Ben Royce 🇺🇦<p>Jesus fucking Christ</p><p>"Assimilation-induced <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/dehumanization" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>dehumanization</span></a>: <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Psychology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Psychology</span></a> research uncovers a dark side effect of <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/AI" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AI</span></a></p><p>...when people interact with <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/autonomousAgents" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>autonomousAgents</span></a>—such as robots or <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/virtualAssistants" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>virtualAssistants</span></a>—that display strong <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/emotionalIntelligence" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>emotionalIntelligence</span></a>, they tend to see those machines as more humanlike. But this shift comes with an unintended consequence: people may also begin to see other humans as less human, leading to a higher likelihood of mistreating them."</p><p><a href="https://www.psypost.org/assimilation-induced-dehumanization-psychology-research-uncovers-a-dark-side-effect-of-ai/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">psypost.org/assimilation-induc</span><span class="invisible">ed-dehumanization-psychology-research-uncovers-a-dark-side-effect-of-ai/</span></a></p>
#dehumanization
1 post1 participant0 posts today
In the Black Mirror episode "Men Against Fire," soldiers are manipulated by neural implants into seeing their targets as monstrous “roaches.” It’s a chilling metaphor for how dehumanization makes violence easier to justify—how perception can be engineered to suppress empathy.
We might not have implants in our heads, but we're still constantly fed narratives—through news media, films, and even video games like Call of Duty—that shape how we see entire groups of people. Often, they’re cast as the villain, the threat, the other.
One group that’s been persistently portrayed this way is Muslims. From headlines that link Islam to terrorism to entertainment that uses Muslim characters as stock villains, these patterns have created a distorted image. Over time, it becomes easy to forget that we're talking about real people—people with families, histories, hopes, and beliefs as varied as anyone else’s.
Just like the soldiers in Men Against Fire, many of us are trained—subtly or overtly—to look past someone’s humanity. And that’s dangerous. Because once we stop seeing people as fully human, anything can be justified.
The way forward isn’t through more fear, but through understanding. We need to question the stories we’re told, listen more deeply, and seek out voices that aren’t always handed a microphone. Only then can we begin to replace suspicion with empathy—and division with something more human.
Continued thread
Refs:
Suarez, C. (2018). The Power Manual. New Society Publishers.
She draws here also on the work of Audre Lorde, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and others.
End of 
#Oppression
#PowerDynamics
#Exploitation
#Dehumanization
#Marginalized
#Equity
How oppression comes about through people's micro-interactions. 
Seven patterns of dominance:
1. Tolerance.
Allowing small doses of difference (especially those that are of benefit to my own or my company/organization's agenda).
But never enough to cause change to the power relationship.
Diversity, but not equity!
1/7
(A thread )
#Trump posted a photo of himself holding up a picture claiming to show #KilmarAbregoGarcia’s tattoos that prove he’s MS-13.
The picture he’s holding has obviously been digitally altered to add the characters MS-13.
The source of this BS is a neo-Nazi X user who claims the tattoos are code for “MS-13.”
This is why you try people in court of #law & not on social media.
Continued thread
"In a stark recasting of Orwell’s original insight, in 2024 it was not Trump and his MAGA allies who cloaked their intentions in euphemism and ambiguity. Instead, it was mainstream media, pollsters, and political consultants who retreated into vagueness—minimizing or outright ignoring Trump's explicit threats in an effort to avoid accusations of bias, partisanship, or alarmism."
#Trump #Republicans #ICE #immigrants #cruelty #Nazis #dehumanization #lies #fascism #media
/6
Continued thread
"In the shadow of mid-20th-century atrocities, George Orwell warned us in his indispensable essay, 'Politics and the English Language,' that political speech often serves primarily to defend the indefensible through 'euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness.' Today, this warning rings truer than ever.
~ Michael Podhorzer
#Trump #Republicans #ICE #immigrants #cruelty #Nazis #dehumanization #lies #fascism #media
/5
Continued thread
"The reason I think we're at the numbers we're at is because this movement has been building a very long time. And one of the things that we need to do when we reclaim America and an America for everybody is to push these people back under the rock they came from. Because that's really where this kind of mentality should be in a healthy society. They'll always be there, but they shouldn't be running everything."
#Trump #Republicans #ICE #immigrants #cruelty #Nazis #dehumanization #racism
/4
Continued thread
"There is the idea of othering and ... you can see the way the administration began these flights with individuals that they believed they had constructed this image of them as these terrible human beings. Again, although 90% of them do not have criminal records, but they could do it. They had brown skin."
~ Heather Cox Richardson
#Trump #Republicans #ICE #immigrants #cruelty #Nazis #dehumanization #lies #racism
/3
https://thelefthook.substack.com/p/how-trumps-greed-grift-and-racism
Continued thread
"They’re painted not as people, but as animals. As monsters. As rapists. As the scourge of American society. The messaging isn’t accidental. It is the exact kind of dehumanization that makes cruelty palatable, even desirable. ...
This is the playbook. This has always been the playbook. Turn the masses against the vulnerable. Make cruelty the point. Then repeat the lie until the truth chokes on its own breath."
#Trump #Republicans #ICE #immigrants #cruelty #Nazis #dehumanization #lies
/2
"Reminiscent of Hitler’s grotesque propaganda, where Jews were cast as vermin, stripped of their humanity so that no one would care when they were disappeared, the Trump apparatus is manufacturing the same cruelty, recast for modern America. The new 'vermin' are the immigrants. The undocumented. The vulnerable. The desperate."
~ Michael Cohen
#Trump #Republicans #ICE #immigrants #cruelty #Nazis #dehumanization #lies
/1
https://www.meidasplus.com/p/when-silence-wins-everyone-else-loses
Meidas+ · "When Silence Wins, Everyone Else Loses"
The 'banality of evil' described by political theorist Hannah Arendt is taking hold in the United States.
What she saw in Hitler’s Germany, we can see in Trump’s America.
#Nazis #TrumpMusk #Deportations #Fascism #Coup #Dehumanization #Immigrants #Racism #USPol
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-04-10/hannah-arendt-germany-hitler
Los Angeles Times · Column: What Hannah Arendt saw in Hitler's Germany, we can see in Trump's America
Continued thread
It’s begun.
The #SocialSecurity Admin this week entered the names & SSNs of >6,000 mostly Latino immigrants into a database it uses to track #dead people, effectively #erasing their ability to receive #benefits or #work legally in the #UnitedStates….
The move, requested by #DHS Secy [& dog killer] #KristiNoem, is aimed at putting pressure on the #undocumented immigrants to leave the country.
#trump #law #immigration #dehumanization #labor
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/10/self-deportation-immigrants-social-security-dead/
The Washington Post · Social Security classifies thousands of immigrants as dead, as part of Trump crackdown
Continued thread
The goal is to cut those people off from using crucial financial services like bank accounts & credit cards, along w/their access to government benefits.
The effort hinges on a surprising new tactic: repurposing #SocialSecurity’s “death master file,” which for years has been used to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, to include the names of living people who the govt believes should be TREATED AS IF THEY ARE DEAD.
"#ICE director says #deportations should be run like ‘#Amazon Prime for human beings’"
Jesus fucking Christ
The #sadism has no bottom. #Dehumanization is the gleeful loudly announced goal
All of the bigots and morons out there will love it or not care
None of this is going to end well, there is some really scary shit coming
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/ice-todd-lyons-deporation-amazon