Post #4363432

When they’re not seen as humans but animals, vermin, etc. it becomes easy to commit such atrocities. An excerpt from “On Freedom” by Timothy Snyder I’m currently reading helps define it some, In Nazi propaganda, east Europeans were subhuman beasts. On Soviet posters, rich peasants were pigs. Russian television today takes this notion to a postmodern extreme: Ukrainians are to be exterminated because they are Nazis, Jews, gays, Satanists, ghouls, zombies, vermin. The next step is violence, the opposite of recognition of the Leib. When we torture or humiliate a body, we further objectify it. After the body has been degraded and the person humiliated, the killer finds the work easier to bear. Some enjoy it.