop the trolley?

348
00:14:43.155 --> 00:14:45.325
Well, one thing that I write about is I say, you know,

349
00:14:45.325 --> 00:14:48.045
what if it was five workmen on a track

350
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and one child on the other track,

351
00:14:50.555 --> 00:14:51.845
what if there's five workmen

352
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and you have to pat push a pregnant woman?

353
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So if you change the people involved in the imaginary

354
00:14:58.685 --> 00:15:02.125
situation, your moral judgments of the situation change too.

355
00:15:02.625 --> 00:15:04.605
And then I apply that to this research,

356
00:15:04.665 --> 00:15:07.565
and I show that as people are killing,

357
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they change their perceptions of the people they're killing.

358
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And that makes it easier for them.

359
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And not just easier, but eventually mundane.

360
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That's the thing. Dehumanization renders violence mundane,

361
00:15:22.385 --> 00:15:24.245
and that's what makes it easy to do.

362
00:15:24.715 --> 00:15:27.885
It's not motivating, it doesn't push you into it.

363
00:15:28.105 --> 00:15:30.165
Overwhelmingly, we see this in the Rwanda

364
00:15:30.165 --> 00:15:31.445
genocide and other genocides.

365
00:15:31.465 --> 00:15:33.885
People don't kill because they perceive

366
00:15:33.885 --> 00:15:34.925
victims as dehumanized.

367
00:15:34.925 --> 00:15:36.925
They kill for a large number of other reasons,

368
00:15:37.105 --> 00:15:39.725
but that's not over and over again, one of them.

369
00:15:40.225 --> 00:15:43.325
But that kind of thinking allows them to continue.

370
00:15:43.465 --> 00:15:44.885
And that's what I pinpoint here

371
00:15:45.465 --> 00:15:48.045
in breaking apart the interviews by temporality.

372
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Much of the contrary of

373
00:15:49.565 --> 00:15:51.845
what we assume we know about these genocides.

374
00:15:52.105 --> 00:15:55.125
But we've seen this research, for example, even looking at

375
00:15:55.965 --> 00:15:59.445
Verma soldiers and the Holocaust, who earlier on I,

376
00:15:59.445 --> 00:16:01.245
Christopher Browning writes about this a little bit.

377
00:16:01.305 --> 00:16:02.645
One of his students, Waitman Born,

378
00:16:02.645 --> 00:16:05.365
has written about it a little and a book of his,

379
00:16:05.365 --> 00:16:09.085
and he very genuinely, shared all these interviews with,

380
00:16:09.185 --> 00:16:11.085
Nazis who killed Jews in the Holocaust.

381
00:16:11.085 --> 00:16:14.365
He shared them with me. So I was able to quickly skin them

382
00:16:14.385 --> 00:16:16.325
and sort of summarize them, but I'm hoping to make

383
00:16:16.325 --> 00:16:17.725
that a larger project in the future.

384
00:16:18.145 --> 00:16:19.845
But you see the same thing where earlier on,

385
00:16:19.845 --> 00:16:22.165
they're writing letters home to their family,

386
00:16:22.425 --> 00:16:24.965
and they're saying, today was the worst day of my life.

387
00:16:25.035 --> 00:16:27.125
This was horrible. I can't believe what I did.

388
00:16:27.545 --> 00:16:30.245
Um, you know, I killed a woman. I killed re children.

389
00:16:30.985 --> 00:16:34.165
Um, this was, nobody was talking at dinner.

390
00:16:34.385 --> 00:16:35.525
No one could look at each other.

391
00:16:35.945 --> 00:16:37.805
We all had to drink to numb our minds.

392
00:16:37.845 --> 00:16:39.645
I mean, there's a lot of research on these of drugs

393
00:16:39.705 --> 00:16:42.725
and alcohol in the Holocaust and other genocides.

