The dehumanization of animals

“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” declared Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable: cutting off water, electricity, fuel and food to the population of the Gaza Strip after the massacre of Israeli civilians at the hands of the terrorist group Hamas. The phrase exemplifies what several columnists around the world have defined as the “dehumanization” of those who are ethnically or racially different, leading to the genocides that have occurred throughout history. Like the Tutsis in Rwanda, whom the Hutus called “cockroaches.” “Kill the cockroaches!” they exhorted on the radio and in the newspapers. And 800,000 Tutsis were killed in 100 days in 1994.

By treating the other as an “animal,” extermination seems justified. Under this view, it is enough to promote dehumanization to authorize killing. This mutual dehumanization is perhaps the only explicit common ground between the Israeli far right led by Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of Hamas. For both sides, the only way out is to sweep the other away not only from their territory, but from life itself. And, to this end, any violence against the civilian population would be legitimized. But is this about dehumanization?

From a Eurocentric perspective, yes, without a doubt. However, it is worth taking the risk to think from other philosophical traditions that challenge anthropocentrism, which places the human species at the center. For many of the native peoples of the Americas, for example, “animals are people.” Humanity resides in the eye of the beholder. Which means that, to themselves, animals are humans. It is not possible to explain something so complex in such a short space. To delve deeper into this idea, I suggest diving into the fascinating concept of “Amerindian perspectivism,” developed by Brazilian anthropologists Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Tânia Stolze based on knowledge of different Indigenous peoples.

Thus, what they all share is not an “animality,” but a “humanity.” This vision is evident in myths, which evoke a time when different beings communicated and recognized each other as humans. This is not a mere reversal of roles, but a radical displacement of colonizing thought. If I bring it up at this time of horror unleashed by events in the Middle East, it is because I suspect that the denunciation of the “dehumanization” of the other by calling him an “animal,” even if it is a “human animal”— whether Jewish or Palestinian —, continues to use the same logic that drives war, all wars. The denunciation operates, therefore, with the same logic as what it is denouncing.

This thinking and this logic are the same ones that are causing the sixth mass extinction of species and global warming, a conception of the world that has lost the possibility of understanding that all lives have a place and everyone shares the same destiny, and this is perhaps another translation of the concept of the humanities, in the plural form. I believe that we must break the barriers of our understanding of the worlds in order to create a way out. If there is any chance for us to emerge from the horror, it is through the radical decolonization of thought.