Snake Girl Ellie
Trump says, regarding illegal immigrants, and specifically transnational gangs like MS-13, "You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people, these are animals."
The danger in denying basic humanity to a certain group of people is twofold:
1) It's too easy to use that to justify TREATING them as non-human, and
2) It's too easy to start spreading that non-human category to include other people you don't like.
Snake Girl Ellie
"They're not people, they're animals" is how people start getting put in concentration camps. They're not people, so you don't have to care about them. They're animals, so you don't have to offer them due process or the protection of law. And once you've done that once, it's really easy to justify doing it again to suppress another group you don't like.
The power to dehumanize is inherently corruptive.
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