Don’t Mimic the Machine: How Dehumanization Slips into Our Speech

Dehumanization is not just the tool of the oppressor—it’s the blueprint of genocide. And too often, we mirror its logic without realizing it. In anger. In memes. In discourse meant to punch up. But language has consequences, especially when it blurs the line between calling out harm and embodying the logics of annihilation.

Let’s be clear:

• “You’re a cunt” is not the same as “You’re acting like a cunt.”

• The first reduces someone to a slur. It collapses their entire being into a disposable object.

• The second, while still offensive, at least frames behavior—not identity.

It’s not about tone-policing—it’s about recognizing the architecture of erasure.

When you flatten a person to a slur, stereotype, or single trait, you’re not just insulting them. You’re enacting the same rhetorical violence used to justify genocide, imprisonment, and extermination.

That’s how it starts:

• “They’re animals.”

• “They’re all the same.”

• “They’re monsters.”

• “They don’t feel pain.”

• “They aren’t human.”

You’ve heard these lines before—because every genocide has used them.

From Nazi Germany to the Rwandan radio broadcasts. From Zionist rhetoric about Palestinians to American cops talking about Black youth.

Dehumanization always precedes mass violence.

It greases the gears of death.

So when we dehumanize—even to “vent,” even “at our enemies”—we’re echoing a system we claim to be dismantling. That doesn’t mean we can’t rage. It means our rage must be principled.

Name violence. Call out abusers. Dissect cruelty.

But don’t become the echo of what we’re trying to destroy.

Rehumanize as rebellion.

Not because they deserve it—but because we do.

Because our liberation will never be built on the same scaffolding as their genocide.