Rats, lice, cockroaches, foxes, vultures… are some of the animals that the Nazis used to define Jews. But beyond the obvious, they used other words to dehumanize them. Now, the linguistic analysis of dozens of speeches, articles, pamphlets or posters shows how the process of dehumanization initiated by Nazism before coming to power gradually modulated: in the years before the Holocaust, the Jew was represented as a being incapable of have human feelings. But coinciding with the beginning of the extermination, the European Jews appear as agents of evil, almost as demons instigating great threats. The consequence, intended or not, was to lower the moral barriers to its mass elimination. By the end of the war, six million of them had been killed.
Researchers from the universities of Stanford, California (United States) and Tel Aviv (Israel) have used a psycholinguistic analysis tool to quantify the words referring to mental states that appeared in Nazi propaganda between 1927 and 1945. Their starting hypothesis is that it could There are different ways to demonize Jews. Explains Alexander P. Landry, from Stanford University and co-author of the study: “These terms about the mental state are those related to the ability to feel sensations and emotions (experiences) or, on the other hand, the ability to have complex thoughts , plan and act intentionally (the authors of the study use the term “agency”, which would be translated as action or instrumentality)”. They start from the theory that postulates that recognizing the other’s ability to feel maintains the moral prevention of harming them. While the agencydetails Landry, “makes them morally responsible for their behavior.”
Following the onset of the Holocaust, Jews were credited with increasing levels of agency. This may have been an effort by Nazi propagandists to demonize them.”
Alexander P. Landry, researcher at Stanford University
The analysis of Nazi propaganda, published in Magazine PLoS ONE, confirms the dehumanization of the Jews. Throughout the entire period studied, the proportion of terms referring to emotions and instrumentality remain at very high levels. But they detect that the process was not uniform: it changed little before the start of the Holocaust. “We observe that the experiential capacity of Jews steadily declined in the period leading up to the Holocaust, suggesting that they were progressively denied moral consideration during this period,” says Landry. This progressive denial may have facilitated systematic violence against them. “However, after the start of the Holocaust, Jews were credited with increasing levels of agency. This may have been an effort by Nazi propagandists to demonize Jews, portraying them as intentionally malevolent agents of evil, to justify the violence inflicted on them,” she completes.
The growing reference to instrumentality is supported by the increase they observe in the presence of agency words, such as evil, infernal, plan… While, after the generalization of the extermination, terms like mind, benevolence, feel… go down. Of the sample of words selected by the researchers, the one that fell out of use the most in Nazi texts since the summer of 1941 was liebe, love in German. In fact, it is in those months when they detect the change in trend between some terms and others. Although the official start of the Holocaust dates back to January 1942, with the Wannsee conference where the final solution (the extermination camps) was approved, already in the summer of last year the mass murders and deaths by hunger began in the east of Europe.
To validate their results, the study authors extended the analysis. On the one hand, they re-analyzed Nazi propaganda materials, but looking for terms related to purity, health and hygiene or death and threat. They observed that both groups of words rose from the summer of 1941, following a curve similar to that drawn by words related to action capacity. On the other hand, they collected a similar sample of articles and speeches that did not deal with Jews directly. They wanted to know if the suspicion, hatred or existential fear that many of them distilled was something generalized and not only focused on the Jewish question. Except for words related to health or fear, they did not see that the trend detected with the Jews was maintained.
Theories on the dehumanization of the other maintain that this process helps to eliminate the barriers that morality imposes to harm others. Hence, continuous references to unpleasant animals or infectious diseases are a constant in Nazi propaganda. But, for the authors of this research, things are not simple. In their conclusions, they write: “These patterns support claims that Jews were subjected to demonization, in which their capacity for sophisticated reasoning coexisted with subhuman moral depravity.”
