Dehumanizing enemies as vermin reduces the guilt of killing them

Evidence

Most of the analysis of dehumanization in military contexts focuses on each side’s need to portray its enemies as subhuman and bestial creatures to make it easier to kill them. Exterminating vermin arouses little guilt. Dehumanization also can foster degrading treatment of prisoners of war, as we have seen in the cases of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2417

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader moral disengagement literature — dehumanization as a disengagement mechanism — and to the euphemistic ‘collateral damage’ language discussed in this same chapter. — connects to: Enemies are dehumanized into vermin before military force can be unleashed — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1451; Comparing victims to vermin and disease makes killing them psychologically easier — Gregory H. Stanton, Ten Stages of Genocide, 2