On the Need to Kill Enemies: How Dehumanization and the Cultivation of Hatred Legitimizes Organized Violence
Author(s)
Shatan, C. F.
Abstract
The perception that people need enemies has played a major role in the history of human hatred and conflict. What renders people susceptible to this perception? The complex psychosocial process of basic combat training (BCT) in the military provides clues to the teaching of hate in society at large. BCT devalues recruits and brutalizes them. Since they are forbidden to oppose their Drill Instructors, recruits deflect the cruelty they experience into active aggression against others. Enemy Formation (“Enemization”) – through dehumanization of self and “others” and loss of compassion – is essential to prepare for war and killing. The core of enemization is splitting between good and evil, between the good self and the bad self. Despite the end of the Cold War, combat and enemization have been normalized as “facts of life.” Intolerance of the presence of the “other” within a majority of social contexts contributes to “enemization” and violence, leaving vast numbers of victims in its wake, genocide and “ethnic cleansing.”
