The Politics of Dehumanization

The cost of politics is high, but in no functional society should the price of politics and debate ever be your life. Yet, in an era of increasing dehumanization and polarization, combined with the rampant gun violence existing in the US, it is far from surprising, even as it is nauseating.

On Wednesday, September 10th, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and ally of Donald Trump, was killed while speaking at a university in Utah. He had just been asked, “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” A single shot ran out shortly after, and Kirk was killed.

This shooting is just the latest act of political violence in the United States, with the country experiencing around 150 politically motivated attacks in the first six months of 2025, according to the BBC. In June, Minnesota’s top Democratic legislator, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark Hortman, were murdered. Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, were also shot and hospitalized. In 2024, there were two attempted assassinations of Trump during his campaign, and UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed.

What is glaringly evident and critical to discuss is the dehumanization of people. On Meet the Press, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he saw Kirk’s murder as another example of “an effort by the radical left to dehumanize the MAGA movement”. Immediately after Kirk’s shooting, Trump appeared in a video from the Oval Office to condemn the attack, yet he also immediately went after the “radical left” when the shooter’s identity and motivations were not yet known.

When Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, Trump offered a “brief, impersonal condemnation” of the attack on Truth Social. In response to Kirk’s assassination, American flags were lowered to half-staff at the White House, public buildings, US embassies, and military posts. Kirk will be awarded the President’s Medal of Freedom.

On August 25th, Stephen Miller, the Homeland Security Advisor and White House Deputy Chief of Staff, in an interview, stated: “The Democrat Party (…) is an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. (…) It is a domestic extremist organization.” The politicians and individuals perpetuating this rhetoric do not have to be holding the gun to be held responsible for the blood that is spilled.

Scholar Arie Perliger, who studies political violence and assassinations, has stated that when tracking extremist online social media accounts, there is a strong sense that the left is celebrating the assassination. “And that has created an escalation of language from those in the extreme right social media ecosystem. There is much more willingness to discuss issues of retaliation, an actual civil war”.

He continues, “And that’s my biggest worry. If you look at social media, what we see is that both sides embrace this kind of rhetoric that really concerns me. More than ever, I’ve seen calls for retaliation and a strong sense that the other side is unwilling to show any sympathy to what happened.”

These examples go beyond political polarization. This is genuinely refusing to see members of opposing political parties as humans. No one had to like Charles Kirk, or any politician, to be aware of the fact that they did not deserve to be murdered for their views. This is not how political disagreements should happen.

While these examples are predominantly from Republicans, people on social media, just as they did after UnitedHealthcare’s CEO’s killing, praised the murder of Kirk (and in fact, are losing their jobs because of it). This is a cross-party, cross-spectrum issue.

History’s greatest atrocities happen because of our ability to dehumanize others. Research shows that our ability to dehumanize can be influenced by how we think others view important facets of the world. “(…) dehumanization appears to be at least in part driven by (…) ‘imagined otherness’: the belief that an outgroup perceives of something that one cares deeply about differently than one assumes most other people do,” according to Professor Sameer Srivastava.

In his study, researchers found that self-identified members of one party were more likely to blatantly dehumanize members of the opposing party when they thought that group’s view about America was different from what they would ascribe to a typical person.

Those conditions already exist in everyday life. The fact that immigrants are labeled as “aliens”. Ways that we manage to incorporate into our vocabulary, ways to dehumanize and stigmatize those we view as “others”. Shootings and harmful political rhetoric will only worsen the already creeping dehumanization rooting itself in American society.

Politics is going beyond polarization; it is stripping away the bare essence of humanity. Soon, we will no longer see each other as individuals with differing perspectives.

We will see each other as targets. People already do.

Cover Image: The U.S. flag above the White House is lowered to half staff after right-wing activist and commentator Charlie Kirk, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, was shot dead in Utah, in Washington, D.C., Sept. 10, 2025. Photo by Daniel Becerril/ Reuters