'NPR' commentary on Manchester terror attack quotes UNE’s David Livingstone Smith
A commentary published on the website of WBUR, Boston’s National Public Radio news station, quoted David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, from his 2011 Book, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. The piece, titled “The Way Forward: Trying to See The Human Face Behind Terror,” discusses the motivation of people who commit atrocities, such as the recent terrorist attack in Manchester, England.
The quotation from Smith explains that the first step in becoming capable of atrocities against others is to view them as less than human. “When people dehumanize others, they actually conceive of them as subhuman creatures,” said Smith. The subsequent process, he explained, will “liberate aggression and exclude the target of aggression from the moral community.”
The commentary continues with an examination of the forces that propel people to dehumanize their fellow humans: a combination of rage and a desire to serve a higher calling in which they believe.
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