Harriet Over, a researcher at the psychology department of the University of York, has studied the different theories of dehumanization in cases of violence against the masses, such as the Jewish genocide. Unrelated to Landry’s work analyzing propaganda, Over clarifies that the idea of dehumanization can refer to different things: “Some researchers define it as treating humans in a way they should never be treated. If we are talking about this, then of course the Nazis dehumanized the Jews.” For other scientists, dehumanization is based on the use of metaphors or the simple comparison of the other with animals. “If we are talking about this, then of course the Nazis dehumanized the Jews. Nazi propaganda is full of references to Jews as vermin, rats or parasites”, adds the British social psychologist.
But Over reminds that there is another possibility in which dehumanization basically consists of considering the other group as subhuman. Understood in this way, the Nazis’ denial of humanity to Jews is, according to Over, controversial: “Others and I have argued that systems of terror can only be sustained if the victims are understood to be human. To oppress an entire community of people, you need to understand their humanity and how to terrorize them into submission. And she adds: “Nazi propaganda often refers to the Jewish people in specific human terms. For example, describing them as enemies, criminals Y traitors. These terms make sense when applied to humans, but seem out of place when applied to animals. Similarly, prominent themes in Nazi propaganda made reference to specific human states of mind supposedly typical of the Jewish people, for example, accusations of plots to seek world domination. This coincides with part of the results of Landry’s research.
we are still creating [monstruos]. We see it in European attitudes toward Muslim and African refugees, in anti-Muslim propaganda in Myanmar, in Russian attitudes toward Ukrainians, and in American racism against blacks.”
David Livingstone, researcher at the University of New England and author of the book ‘Making Monsters. The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization’
In the book Making Monsters. The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization (Making monsters. The disturbing power of dehumanization, not yet published in Spain), psychologist David Livingstone, grandson of a German Jew, tells in one of his chapters the story of lynchings in the United States. Of the 4,467 lynched to death for which there is data between 1883 and 1941, only 73 were white. Except for a few Indians, all the others were black. In a conference given last week at the University of Arizona (United States), Livingstone recalled what these executions were like. Thousands of people gathered from all over. The trains organized routes to see the show and the schools were closed so that the children could also go. Generally, the executed person died after hours of torture and mutilation. “How could people do such a thing?” asks this professor of psychology at the University of New England in Maine. The answer is given by Livingstone himself. When reviewing the newspapers of that time, the chroniclers of the show used adjectives such as “monster incarnate”, “unnatural monster” or as the chronicle of the show said new york sun, “the most inhuman monster known of these times”. More than animals, the lynched blacks were considered as monsters with human and animal features. And for Livingstone, a professor at the universities of Toronto and Yale, Nazi propaganda painted Jews in this way.
“David [Livingstone] has conducted careful research showing that Nazi propaganda contains references to Jews as non-human animals (eg rats and parasites) as well as criminals, enemies and traitors. She uses this evidence to argue that the Nazis perceived the Jews as human and subhuman at the same time, and consequently as horrible monsters”, opines Harriet Over. And by taking away their human condition, the Holocaust made it easier. But the British psychologist also recalls in an email that the dehumanization process is not a requirement for barbarism: “As Paul Bloom has argued, the statement that when we recognize ourselves as human, we tend to treat each other well is optimistic. The reality can be worse: there are certain types of damage that we reserve only for other humans.” Bloom is a psychologist at the University of Toronto and has written many articles and books on human nature, particularly human cruelty.
Livingstone, the author of Making Monster, maintains that “the Nazis actually considered the Jews to be untermenschen (subhuman) dangerous.” But he does not believe that dehumanizing them was a simple plan: “The dehumanization of the Jews by the Nazis was not a strategy to justify their extermination. Rather, it was the basis for their extermination, ”he says in an email. And those ideas of a century ago are not a thing of the past. Livingstone highlights it: “We are still creating [monstruos]. We see it in European attitudes toward Muslim and African refugees, in the genocidal war in Ethiopia, in anti-Muslim propaganda in Myanmar, in Russian attitudes toward Ukrainians, in Hindu Islamophobia, and in American anti-black racism, to name a few. just a few examples.”
You can follow MATTER in Facebook, Twitter and Instagramor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
#Nazi #Propaganda #Dehumanized #Jews #Facilitate #Holocaust