Dehumanizing Our Enemies In Turn Dehumanizes Us

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Wolfenstein 3D is the game whose final boss is mecha-Hitler. You're thinking about this too much in relation to that series.

Also, I can't speak for everyone but I don't relate video game Nazis to real life ones.

This post will not be popular. But it's provocative and took effort and thought, so I appreciate that.

I always thought Hitler was a robot... Gee, thanks video games. But I do agree with @little_socrates. The first half with the piece about sniper was really well written and well thought out.

I can agree with some of the theory you laid down but not the notion that making them an enemy in video games somehow dehuminizes them any more than any other enemies that you could substitute for them. Honestly I think the more appropriate analogy for today's world would be one of the extremist Islamists.

@demoskinos: I guess I picked Nazis because of their "glamor," and because it was the announcement of Wolfenstein that made me start thinking about it, but yes, these ideas certainly apply to extremist Islamists as well. Or maybe it applies to any human video game enemy? I'm still sussing this all out, that's why the post ends in a torrent of questions and a gut check.

It's definitely important to think about how we talk about people like Charles Whitman, as you detail in the first part of your past.

But I don't think this fight can be fought with the Nazis. They have been demonized so pervasively for so long that to imply they were anything other than evil offends a lot of people. As antagonists, they're seen as perfectly acceptable cannon fodder, in the way mutants or aliens are. It's dangerous to think of any group as essentially evil, but I think with the Nazis that way of thinking has so permeated our culture that it's not even a point of contention.

Yea I tend to think of people as men aswel, no matter how out of their damn mind they are.

I think making a big bad out of nazis is IN SOME WAYS a victory, and I can relate to that thought, but by the way it's pretty fuckin lazy story-telling. In the question of whether or not removing empathy makes us all robot aliens: Yeah I bet it probably does, but even before you get to THAT conversation, I'd say you probably shouldn't do it cos it makes for a boring and lazy story.

No that's the whole point, it's "Should we be making a cartoon Dick Dastardly out of terrifying human beings."

A more down-to-earth version of making Hitler a robot with guns on it is seeing people cheering and chanting "U.S.A" outside the hospital bed of the Boston bomber. Is levity in the face of tragedy actually more terrifying than dignified mourning, is the topic.

But they were human, it's an important thing to remember. It helps keep us humble and away from a proud and self-righteous attitude. The only difference between a Nazi and any one of us is the socioeconomic and political circumstances we grew up in.

I mean this is basically the exact conversation around The Producers, right?

One of the accomplishments of The Producers was making a big fat joke out of Adolf Hitler and the nazi regim, about 20 years after the events of World War II. A lot of people saw it as a victory, and a way of healing, and overcoming the fear and post-trauma of a dark time. Is THAT the definition of being human?

There's an argument out there that it is, but my gut feeling says it's probably on a pretty low rung of the ladder.

I like shooting nazis in video games. There is nothing wrong with that.

First off, interesting and well written article, good job. But as for my input on the matter, I think, like others in the comments, that Nazis have been demonized to such extent that it'd be hard to start trying to humanize them in this way now, at least in video games.

I agree with your theory. I think while we labels such acts as monstruosities and the perpetrators as monsters, and fail to see both the causes that lead to those incidents and acknowledge the people who enacted them, we will allow similar things to happen. There is a limit to what any law about gun control or prevention of any kind can do, while we fail to see the reasons behind such acts.

In videogames and in movies, normaly the antagonists aren't fleshed past their paper thin motivations, which leads to lack of any real empathy with them and the sentiment of agression.

They can be understood in some manner, like Chapin attempts to understand Whitman, and to deny their humanity is to deny our own. So are we doing wrong by shooting at them in our virtual worlds? Are we furthering the gap between "us" and history's perceived "monsters?" Are we helping to sustain such a shallow understanding in the name of entertainment? And does any of this, at all, matter?

To deny their humanity is to deny understanding ours. The reasons which can lead to destructive acts. And yes, we're doing wrong in using them as virtual target practices, as we give up on our desire to understand them when we shoot them multiple times without a secont thought. And yes video games are entertainment, and thats why we do it. And it does matter. But we can't ask that all the entertainment be educational, sometimes consumers need something mindless.

I'm guessing Inglorious Basterds didn't go over too well either, did it.

@c0l0nelp0c0rn1: Sure. I don't agree with the tendency to portray Nazis as inhumanly evil, but I suppose by consuming content that participates in this mode of representation, I'm complicit in its continuation. I can't deny that I enjoy watching movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark or playing WWII shooters, though I don't think it's because I enjoy watching Nazis get killed. In any case, it's important to occasionally reflect on the media we consume and the various world views they implicitly present.

