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I don't normally do this, but that's a wee bit too close to precision to ignore.
"I am obeying the highest law by doing my duty. Man must defend himself against bedbugs and rats -- against vermin." -- Heinrich Himmler
"I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin." -- Adolf Hitler
The Seven Stages of Genocide
by
Dr. Gregory H. Stanton
An exceprt ...
THE GENOCIDAL PROCESS
Prevention of genocide requires a structural understanding of the genocidal process. Genocide has seven stages or operational processes. The first stages precede later stages, but continue to operate throughout the genocidal process. Each stage reinforces the others. A strategy to prevent genocide should attack each stage, each process. The seven stages of genocide are classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, and extermination. The eighth post-genocide stage, denial, always follows.
Classification -- Stage 1
All languages and cultures require classification - division of the natural and social world into categories. We distinguish and classify objects and people. All cultures have categories to distinguish between us and them, between members of our group and others. We treat different categories of people differently. Racial and ethnic classifications may be defined by absurdly detailed laws -- the Nazi Nuremberg laws, the "one drop" laws of segregation in America, or apartheid racial classification laws in South Africa. Racist societies often prohibit mixed categories and outlaw miscegenation. Bipolar societies are the most likely to have genocide. In Rwanda and Burundi, children are the ethnicity of their father, either Tutsi or Hutu. No one is mixed. Mixed marriages do not result in mixed children.
Symbolization - Stage 2
We use symbols to name and signify our classifications. We name some people Hutu and others Tutsi, or Jewish or Gypsy. Sometimes physical characteristics - skin color or nose shape - become symbols for classifications. Other symbols, like customary dress or facial scars, are socially imposed by groups on their own members. After the process has reached later stages (dehumanization, organization, and polarization) genocidal governments in the preparation stage often require members of a targeted group to wear an identifying symbol or distinctive clothing -- e.g. the yellow star. The Khmer Rouge forced people from the Eastern Zone to wear a blue-checked scarf, marking them for forced relocation and elimination.
Dehumanization - Stage 3
Classification and symbolization are fundamental operations in all cultures. They become steps of genocide only when combined with dehumanization. Denial of the humanity of others is the step that permits killing with impunity. The universal human abhorrence of murder of members of one's own group is overcome by treating the victims as less than human. In incitements to genocide the target groups are called disgusting animal names - Nazi propaganda called Jews "rats" or "vermin"; Rwandan Hutu hate radio referred to Tutsis as "cockroaches." Bodies of genocide victims are often mutilated to express this denial of humanity. Such atrocities then become the justification for revenge killings, because they are evidence that the killers must be monsters, not human beings themselves.
The next stage is Organization ...
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