394
00:16:43.145 --> 00:16:45.925
Um, but over time, not only did they get used to it

395
00:16:45.945 --> 00:16:48.005
and stop writing about it in their letters home

396
00:16:48.005 --> 00:16:49.925
and have no problem eating and even cheering

397
00:16:49.985 --> 00:16:52.525
and even celebrating and having parties,

398
00:16:53.105 --> 00:16:56.405
but over time they actually started coming up

399
00:16:56.405 --> 00:16:58.125
with games making the killing fun,

400
00:16:58.125 --> 00:17:00.845
because it had come so mundane to them

401
00:17:01.555 --> 00:17:04.845
that they were looking for a thrill and for a rise.

402
00:17:04.905 --> 00:17:07.125
So that's also like, you know, I'm getting too far ahead

403
00:17:07.125 --> 00:17:08.125
of myself here, but something

404
00:17:08.125 --> 00:17:10.845
that I'm interested in looking at,

405
00:17:10.985 --> 00:17:15.765
in future research is sort of when does the, boring

406
00:17:17.485 --> 00:17:20.085
everyday routineness of genocide

407
00:17:20.085 --> 00:17:21.805
and mass killing,

408
00:17:22.725 --> 00:17:24.845
actually become a problem for the killers?

409
00:17:24.845 --> 00:17:26.765
And then they try and find other ways

410
00:17:26.785 --> 00:17:27.965
to motivate themselves.

411
00:17:28.225 --> 00:17:30.325
Um, and that's by creating these kinds of games

412
00:17:30.425 --> 00:17:32.765
and sounds terrible to describe it this way,

413
00:17:32.765 --> 00:17:34.445
but, you know, sort of killing adventures and,

414
00:17:34.825 --> 00:17:37.445
and competitions among each other and so on.

415
00:17:37.745 --> 00:17:41.445
Um, so we see a lot of research on this,

416
00:17:41.665 --> 00:17:42.845
or not a lot of research on this,

417
00:17:42.865 --> 00:17:45.685
but findings in, the evidence on the Holocaust.

418
00:17:45.785 --> 00:17:49.245
Uh, it's also, I should say like a really big reason why the

419
00:17:49.405 --> 00:17:51.405
concentration camps were created,

420
00:17:51.435 --> 00:17:54.805
because the mass killing fields in the East were proving

421
00:17:55.105 --> 00:17:58.445
so traumatic for those who were doing the killing.

422
00:17:58.865 --> 00:18:00.805
Um, you know, it was really difficult.

423
00:18:01.035 --> 00:18:03.725
Many Nazis committed suicide

424
00:18:03.745 --> 00:18:06.405
or tried to, many, like I

425
00:18:07.125 --> 00:18:09.245
reported in Rwanda would throw up after the killings.

426
00:18:09.245 --> 00:18:11.365
They'd be sick, they'd ask to take a break.

427
00:18:11.865 --> 00:18:15.365
Um, so it was interfering with the genocidal goal

428
00:18:15.625 --> 00:18:18.125
of the Nazis to have people engage in sort

429
00:18:18.125 --> 00:18:21.085
of this close range killing even with people who were

430
00:18:21.085 --> 00:18:22.085
so different from them.

431
00:18:22.185 --> 00:18:26.165
So this is to say, even when they were killing Jews in

432
00:18:26.705 --> 00:18:29.525
the east in Ukraine, in the killing fields in Poland

433
00:18:29.525 --> 00:18:34.405
and so on, people that were unlike in Rwanda, not

434
00:18:34.405 --> 00:18:35.805
as socially close with the

435
00:18:35.805 --> 00:18:37.165
German Nazis who were killing them.

436
00:18:37.825 --> 00:18:39.445
Um, and you see similar results.

437
00:18:39.525 --> 00:18:40.725
I include a couple of quotes from the

438
00:18:40.725 --> 00:18:42.165
second Sino-Japanese war.

439
00:18:42.505 --> 00:18:45.445
Um, you see a lot of people talking about it also saying

440
00:18:45.445 --> 00:18:47.285
how horrifying it was,

441
00:18:47.385 --> 00:18:48.925
and how they eventually got used to it,

442
00:18:48.925 --> 00:18:50.485
and how it became sort of mindless.

