Dehumanization

“ To destroy these activities; to reduce all the varied, and picturesque, and stimulating episodes in savage life to a dull routine of endless toil for uncomprehended ends; to dislocate social ties and disrupt social institutions; to stifle nascent desires and crush mental development; to graft upon primitive passions the annihilating evils of scientific slavery, and the bestial imaginings of civilised man, unrestrained by convention or law; in fine, to kill the soul in a people—this is a crime which transcends physical murder. ”

“ These are too commonly composed of degenerate beings, corrupted and enfeebled by the vices of society, without being benefited by its civilization. That proud independence which formed the main pillar of savage virtue has been shaken down, and the whole moral fabric lies in ruins. Their spirits are humiliated and debased by a sense of inferiority, and their native courage cowed and daunted by the superior knowledge and power of their enlightened neighbors. Society has advanced upon them like one of those withering airs that will sometimes breed desolation over a whole region of fertility. ”

“ If it were possible we might trace back from yonder robber and murderer--a human hyena--the long ancestral line of brutality, until we see it starting from some poor peasant of the Middle Ages, trampled into crime under the feet of feudalism. The little seed of weakness or wickedness has been carefully nursed by society, generation after generation, until it has blossomed at last in this destructive monster. Civilization has formulated a new variety of the genus homo--and it must inevitably perpetuate its kind. ”

“ This lowering of the level of general morality causes the most immoral part of society to come more and more to the top ; and an immoral public opinion is formed which not only permits, but even approves crimes, robberies, debauchery, and murder itself. Thus a vicious circle is set up: the evil elements of society, evoked by the social struggle, throw themselves hotly into public activity corresponding to the low level of their morality, and this activity again attracts to itself yet worse elements of society. ”

“ Taken from happiness, a comparative boy, I was plunged into a state of absolute torment, an existence of brutalizing labour, ceaseless cruelty, and blackest infamy. I herded with men who had degenerated from criminals into brutes under the influence of the infamous system. ”

“ The so-called depravity and crimes of these derelicts are fundamentally the depravity and criminal anti-social attitude of Society itself that first creates the underworld and, having created it, wastes much energy and effort in suppressing and destroying the menacing phantom of its own making,—forgetful of the elemental brotherhood of man, blind to the value of the individual, and ignorant of the beautiful possibilities inherent in even the most despised children of the depths. ”

“ Those, those, terrified me, Imre! To think of them shamed me; those types of man-loving-men who, by thousands, live incapable of any noble ideals or lives. Ah, those patently depraved, noxious, flaccid, gross, womanish beings! perverted and imperfect in moral nature and in even their bodily tissues! Those homosexual legions that are the straw-chaff of society; good for nothing except the fire that purges the world of garbage and rubbish! ”

“ Now a scene of persecution and cruelty began which far exceeds in atrocity anything which history has related. Every tie of nature and society was broken, every duty and every relation violated, and torture forced from all alike false accusations, betrayal of friends, confession of impossible crimes ”

“ It is a relic of barbarism, and stands a monument to the early savagery of the human race.
How is it possible for a man or woman to lead an upright, useful life after they once come under the ban of the law? Society combines to hound them down. ”

“ They saw nine and one-half millions of human beings. They saw the spawn of slavery, ignorant by law and by deviltry, crushed by insult and debauched by systematic and criminal injustice. They saw a people whose helpless women have been raped by thousands and whose men lynched by hundreds in the face of a sneering world. ”

“ Such teachings accompanied by seductive example are most dangerous to new-comers in distorting their moral vision and to lead them into paths discreditable not only to themselves individually, but to the class to which they belong—for it is well known as one of the most wanton and cruel forms of the injustice you have to suffer is that any wrong done by any of your people is charged not merely against the guilty individual but against your race. ”

“ Long ere it gains this disgusting pitch, the worst passions of our nature will become inflamed to madness,—a state more dangerous to virtue than even confirmed sottishness. In proof of this, it need only be observed that the one is an incentive to every species of criminality by which the peace of society is disturbed, while the evils of the other are confined principally to the debased individual who gives himself up to such disgraceful practices. ”

“ Every measure was pleasing and popular just in proportion as it tended to harass and ruin a set of people who were looked upon as enemies to God and man; and, indeed, as a race of bigoted savages, who were a disgrace to human nature itself.
"To render humanity fit to be insulted, it was fit that it should be degraded." ”

“ They trusted to bad conditions to create good human beings. They tolerated the institutions of human slavery, and hoped, poor fools, for the day when the slave should be noble and the slave-master kind. They believed that the human race was wicked, that it gloried in its wickedness, and that all the vices and crimes it committed were but the natural manifestations of its totally depraved nature. ”

“ In this way there appeared among mankind instinctive and exclusive impulses of sympathy and of duty, combined with intensely selfish predatory desires. The extraordinary complexity of the human brain is responsible for the strange many-sidedness of character which resulted. For example, crime and heroism developed side by side; child murder, parricide, rapine and robbery, slavery, war, and in particular the vilest subjugation of woman as an article of commerce or a beast of burden—these represent [27] the fruits of egotism and its attendant cunning and meanness. ”

“ They are menaces to its well-being, and vigorous resistance to their vicious propensities and evil doings is indispensable for the very life of society. In primitive society the work of redressing wrongs remains in the hands of aggrieved individuals, and as individuals are actuated by vengeance, hatred is met by hatred, blood is avenged by blood, and evil is repaid by evil. In organized society the right of redressing wrongs is taken from the individual. Society interferes, and in its authoritative position as State, undertakes to dispense justice to warring factions. ”

