Cruelty

This chapter examines the dimension of cruelty in the dehumanizing process. It reveals that acts of abominable cruelty have something to do with the fact that dehumanizers see their victims as human beings. It is because dehumanizers cannot help recognizing that their victims are human, and this recognition coexists in their minds with the belief that they are animals, that the members of the dehumanized group are regarded as horrific monsters, and such monsters are, by definition, malevolent, evil beings. And because those who are dehumanized come to be seen as evil, they become targets of the most extreme forms of moralistic aggression. The magnitude of their wickedness is such that no imaginable punishment is too severe for them. In addition, dehumanizers almost always take pains to humiliate those whom they dehumanize.