443
00:18:51.065 --> 00:18:54.325
Um, I found quotes from the Chinese cultural revolution.

444
00:18:54.765 --> 00:18:58.685
I found quotes from a whole range of cases.

445
00:18:59.305 --> 00:19:03.765
Um, so hopefully a, a next big project would be like sort

446
00:19:03.765 --> 00:19:04.965
of a broad comparative one.

447
00:19:05.025 --> 00:19:08.285
But absolutely, this is, I think a very,

448
00:19:09.875 --> 00:19:12.285
it's tricky to say this, but it's a very human process.

449
00:19:13.225 --> 00:19:17.405
Um, that's a consequence of violence in contexts

450
00:19:17.405 --> 00:19:19.325
where historically violence is

451
00:19:19.605 --> 00:19:20.725
considered the wrong thing to do.

452
00:19:20.875 --> 00:19:23.085
Killing people is considered the wrong thing to do.

453
00:19:23.525 --> 00:19:27.085
I think there's two implications. One is bad, one is good.

454
00:19:27.585 --> 00:19:29.165
Um, the good one is

455
00:19:29.165 --> 00:19:32.525
that if dehumanization doesn't cause mass violence,

456
00:19:32.665 --> 00:19:36.045
if dehumanization isn't necessary for genocide,

457
00:19:36.045 --> 00:19:39.085
the good thing is anytime we hear it, we can intervene.

458
00:19:39.545 --> 00:19:42.565
We can protest. If a political leader, if mass media

459
00:19:43.105 --> 00:19:46.125
is characterizing, you know, immigrants

460
00:19:46.225 --> 00:19:50.925
or other minority groups as animals, as vermin, as rapists

461
00:19:50.925 --> 00:19:53.285
and so on, that doesn't mean we're one

462
00:19:53.285 --> 00:19:54.445
step away from genocide.

463
00:19:54.665 --> 00:19:56.205
It means let's push back.

464
00:19:56.655 --> 00:19:59.565
Let's organize, let's mobilize, let's have conversations,

465
00:19:59.655 --> 00:20:00.685
let's protect people.

466
00:20:01.305 --> 00:20:03.005
Um, genocide is not inevitable.

467
00:20:03.225 --> 00:20:05.125
Dehumanization doesn't cause it.

468
00:20:05.155 --> 00:20:08.565
Then we can do something to intervene when it becomes part

469
00:20:08.565 --> 00:20:11.885
of common discourse or part of elite discourse.

470
00:20:12.065 --> 00:20:14.365
Um, try and stop it from becoming common discourse.

471
00:20:14.985 --> 00:20:16.525
Um, and so on.

472
00:20:17.385 --> 00:20:22.085
The negative, implication of this is that

473
00:20:22.905 --> 00:20:25.205
dehumanization isn't necessary for violence.

474
00:20:25.465 --> 00:20:27.005
We live in a very violent world.

475
00:20:27.515 --> 00:20:29.005
Many people do terrible things,

476
00:20:29.285 --> 00:20:30.645
terrible things are happening all the time.

477
00:20:31.265 --> 00:20:35.965
Um, and so, you know, dehumanizing language isn't necessary

478
00:20:36.025 --> 00:20:38.405
for mass violence and for genocide to transpire,

479
00:20:38.405 --> 00:20:41.605
but at the same time, violence doesn't require it.

480
00:20:42.025 --> 00:20:45.045
And so I think that's an important thing to keep in mind,

481
00:20:45.585 --> 00:20:48.565
to sort of pay attention to what,

482
00:20:48.915 --> 00:20:50.485
what does push people into violence,

483
00:20:50.985 --> 00:20:52.605
and then when does this play a role?

484
00:20:52.865 --> 00:20:54.845
If we wanna really intervene meaningfully,

485
00:20:55.235 --> 00:20:57.445
then I think we need to be much more precise in

486
00:20:57.445 --> 00:21:00.085
understanding the relationship between the two, instead

487
00:21:00.085 --> 00:21:01.645
of assuming the relationship.

