The 5 Steps of Dehumanization (Explained)

Dehumanization is the act and also the effect of clearing a person or group of people of their characteristics that define them as human beings.

The 5 steps of dehumanization represent a process that as a whole makes up a tool that has been of great help to certain power groups throughout human history to contain numerous atrocities against other human beings.

Before explaining the 5 steps of dehumanization, it is convenient to reflect a little about what the word dehumanization really is.

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What is dehumanization?

We should first ask ourselves the following: what does it mean to be a human person? To answer that, we could say that a human person is one who owns a series of rights for the simple fact of being, and they, in theory, should belong to all human beings equally.

Now, this that all human beings should have the same rights in practice is very different. As we will see in this article, throughout history many people have been deprived of their rights, ceasing to be treated as human beings.

Dehumanization is a concept that It involves stripping a person or a group of people of their human characteristics and also of their rights as such. In this context, it is a concept that has been widely used to explain human evil.

Throughout human history, a large part of the abuses perpetrated against certain groups of people who had been treated as if they were not human beings, it is striking that they had people as executioners currents; although it is true that these abuses occurred in unusual circumstances.

We are going to qualify this. It is true that at the head of those atrocities produced normally was a person or group of people that we could brand as cruel, ruthless and many other pejorative adjectives, but it is also true that these people alone would not have been able to commit these atrocities without the collaboration of other people who were under his command, whether under a feeling of fidelity, under duress, being in a situation of despair or because of fear.

Now, although many proper names come to mind because they have committed heinous and despicable acts, here It is not intended to prosecute anyone in particular for their actions, but the fact of the matter is to reflect on the fact of that in certain circumstances, a person with no intention of harming anyone could do so indirectly in a certain context or also under duress, and this has been possible through a very powerful tool through a process divided by the 5 steps of dehumanization, as we will see below.

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What are the 5 steps of dehumanization?

The crimes against humanity have experts who affirm that they have been produced, in part, as a process of dehumanization, that is divided into different phases.

The 5 steps of dehumanization pass successively forming a powerful tool that allows a group of power, with a determined ideology, to coerce and condition other people, usually subordinate, to perpetrate a series of atrocities and Even though firsthand they would never believe that they would be able to do something like that, get them to find a justification for do it.

In contraction we will briefly see what the 5 steps of dehumanization consist of that can be part of the process behind crimes against humanity.

1. The creation of fear

The first step of this dehumanization to get a group of people to exceed ethical limits would be instill fear in them, fear for their own life and that of their loved ones.

Fearing people about what might happen to them and their family is a tool that has been widely used by dictatorial regimes throughout history in various countries. By managing to instill fear in subordinates, they easily become scapegoats and in this way are held responsible for the crimes committed.

In this first step, an ideology would begin to be forged in society, which can be based on preconceived ideas of racism, homophobia, etc.

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2. Soft exclusion

The second of the 5 steps of dehumanization is soft exclusion, which consists of get the group of subjects, who have been made to become scapegoats, are excluded from some sectors of society (For example, the Nazis began by excluding Jews from professions held in public office, such as hospitals and universities).

In this second step, the ideology of the power group would gradually acquire a certain solvency in society.

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3. Documented rationale for fear and exclusion

To carry out this third of the 5 steps of dehumanization, the power group uses media coverage and documented research in order to provide evidence to justify the reason for exclusion of the group of people to be excluded, such as the argument that it is for the "good of society."

After managing to carry out this step, the ideology of the power group would be formally enshrined.

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4. Hard exclusion

In this fourth step of dehumanization the objective would be hard exclusion, which consists of making the rest of the population see that "it has been shown that this group is the cause of society's problems"Therefore, they must be excluded from civil society and stop being people with rights, so that they have no voice or vote in society, being social outcasts.

After perpetrating this fourth step, the ideology of the power group would be strongly socially consolidated.

5. Extermination

Upon reaching the last of the 5 steps of dehumanization, the extermination of the oppressed group would begin, so that its members are forcibly expelled from society (in concentration camps, ghettos, prisons, etc.) to being treated as "non-human" and even being exterminated.

If the previous 4 steps have been successfully carried out, the latter is carried out more easily because there are less left people who care to defend them because they have lost their voice within the society in which they lived and, therefore, their rights as beings humans.

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An example: the case of Dražen

To better understand the 5 steps of dehumanization, let's look at the case of Dražen Erdemović is an example that any human being in a desperate situation could go where he would never have imagined, and that is when exploded the war in 1992 in Bosnia-Herzegovina (which was part of Yugoslavia), Dražen, against his will, was drafted into the Yugoslavian army to fight against the Croatian army. At that time, Dražen was 21 years old and a young man like any other with dreams and plans for his future, such as having a decent job or starting a family.

A year later, Dražen was able to leave the military service to return to his wife, who just gave birth to their son, and thus start a new life. away from the war thanks to an intermediary who had agreed with Dražen to provide them with the documents that would allow him and his family to leave the country. However, the intermediary did not show signs of life, having collected the agreed money for the help that he had to provide, so they could not leave the country.

Then the family found themselves in a precarious and very complicated situation, since they did not have a home, nor did they have money or a job with which to earn it. So Dražen's only option in this desperate moment was to accept an offer a friend had made to enlist in the Bosnian Serbian Army., since they gave him a home where he could house his wife and son, and they also paid him a salary. The house where Dražen's family had stayed had belonged to a Muslim family that had been forcibly evicted by the army.

Dražen, who had accepted the job so that she could feed his family in the face of such a precarious and desperate situation as the one they were experiencing, he told himself that everything he was doing was going to be temporary and that he was doing it to help his family. So one day when he was sent on a mission ordered by his superiors, they began to arrive buses full of people, including children, blindfolded and holding hands tied. Then the Dražen's superiors ordered him and his companions to shoot those people in the head.

Dražen protested to the superior who gave him the order and persisted in his refusal to execute those people, but soon realized that if he did not do so, it would be him that they would end up executing. Then, before the warning and the anger of his commander, he got into position, next to his companions, and began to shoot those people.

Some time later, he could not with the remorse for what happened and surrendered to the authorities, being transferred to the International Criminal Court, where he confessed that, according to his estimates, he had he killed around 70 people, for which he came to be tried and convicted of committing crimes against humanity as a war criminal, despite having shown repentance for his acts.

The story of Dražen could be a story among similar millions, which gives us room to reflect and see that in a situation as desperate as the one that Dražen lived Any ordinary person, who has no intention of hurting anyone and simply wants to get ahead, could cross unsuspected limits.

As well as being conditioned and coerced by this 5-step dehumanization system to commit those crimes, so were Dražen's superiors. And such atrocities did not occur overnight, but rather the powerful group, the oppressors, carried out in a effective each and every one of the 5 steps of dehumanization, in order to achieve the goal of exterminating these people innocent