Challenging the Language of the Culture of Death
Table: Dehumanizing Terminology
A.I.R.V.S.C.
Association for Interdisciplinary Research in Values and Social Change
Reproduced with Permission
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Deficient Human | Nonhuman | Animal | Parasite | Disease | Inanimate Object | Waste Product | Nonperson |
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| The above table and accompanying documentation can be found in: Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives, by William Brennan, Ph.D. (Loyola University Press, 1995, 3441 North Ashland Avenue, Chicago Illinois 60657, 1-800-621-1008) | ||||||||
| Native Americans |
Indians [are]… inferior to the Anglo-Saxon. (Henry Clay, Sec. of State, 1825) |
The life of these [aborigines] is…not human. (Author Hugh Brackenridge, 1779) |
The Indian…is an untamable, carnivorous animal. (Dr. Josiah Nott, 1847) |
Clear the country of that vermin [Indians]. (Colonel Henry Bouquet, 1763) |
The Iroquois had proved more deadly…than the pestilence. (Historian Francis Parkman, 1902) |
[Indians are] anthropological specimens. (American press coverage, 1904) |
[Indians are] the very dregs, garbage… of Earth. (Poet Christopher Brooke, 1622) |
An Indian is not a person within the meaning of the Constitution. (George Canfield, Am. Law Rev., 1881) |
| African Americans |
A subordinate and inferior class of beings (U.S. Supreme Court on the status of Black people, 1857) |
The negro is not a human being. (Buckner Payne, Publisher, 1867) |
The negro is… one of the lower animals. (Professor Charles Carroll, 1900) |
They [Negroes] are parasites. (Dr. E.T. Brady, 1909) |
Free blacks in our country are… a contagion (American Colonization Soc., 1815-30) |
A negro of the African race was regarded…as an article of property. (U.S. Supreme Court decision, 1857) |
The negro race is… a heritage of organic and psychic debris (Dr. William English, 1903) |
In the eyes of the law… the slave is not a person (Virginia Supreme Court Decision, 1858) |
| Soviet Enemies |
The uncivilized, stupid, turgid people in the Russian villages. (Author Maxim Gorky, 1922) |
Kulaks are not human beings. (Lenin and Stalin, 1918-34) |
[Peasants are] beasts of burden. (George Plekhanov, founder of Russian Marxism, 1823) |
The kulak, the parasite. (Lenin, 1918) |
Every religious idea [is]…‘contagion’ of the most abominable kind. (Lenin, 1913) |
[Gulag slave laborers are] raw material. (Author Maxim Gorky, 1934) |
A foul-smelling heap of human garbase [Purge Trial Defenants]. (Prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky, 1938) |
Unpersons who had never existed. (Designation for people purged by the Soviet government.) |
| European Jews |
The inferior Jewish race. (Dr. Rudolph Ramm, Nazi medical educator, 1943) |
Jews are undoubtedly a race, but not human. (Adolph Hitler, 1923) |
The prisoners here are animals. (Nazi anatomy prof. Dr. August Hirt, 1942) |
The Jew is parasite. (Nazi propoganda booklet, 1944) |
Some day Europe will perish of the Jewish disease. (Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propoganda Minister, 1939) |
Transit material. (Portrayal of Jews dispatched to Nazi death camps, 1942-44) |
What shall we do with this garbage [Jews]? (Christian Wirth, extermination expert, 1942) |
The Reichsgerict itself refused to recognize Jews…as ‘persons’ in the legal sense. (1936 German Supreme Court decision) |
| Women |
They [women] form…the second sex, inferior in every respect to the first. (Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851) |
Women are not seen as human. (Report by women's group on pornographic images, 1980) |
Women are domestic animals. (19th-century poet Charles Baudelaire) |
Women's sexual parasitism is innate. (Philosopher Rene Guyon, 1950) |
The worst plauge Zeus has made - women. (Ancient Greek poet Semonides) |
I considered my wife…my property. (Former wife abuser, 1989) |
Emptying refuse into a sewer [the woman's body]. (Author Henry Miller, 1965) |
The statutory word “person” did not in these circumstances include women. (British voting rights case, 1909) |
| Unwanted Unborn |
The fetus, at most, represents only the potentiality of life. (U.S. Supreme Court decision, 1973) |
The fetus is not a human being. (Rabbi wolfe Keiman, 1984) |
Like…a primitive animal that's poked with a stick. (Dr. Hart Peterson on fetal movement, 1985) |
The fetus is a parasite. (Professor Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, 1984) |
Pregnancy when not wanted is a disease…in fact, a venereal disease. (Professor Joseph Fletcher,1979) |
People's body parts [embryos] are thier personal property. (Attorney Lori Andrews, 1986) |
An aborted baby is just garbage…just refuse. (Dr. Martti Kekomaki, 1980) |
The word “person” as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn. (U.S. Supreme Court decision, 1973) |
| Dependent Discards |
A life…devoide of those qualities which give it human dignity. (Assessment of child with dsiabilty, Dr. Harry Hartzell, 1978) |
No newborn infant should be declared human unitl it has passed certain tests. (Dr. Francis Crick, 1978) |
Unitl a living being can take conscious management of life…it remains an animal. (Prof. George Ball, 1981) |
That's a real parasite. (Medical staff characterization of a debilitated patient, 1989) |
Those sicklers. (Doctors' portrayal of patients with sickle cell anemia, 1986 ) |
I came to see patients as work objects. (Nursing home staff member, 1977) |
There's a lot of rubbish [patients] this morning. (E.R. doctor, 1979) |
New-born humans are neither persons nor even quasi-persons. (Philosopher Michael Tooley, 1983) |
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