Dehumanization, Propaganda, and Intergroup Violence

00:00:00 - I think there's a couple of different ways to think about it. the first is sort of the most common assumption, which is that there's a really close relationship between dehumanization and propaganda. so people often look to the history of the Holocaust and they'll see how the Nazis characterize Jews as vermin. they'll look to the Randan genocide. They'll see that Tootsie were characterize as cockroaches. And they'll say, or they'll argue, and they'll assume that there's a direct link between this dehumanizing propaganda put forth by government extremists or media extremists work in favor of the government

00:00:32 - that people they've long lived beside, known, had close relationships with. They'll listen to the radio, they'll hear these characterizations of them, and they'll become convinced that it's true and that will motivate them to wanna kill them. So I may have a Tootsy brother-in-law, but the radio keeps saying, tootsy are cockroaches, tootsy are cockroaches. And suddenly I start to see my brother-in-law that way. And it's one other step before I find myself killing him. so that's like really, if you distill it down,

00:01:05 - I challenge them in my article. But another way to think about them is less with the emphasis on propaganda and more sort of this long-term cultural perceptions of people, intergroup relations whereby people might be more likely to see different minority populations typically, as more closer to less human than more human. So there's sort of like this ascent of human scale that people often use in this kind of research. And then they'll take that

Dehumanization and Violence: Challenging Assumptions in Genocide Studies

00:01:36 - whether it's proclivity to rape, proclivity to kill, speed with which someone presses a button on a computer test to see whether or not they'll kill them. They find that there's a correlation between certain modes of perception that are closer to dehumanization and willingness to enact harm. and the third argument is that dehumanization actually doesn't matter at all, and that people tend to wanna participate in violence, when they see a group that is a minority group, a subordinate group, sort of increasing in power,

00:02:08 - and they wanna participate in violence to reassert their dominance, to remind victims of their rightful place in the social order. So they actually perceive them as humans, but as threatening humans. And so they wanna push them back down. those are three common assumptions about how the link between dehumanization and violence works. And I challenge each of those three in my research, looking very specifically at Rwandans who participated in the genocide. and I break it down into different time periods to try

00:02:41 - of the people that they were killing changed over time. so I actually start before the genocide. I look at one particular community because to me it helps to sort of narrow the focus. 'cause different communities have different histories. The one that I looked at in particular wasn't all that different from most of Rwanda, which is a majority rural country. and as anyone who's been to Rwanda will tell you, even when I was last there, which I guess now is, you know,

Examining Propaganda and Relationships in Rwanda

00:03:14 - even now, there's still not radio access throughout the whole country. before the genocide, the majority of the country wasn't literate. So they weren't reading some of the dehumanizing propaganda that was being put forth in newspapers. they weren't listening to the radio. They didn't have radio access. But not only that, scholars have studied the timing of the propaganda that is often said to have caused the genocide, whether it's calling Tootsie Cockroaches, or calling for people to organize

00:03:42 - And a lot of that, not only did it re not reach the majority of the country, but it actually aired after the killing had begun. So that's an important thing to keep in mind, is people weren't hearing it and they weren't receiving it when it's commonly assumed that they did, if they did. but then when you break it down and you look in these individual communities where you have high rates of intermarriage, long histories of people living side by side with each other, you know, it was a densely populated country. the whole country is the size of Maryland and the United States.

00:04:14 - I had heard about these characterizations of, you know, Hutu and Tootsie as us being enemies, or that there were problems between us in the past. But I didn't really feel that way among my friends. It wasn't really relevant to me. that was more elite stuff, elite politics. It wasn't relevant to my personal life. and this is a very common thing. and again, if you consider high rates of intermarriage, people loved each other. People had children with each other, people had family.

