5. Suç ve Ceza Film Festivali "AYR/MC/L/K" Tebliğler: Dehumanization And Islamophobia

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Sayfa 77

Dehumanization And Islamophobia

Dr. Farid HAFEZ*…

In his book Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others (St. Martin’s Press, 2011), David Livingstone Smith argues that “there are two powerful psychological forces that fuel the dehumanizing impulse. One is psychological essentialism. Psychological essentialism is the tendency to think that every kind of living thing possesses a unique essence: a mysterious inner quality that makes it a member of that kind”. For Smith, the most important feature of essentialism is “the notion that the essence of a thing is distinct from its appearance”. This means that although human beings may look similar to each other, their essence makes them different. Smith goes on: “The second psychological dynamic behind dehumanization is the belief that nature is arranged as a hierarchy […] We humans (modest beings that we are) have always placed ourselves near the uppermost rank, and have supposed that every other creature is less than human.”. Hence,…

“However, the idea that another group of people are not of our kind situates them as what social psychologists call an “out-group.” When this happens, powerful psychological biases are likely to come into play. We develop an “us and them” mentality that leads us to consider these others as a homogeneous mass rather than a group of individuals, and to think them as our moral inferiors. […] The combination of essentialist thinking with outgroup bias makes for a particularly nasty cocktail […] Even if a person’s behavior doesn’t conform to a negative racial stereotype,

Hence, we understand when a number of politicians call for restricting immigration…