Dehumanization Awareness Project (2021-2022)
This page is set to examine the origin of harassing and discriminating rhetoric towards members who challenged vaccination mandates.
The content on this page is contributed by members who have personally experienced such rhetoric, including from the Union representatives.
See also:
Why BoD did not challenge the Vaccination Mandate from onset? (TBA)
Why BoD did not follow up with its original intent to assist members placed on LWOP for non-compliance with Vaccination Mandate (TBA)
This project documents the increasingly hostile, dehumanizing and at times threatening rhetoric used in Canada against people who decline the current Covid vaccines.
When the public come to see one group as the cause of their problems, as a physical threat to their safety, as dirty and dangerous, as unacceptable members of their society, as obstacles that are the only thing that stand in the way of liberation from crisis—it is not difficult to see that atrocities may follow.
The goal of the project is to hold up a mirror to Canadians, show them how far removed from basic norms and values of community and society their thinking about, and treatment of, some of their fellow human beings has become.
Holding up a mirror may help to slow down or bring to a halt this otherwise escalatory process. And documenting this rhetoric may be valuable for a process of truth and reconciliation afterwards.
If you have examples of the kind of hostile rhetoric, please send them to kmswinkels@protonmail.com
For a video on the process of dehumanization, the emergence of a totalitarian society and the risk that atrocities may follow, see e.g. this video by professor Mattias Desmet (not affiliated with the project).
"Professor Mattias Desmet talks about his work that connects past historical episodes of what is called “Mass Formation”... and current events. The risks are as grave as they come. Unless a few brave and courageous people are willing to stand up and say “I don’t agree!” history suggests that we will end up with a fully totalitarian outcome."
For historical examples and in-depth analysis on the origins of totalitarianism, please read Hannah Arendt's classic. It is freely available in Open Library in PDF and Audio formats.
Data source: Dehumanization Awareness Project (Google Sheet)