Complex Realities of Early Genocide Participation

00:04:44 - of those relationships to dismiss them and say that radio just changed their minds. but then also what I find is that the first few times people participated in genocide, they were horrified by their actions. They threw up, they ran away. They said, I'm never gonna do that again. They made really difficult decisions. I actually, have a different article about this decision making process that I published in 2015, where sometimes they would say, look, I,

00:05:16 - I'll kill this person if you protect my brother-in-law, or my wife or I will kill this day, but not kill that day. So people early on were making really complicated choices about who to kill and who to save, which is another indication that they didn't see all Tootsie as this dehumanized, subhuman, monolithic mass, totally devoid of meaning. They were still distinguishing, which means they were still seeing them as people. the other thing is not only did they throw up

00:05:46 - that they killed someone, but also they remembered it vividly years later. So they would say, the first time I killed someone, it was a mama. It was a baby. It was two children in a corner. It was a man in the marketplace. So they remember all these details with remarkable clarity, which as psychologists who study trauma will tell you, is really an indication that this was a traumatic event for them, that it was meaningful for them because it stuck with them. but the more they killed, the more they got used to it.

Routinization of Violence and Dehumanization

00:06:19 - They'll say that, they'll say, the more I killed, the more I got used to it. The details fell away. You know, it got murky in my mind. it stopped meaning anything to me. I would just wake up, I'd go, I'd kill. I didn't even pay attention to how many people I was killing. And then I'd go home and the the direct quotes really show this. so to me, breaking down the timing is really crucial for showing when dehumanization matters

00:06:49 - And in my argument, I suggest that it's a facilitative process that allows violence to continue, but it's not what pulls people into violence in the first place. If anything, dehumanization is demobilizing 'cause it strips things of meaning and content. It's, it's a product of routinization. Being in Rwanda is incredibly complex situation. it's a fairly authoritarian government. And so when I was there, I was

00:07:19 - I was interviewing people who participated in the genocide, people who were incarcerated. So it was a very difficult, for me, a very difficult dynamic. I write about this at length in the appendix to the paper, which I'd recommend anyone read, for people working with what we would call sort of sensitive populations. and one of the things that sort of stood out to me most is when I was talking to people, they, they would describe this, they would describe how they made these difficult choices. And that went really against my assumptions about

Complexities of Guilt and Perpetration in Genocide

00:07:52 - Because they would tell me, you know, I, I admit I killed someone. I admit I killed many people. but I made, you know, on Monday I killed two people. On Wednesday, I saved someone on Thursday, I killed again. Friday, Saturday, Sunday I killed some more. The next day I refused, and then I did it again. And that, those interviews, those conversations to me really challenged a lot of what I assumed caused genocide, which was sort

00:08:25 - Hatred and dehumanization are not the same thing. I talk about that in the paper as well. and so because of that, I got really interested in like, what's really going on here? and trying to pinpoint really, like looking at these interviews, I did some myself and then I also drew from a lot of secondary sources. So interviews that other people had done with Rwandan at different time periods, also interviews with survivors, interviews with rescuers.

00:08:54 - but I found that it was getting ignored in the overwhelming focus on why do people join? Because there's so much research on why perpetrators kill. but when people ask why do perpetrators kill, they tend to look at why do they join in killing, as opposed to how do they feel about killing? And how do those feelings change over time? Because why people kill at time A might be very different than why people kill at time

The Psychology of Hatred and Dehumanization

00:09:23 - And that's what I found, and that's what I got really interested in, is looking at the beginning, at the middle as genocide progressed and tracking those changes. So instead of joining and killing and looking at that, can you tell us about how cultural moral sociology concepts helped, helped, sort of explain that? And can you also speak to that h and dehumanization the difference? Yeah, absolutely. So really quickly, you know, there's a lot of really fascinating research on this, especially in neuroscience, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology at the moment, on the difference

00:09:58 - You know, hatred is a strong feeling. It pushes people into action most often. and people who do research, you know, do FMRI scans, look at people who hate other groups. They'll see certain parts of the brain light up because it is an active feeling. and like I said, a motivating feeling, whereas dehumanization, your brain's not lighting up anymore. It's, like I said, it's routinized, it's habit, it's a mode

00:10:30 - neutral in a sense, neutral. Because if you're looking at a dehumanized person, it's the same as if you're looking at a book. It's the same as if you're looking at a piece of paper as an, this is what we say. It's like you're looking at an object, right? There's objectifying dehumanization and there's animalistic dehumanization, but you don't, your brain isn't working as if you're looking at a human anymore. Whereas when you're looking at a human, whether it's someone you love or someone you hate, you have a feeling about them.

