Eliminationist antisemitism caused the Holocaust. Half of my family was murdered during WWII because anti-Semites believed Jews were diseased vermin, subhuman, a parasitic existential threat that demanded extermination. For the nation; for civilization; for all that is good.
Dehumanizing language is how they were able to convince themselves and others to murder my family. Dehumanization. Because we don’t murder vermin. We don’t murder parasites.
We murder people.
It is a dangerous mistake to think that only the bad guys’ dehumanization of their enemies ends with gas chambers, bombed cites, hacked-off limbs and lynchings. If one thing a casual appreciation of history shows, we are all potential dehumanizers, just as we are all potential victims of dehumanization.
The problem of dehumanization is everyone's problem. Dehumanizing language inevitably leads to murder.
MAGA and hard right-wingers are not vermin, or subhuman brutes. Please don’t call them such. They are people. Many are bad people. And they are people.
They should not be dehumanized. Because they should not be exterminated.
They and their hate should be defeated.