Except Whitman's actions were caused by a brain tumor. Millions of people have shitty, terrible lives and don't go shooting up college campuses because of it. He had no control over his actions. Even without the fact that the song is straight-up based on false information and emotional trauma had nothing to do with anything, there's still a rather large cognitive disconnect when talking about a sick man versus Nazis.

And there's little evidence to show that we're any different from people who were involved with the death camps, even among the victims. The operation of the internment camps relied on a chain of command that required a vast majority of those involved to be complicit, including people who were ostensibly captives. Indeed, many of the cruelest overseers and foremen were prisoners who received their tiny scraps of power from the Nazis themselves.

A rhesus monkey will starve to death before willingly harming a fellow rhesus monkey. How long do you think it would take for most people to kill their neighbors for food?

this, although I have to add that though I want to understand and sympathize with the killers(as well as the victims obviously). I don't think the mainstream media should do so... people are impressionable and giving them attention at all is terrible.

It's a Wolfenstein game, don't overanalyze it.

But the Nazis are the best example of a straight up villan in modern history. I'm sure a lot of their soldiers were just regular dudes that got caught up in bullshit propaganda.

Yes, humanize them. Remember that evil is a quality a human can have.

I go to UT. That's my gripping commentary on the subject.

I'll instead quote Steve, since he basically said what I was thinking:

Which, just to once again clear up what a duder mislead Giant Bomb members about, never actually happened. But there are certainly events that have actually occurred which fit this point.

Should we have more artistic depictions of the reality that evil people are still ultimately people?

Yes.

Should we avoid any artistic depictions of evil people as pure villains?

No.

What about transhumanising enemies like Deus Ex does?

@example1013 said:

I imagine the reason Harry Chapin wrote a song, and not a biography about Whitman, was so he could take artistic liberties with the reality of the shooting. The song is about Whitman as an idea. There's no way for a musician to know if Whitman was suffering an existential crisis like the one depicted in the song or not.

Furthermore, I was not simply comparing a sick man to the Nazis, I was comparing history's/MSM's treatment of both accounts. Other than that, I do like the additional angle you provide. Reminds me of the Stanford Prison Experiment.

I like this. Maybe all we need is more mainstream counterpoint, while allowing the current trend to do its thing (not that we could unallow it, haha).

@atmonauti: My point is alternately either that dehumanization is not required to be ok with shooting Nazis, or that dehumanization is so reflexive and natural that we have no problem bringing ourselves closer to the cruelty of groups like the Nazis. In fact, some distance would bring comfort, as it would signal actual advancement. Adults are 95% just as petty and cruel as children (who are exceptionally petty and cruel for their size), they just use a complex network of rationalizations and mechanisms to confirm their biases and maintain their self-images.

I am an adult and therefore recognize that my enemies in video games are actually comprised of polygons and AI code. Case closed.

@punkxblaze: That doesn't mean that dehumanization of particular groups isn't happening or isn't negatively affecting your thoughts/feelings towards these groups.

@example1013: How can you elaborate on how you think dehumanization would not be required to be okay with shooting Nazis? Wouldn't the opposite be true? That you have to see them as less than human in order to accept it?

Enemies in games like Wolfenstein are intentionally dehumanized because it's not fun to murder a human being. We can have fun doing an act that normal people believe to be inherently wrong because the humanity of the enemy and sometimes the players themselves (like in multiplayer shooters) is taken out of the equation. Even a game like JFK Reloaded can be fun when we're seeing the people we're shooting not as real human beings but as toys to be played with. These games are fun only because we know they're not real.

If we're looking for a discussion of our mindless dehumanization of enemies (esp. Nazis) ina video game or other media, we can look elsewhere (e.g. Inglorious Basterds, Metro 2033), and games like Wolfenstein, which is more of an effect of it rather than a discussion, are mostly so far removed from reality. "Realistic" propaganda games like Blackwater are not quite successful in comparison. I think we video game consumers are not as ethically unsound as we sometimes think we are.

@atmonauti: I don't know, I've had no problem staring a dude in the face and seriously considering choking the life out of him, without trying to ignore the fact that he's a person. He just became a person whose life I wanted to end.

I am not worried about shooting endless waves of demonized assailants in the face causing me to become less sensitive or understanding to my fellow man because I have a healthy distinction between fantasy and reality.

I do not believe video games should be knocked for portraying enemies in such a fashion that people without a healthy distinction become less understanding in reality because they will find other ways to harden their hearts, be it movies, television, books, music, etc.

If you're going to target one medium, target them all.

No, it's the Neo-Nazi that I delivered pizzas to in the past that dehumanized Nazis. That piece of shit never tipped.