Emotional and Bodily Adjustment in Learning New Skills

00:11:02 - and sociology of culture research and the sociology of morality. There's a lot of really, really cool work in the sociology of culture on what I sort of characterize as how you become a person and new, how people take on new habits, or new ways of being. So whether it's learning to become a chef, whether it's learning to become a martial arts fighter, whether it is learning to play an instrument,

00:11:31 - overwhelmingly in research shows that as you take on these new practices, at first it's really, really difficult. I mean, we can all think of, you know, becoming a yoga practitioner, things we've adopted in our adult lives, you know, secondary socialization, I guess is another way to think of it. and how hard it is at first to get used to it. But then you do get used to it, and then it becomes like second nature. You know, you go, you're playing basketball, it's easy.

00:12:02 - How do I pass, et cetera. you know, when you're a chef, you're not thinking, how do I cut so that I don't cut my finger? You just end up doing it really fast, which is not something I still can do. Like I, you know, I'm not a chef. so every time I cut an onion, I'm worried about cutting my fingers off. so that's sort of about like this bodily adjustment. Then there's research on sort of emotional adjustment, which is that you also get used to it emotionally. you know, you stop being nervous every time you stop,

Emotional and Moral Adjustments in Cultural Practices

00:12:34 - Same when you convert to a new religion, there's a lot of fascinating researcher, and you stop feeling this sort of connection to the sacred and it becomes mundane and you're just going through the routine of new prayer, new practices, new fastings and so on. So sociology of cultural argue that there's sort of this bodily adjustment that you get used to. There's this emotional adjustment that you get used to. And then I tie that into research on morality, which shows that, moral things are things we have feelings about.

00:13:09 - of someone stealing, you might feel really upset about it because to you, stealing is wrong. If you see a car crash, you might feel upset about it because that's a bad thing that happened. We have strong feelings about things that fall into the realm of our morals and our values. I think of another example. Well, actually there are all sorts of examples of things that, you know, are ostensibly bad, or ostensibly good too.

00:13:37 - you feel really excited about it because you value that thing. But then what I add is you also value that person. So morality isn't just about evaluating actions, but it's evaluating people. that's sort of a, a big piece of this article and sort of my broader project at the moment. and that how we judge people and how we judge actions intersect. So whether or not it's right or wrong to steal depends on who is doing the stealing.

Ethics and Perception in Moral Dilemmas

00:14:10 - of this philosophical experiment where, it's like a, a man whose child is dying, who needs to steal medicine in order to save his child. Is it ethical for them to steal from the pharmacy or from wherever? or, you know, the famous trolley experiment, you know, is always a really good one. Well, one of the things I write about in another article is that the trolley experiment is commonly characterized as there's five workmen on one track. There's one large workman on another. Do you switch the, you know, press the lever or push a man

00:14:43 - Well, one thing that I write about is I say, you know, what if it was five workmen on a track and one child on the other track, what if there's five workmen and you have to pat push a pregnant woman? So if you change the people involved in the imaginary situation, your moral judgments of the situation change too. And then I apply that to this research, and I show that as people are killing, they change their perceptions of the people they're killing.

00:15:15 - And not just easier, but eventually mundane. That's the thing. Dehumanization renders violence mundane, and that's what makes it easy to do. It's not motivating, it doesn't push you into it. Overwhelmingly, we see this in the Rwanda genocide and other genocides. People don't kill because they perceive victims as dehumanized. They kill for a large number of other reasons, but that's not over and over again, one of them. But that kind of thinking allows them to continue.