“ This depravity, descending from the rich to the poor, despising (in its selfish desire) the sanctity of the domestic hearth,—this depravity, still most deplorable when it is voluntarily submitted to, becomes hideous, frightful, when it is satisfied with violence. It is an impure and brutal slavery, an ignoble and barbarous tyranny over a fellow-creature, who in her fright replies to the solicitations of her master by her tears, and to his declarations with a shudder of fear and disgust. And then," continued Rodolph, "what is the consequence to the female? ”

“ We might expect to find in it the marks of despotism, severity, harshness, want of consideration, and yet we find the very opposite—mildness and humanity. But this mildness itself is a despotic mildness, that is, it robs one person of what it gives another—it is the mildness of arbitrariness and caprice, not that of humanity—it is the penalty of cruelty. ”

“ They're not real people, like you and I.' At this he curled his lip, barely able to contain his rage. 'On bad days..... They're harassed and preyed upon by police, jaded social workers and psychotic killers, or just beaten and abused by the fatherly' pimps.
'And what is their crime, that makes them the object of universal scorn and reprisal? They're VICTIMS, vulnerable, bringing out the predatory instinct in all of us. And more than that, they commit the most unforgivable sin of all: they make us look at ourselves, and see something about our pretty little world that we don't like. ”

“ This also Lady Frances excelled in. She had also a receptacle for all sorts of animals to retire to in their old age. It was of old the custom to bury the favourite dog near the master. To use those of the brute creation who toil for our pleasure, or labour for our profit, with hard and ungenerous treatment, is a species of inhumanity which all men allow to be derogatory from virtue. The authors of wanton cruelty towards the dumb creation, are justly execrated for their brutality. ”

“ We ask ourselves, then, with painful curiosity, what chain of fatal causes could thus debase these unhappy creatures, who have known shame and chastity? There are so many declivities, alas, which verge to that fall! It is rarely the passion of the depraved for depravity; but dissipation, bad example, perverse education, and, above all, want, which lead so many unfortunates to infamy; and it is the poor classes alone who pay to civilisation this impost on soul and body. ”

“ After such wise, by turning the innocent word 'prejudice' into a weapon of attack against everything which restrained vice, crime, illicit pleasure, violence, and social profligacy—against whatever, in short, rationally deserves to be called prejudice—the human race plunged willingly and universally into a pitiable and apparently immedicable state of pure unvarnished prejudice. ”

“ This travesty of the law by those who had been in its clutches revealed a vicious psychology lost to all shame and decency, but was also a condemnation of society which produced such types of men and women, for the most part victims of slum life, foul surroundings, and evil upbringing, tolerated, and indeed created, by the social system of England. ”

“ He who grovels in the worst human elements of any race, knows nothing about that race, and opens the door to the degeneracy of all the nations and races on earth, by advocating them as the evidences of degeneracy. ”

“ But if you call society inhuman you imply that the young girl is made to suffer by its censure. How then, can you hold her up to the scorn of society in the newspapers without realizing that you are making her suffering, still greater? ”

“ Only the workers in the darkest places of our great cities know how large illegitimacy looms as a factor in the social disintegration that leads to the prison, to the mad-house, to the hospitals, to the casual wards, and to the streets. Only the eye of the scientist can vision in the relation of the unhonored child to its mother the seed of that evil which one day shall become the dishonor of the dishonorable man. ”

“ So dark and terrible a picture of the human character seems unnatural and incredible. We can scarcely believe that any human being could have the inhumanity and heartlessness to do so base, cruel and hard-hearted a deed—so revolting and shocking to all our better feelings—a deed which seems to stand without a parallel in the annals of infamy and crime! But is it so? Is it more inhuman to be a passive agent in the destruction of our fellow beings, than an active one? ”

“ It is poisoning the fountains of our social life; it is ruining and degrading our young men, men who would scorn to have imputation put on them of equalization with negroes, but who have, nevertheless, found the lowest depths of moral depravity in this unnatural shame of their lives. ”

“ The standard of extreme cruelty is not merely descriptive, but necessarily embodies a moral judgment. The standard itself remains the same, but its applicability must change as the basic mores of society change. ”

“ Perhaps this is due to the inherited superstitions of our race, not long emerged from the blackness of barbarism, but at least we still feel as our forefathers did; as though the will to work evil had the power to bring about the evil desired. It is nonsense, since were it true, none could escape the direst misfortune, as every one of us is at some time or another the object of the hate or jealousy of other human beings. ”

“ But whoever expresses his disgust at such manliness, and allows his disgust to increase with the size of the bloody deeds, who despises such courage as the brutal insensibility of a hardened barbarian, he is branded by the vulgar judgment of thoughtless slaves and patriots as an enemy of the people or fantastic crank. ”

“ OK, that's a good code of conduct. I'm all for not murdering and raping, and not just because it's *wrong*, but because a world where the social norms include murdering and raping is a bad one for me to live in. ”

“ If these are the general sentiments of man, what must be their depravity—what must be their degeneracy—who can blot out and erase from the bosom the virtue that is most deeply rooted in the human heart, and twined, within the cords of life itself? Aliens from nature! Apostates from humanity! And yet, if there be a crime more fell, more foul; if there be anything worse than a wilful persecutor of his mother, it is that of a deliberate instigator and abettor to the deed ”

“ Were their members, therefore, monsters of depravity? The history of our race is made up of wrongs, many of which were committed without a suspicion of their true character, and many from an urgent sense of duty. ”

“ They would be condemned, as a race, to a life of vagabonds, paupers and beggars, of gipsies and pig stealers, and their women of something worse, a festering sore in society, carrying corruption wherever they would go, and a curse to themselves as well as to the white people among whom they would move. ”