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It occurred to me recently that while I've seen a great many shows/movies/etc about prejudice/tribalism/bigotry/etc, none of them reflect the kind of dynamics I've seen in the culture war. The closest things I've seen were The Hunt, a completely non-allegorical satire of current day social dynamics, and "The Great Divide," a filler episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's hard to identify what phenomena I want reflected in this kind of story, but one of the most distinct aspects of our current polarization is how the dominant tribe justifies its antipathy towards the opposing tribe by accusing it of bigotry. Dehumanization isn't unusual, but dehumanizing people by accusing them of dehumanization seems novel. Or at least, novel enough that I haven't seen it outside of a South Park episode (The Death Camp of Tolerance) that treated the concept as inherently absurd because, at the time the episode was made, it still seemed outside the realm of possibility.
Do you guys know any good works of fiction that depict bigotry similar to that we've seen in America over the past decade? I don't necessarily mean stories where one group accuses the other of being bigoted. Just anything that leaps out to you as similar.
I don't know why you are conflating calling someone a bigot is the same as dehumanizing them. Archie Bunker was depicted as a bigot, but he was not dehumanized. Dehumanization is something quite different.
You're absolutely right. I was being inarticulate. The accusation of bigotry, itself, is not dehumanization. The dehumanization comes when you say that because someone is a bigot, it's okay to "punch" them. That their rights, the rights that are supposed to extend to all of humanity, no longer exist. The trigger word they usually use is "Nazi," and they expand the definition of that term enough to include wrongthinkers of all races and religions. That's the most extreme example, but even it is frighteningly common.
I don't think Archie Bunker wouldn't be tolerated in today's world. While he was absolutely portrayed as in the wrong, he was also tolerated, even loved. Today, people like that are not deserving of tolerance. They get "cancelled." It's like.. you know how in the 00's, some Christians had a "love the sinner, hate the sin" attitude towards homosexuality, while others didn't want to let gay people anywhere near them? Leftists used to be analogous to the former, hating problematic attitudes while still loving people who possessed them. Now they're the latter. Or at least, that's how I perceive the situation.
Ok, but "it is ok to punch someone who is x" is not dehumanization. Eg: it is considered ok for a woman to slap an obnoxious drunk. Does that mean that the drunk has been "dehumanized"? If a mass murderer is put to death, has he been "dehumanized"? I think you are referring to a different concept.
If the obnoxious drunk is following you, despite your repeated requests to be left alone, then he is invading your personal space and implicitly threatening you, making it okay to slap him in self-defense. Punching someone who is not invading your space or violating your rights in any way is not comparable, and doing so is actually a violation of their rights. To deny someone their rights is to dehumanize them. You are treating them as though they are not human.
Merely saying that somebody should be physically assaulted isn't the same thing as assaulting them, but it is still a form of dehumanization, and it precedes the literal violence.
The problem is that defining dehumanizing that broadly renders the term meaningless. If denying someone their rights is dehumanizing them, then a prosecutor commenting on a defendant's decision not to testify a trial is dehumanization. As is kicking a cheerleader off of the team for saying "fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer" on Snapchat. As is refusing a trademark to a band called "The Slants" because the term is derogatory.
And the other problem is with your argument that punching an obnoxius drunk is not dehumanizing him because he is invading your rights. That is the exact argument that Antifa types use when justifying punching people. They claim that speech is violence, after all.
Finally, you are needlessly complicating matters. What you are talking about is simply people using violence to silence those they disagree with. That is hardly a new phenomenon.
I was trying to say that the woman in this scenario is justified if, and only if, the man is following her and won't leave her alone despite her requests.
I'm trying to say that there's a spectrum of behavior that has violence against people you disagree with on the most extreme end. You can call this spectrum murderism, or dehumanition, or whatever, but I think it's fair to consider them all part of the same phenomenon. That's the entire concept behind racism, homophobia, and so on. I'm just expanding it more broadly.
And yes, lynchings and genocide and so forth are hardly new phenomenons. Doesn't make them acceptable. They are so terrifying that I want to make them as rare as possible.
No one is claiming that violence is generally acceptable.
To be clear, when I said that "people using violence to silence those they disagree with . . .is hardly a new phenomenon," I was not referring to lynching and genocide. I was referring to lesser forms of violence. I am dubious that most lynchings and genocides have been conducted simply because the victims held unpalatable views (and I say that as someone with PhD-level coursework on political violence).
I am sure there is a spectrum, but my point is that you really can't call it dehumanization, because that term already has an established meaning in the field of political violence.
Oh. What is the academic meaning of dehumanization? The most literal interpretation would be that it's denying someone's status as human, but that's not what happens. Like, the German didn't literally believe that Jews were rats in the clip you posted, but he was comparing them to rats as a heinous metaphor.
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