From Horror to Mundanity: Evolving Perspectives on Genocide

00:15:45 - in breaking apart the interviews by temporality. Much of the contrary of what we assume we know about these genocides. But we've seen this research, for example, even looking at Verma soldiers and the Holocaust, who earlier on I, Christopher Browning writes about this a little bit. One of his students, Waitman Born, has written about it a little and a book of his, and he very genuinely, shared all these interviews with, Nazis who killed Jews in the Holocaust. He shared them with me. So I was able to quickly skin them

00:16:16 - that a larger project in the future. But you see the same thing where earlier on, they're writing letters home to their family, and they're saying, today was the worst day of my life. This was horrible. I can't believe what I did. you know, I killed a woman. I killed re children. this was, nobody was talking at dinner. No one could look at each other. We all had to drink to numb our minds. I mean, there's a lot of research on these of drugs and alcohol in the Holocaust and other genocides. but over time, not only did they get used to it

00:16:48 - and have no problem eating and even cheering and even celebrating and having parties, but over time they actually started coming up with games making the killing fun, because it had come so mundane to them that they were looking for a thrill and for a rise. So that's also like, you know, I'm getting too far ahead of myself here, but something that I'm interested in looking at, in future research is sort of when does the, boring

Desensitization and the Mechanics of Mass Killing

00:17:20 - and mass killing, actually become a problem for the killers? And then they try and find other ways to motivate themselves. and that's by creating these kinds of games and sounds terrible to describe it this way, but, you know, sort of killing adventures and, and competitions among each other and so on. so we see a lot of research on this, or not a lot of research on this, but findings in, the evidence on the Holocaust. it's also, I should say like a really big reason why the

00:17:51 - because the mass killing fields in the East were proving so traumatic for those who were doing the killing. you know, it was really difficult. Many Nazis committed suicide or tried to, many, like I reported in Rwanda would throw up after the killings. They'd be sick, they'd ask to take a break. so it was interfering with the genocidal goal of the Nazis to have people engage in sort of this close range killing even with people who were

00:18:22 - So this is to say, even when they were killing Jews in the east in Ukraine, in the killing fields in Poland and so on, people that were unlike in Rwanda, not as socially close with the German Nazis who were killing them. and you see similar results. I include a couple of quotes from the second Sino-Japanese war. you see a lot of people talking about it also saying how horrifying it was, and how they eventually got used to it, and how it became sort of mindless. I found quotes from the Chinese cultural revolution.

Human Response to Dehumanization and Violence

00:18:59 - so hopefully a, a next big project would be like sort of a broad comparative one. But absolutely, this is, I think a very, it's tricky to say this, but it's a very human process. that's a consequence of violence in contexts where historically violence is considered the wrong thing to do. Killing people is considered the wrong thing to do. I think there's two implications. One is bad, one is good.

00:19:29 - that if dehumanization doesn't cause mass violence, if dehumanization isn't necessary for genocide, the good thing is anytime we hear it, we can intervene. We can protest. If a political leader, if mass media is characterizing, you know, immigrants or other minority groups as animals, as vermin, as rapists and so on, that doesn't mean we're one step away from genocide. It means let's push back. Let's organize, let's mobilize, let's have conversations,

00:20:01 - genocide is not inevitable. Dehumanization doesn't cause it. Then we can do something to intervene when it becomes part of common discourse or part of elite discourse. try and stop it from becoming common discourse. and so on. The negative, implication of this is that dehumanization isn't necessary for violence. We live in a very violent world. Many people do terrible things, terrible things are happening all the time.

Rethinking Dehumanization's Role in Violence

00:21:00 - for mass violence and for genocide to transpire, but at the same time, violence doesn't require it. And so I think that's an important thing to keep in mind, to sort of pay attention to what, what does push people into violence, and then when does this play a role? If we wanna really intervene meaningfully, then I think we need to be much more precise in understanding the relationship between the two, instead of assuming the relationship.

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