/uj It deeply annoys me when human atrocity historians say "treated like animals," because it suggests that, for some reason, humans feel the need to have some group at the bottom. Once it was no longer socially acceptable in many places to do it with groups of humans, they simply used non-human animals. But in truth, the level of cruelty in past human atrocities and current animal atrocities, like factory farming and animal testing, is not about treating people as animals; it's about treating living beings as inanimate objects. Someday, I hope that we will see this as a category error. You don't explain the horror of oppression of one group of sentient beings by comparing it with a current atrocity in a way that suggests the current harm is non-negotiable and fixed. As history proves, cruelty is NEVER fixed.
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u/rangda flexitarian Apr 19 '26
Farmers care deeply about their animals ✅
Holocaust victims were treated “like nothing more than animals” ✅
Meaning the operators of concentration/death camps cared deeply about their victims I guess