I would like to contend the point that Nazis did not have sharper-than-average teeth and clawed fingers. I have spent much time around Nazis in my life, and in my experience they are, in fact, actual eldritch horrors.

I think it's ok to dehumanise an artistic rendering of a human, be it in any art form. The real problem arises when you start dehumanising actual people. I don't believe a mentally healthy person is susceptible to having the barrier between reality and fantasy broken simply by exposing themselves to this media.

This is why young girls who are exposed to fashion/celebrity magazines get so messed up by them, because the fashion and celebrity industries thrive on and profit from dehumanising actual human beings, so for the girls there is no disconnect. They see that the most successful people are the ones who are either so conforming to the unnatural body types as to be inscrutable, or are the most vicious and verbally abusive. No wonder there's so many anorexic and/or suicidal teens out there.

But I've been playing very violent videogames for many many years now, and while I find the violence to be a bit low brow and boring, and its given me a high tolerance for other violent or disturbing forms of media, I don't think it's affected my ability to sympathise with real people's plights. Every time a new report of a horrible incident comes out I am usually depressed for at least a day.

And now my quick reply has turned into a short essay, woops. Great post by the way, its good to see a thought provoking topic, it's quite rare on these boards.

I don't believe that just because we use real life antagonists as fictional ones we somehow lessen their real life significance. As long as the fictional perception and real life perception don't cross, I think we're fine.

@atmonauti: Nazis were indeed just men and women, But I prefer to humanize their victims rather than the perpetrators.

Lord knows their victims suffered far worse and unlike the Nazis, they receive far less attention and coverage in entertainment media.

I see you point, I guess I just don't like spending so much energy worrying about people who have committed great acts of evil, when the victims of their acts need so much help. It doesn't feel fair you know?

@audiobusting: Absolutely love your response. Thank you for posting.

@example1013: God damn, I'd hate to meet you in a bar while upset.

@rollingzeppelin: Thanks for the post. I certainly don't mind the "short essay" you've posted.

Sorry, but I see no reason in trying to humanize people who have done such unforgivable acts. It's stupid to say that, oh this person didn't have claws, he was a human who was deeply troubled, blah, blah, blah. You give up your humanity and turn into a monster when you willingly choose to enact such terrible crimes upon other people.

If you want to argue that at some point these people were... people, then that is a different thing. If you want to analyze the climate which turned them into what they are and use the person as an example of what not to be, then that is a different matter. But your legacy is what remains, and if your legacy is that of a person who has committed manslaughter on such a huge scale then you will always be known as a monster. Plenty of people in the world suffer immense hardships, and they don't turn into psychotic shooters. I don't have time to feel sympathetic towards the Nazi's for example, because I'm too busy being shocked at all the disgusting acts that they committed.

I missed the part where you explain how dehumanizing them dehumanizes us. Making boogeymen out of mad men seems quite human to me. I can see how creating distance between the unconscionable and ourselves can serve as a reinforcement of what humanity is (or at least what society wants it to be), or a rejection of that which humanity ought not to be.

Sussing out the causes is important to helping others who are veering down that path, but labeling what lies at the end as a monster isn't mutually exclusive to prevention of course.

The reminder is the villification, and the lesson comes from understanding that they were actually human.

Better question, why is the Western world so adverse to deaths of it own? Tens of thousands of American deaths was enough for Washington to pull out of the Vietnam war yet hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese left Hanoi unfazed. A garment factory collapses in Dhaka and well over a thousand are now reported to be dead. No doubt never would've happened if safety measures were properly enforced, but the bloodthirsty demand for cheap labor from American industrial giants allows it to occur. No accountability, no justice. Just bribes of blood money. Out of sight, out of mind, the media doesn't seem to care so why should the average American citizen? Inhuman? No, seems to be human nature at this point.

It's an interesting post but part of being human is being a monster. You said that the nazi men and women didn't have fangs and claws, but how many animals do have fangs and claws and yet are by no means even close to how evil mankind are. Men created monsters as a reflection of self, they weren't witnessed and then described in folk lore, they were created and our fascination with monsters and killers is feeding a part of ourselves that society has taught us to keep under control.

In games that feature some kind of nazi enemy I never feel they are dehumanizing the nazi because they simply become enemy a or b. The reason they are so popular in games is because they are a common enemy, and if people can gladly run down civilians then shooting down the enemy of the protagonist is a none issue and we should instead of looking to humanize the enemy be looking at ourselves. But then comes the age old argument that it's just a video game and violence can't be encouraged if it isn't already a part of the person. This is why I now play visual novels and get an unrealistic idea of love instead!!

@atmonauti: I'm sure you'd never even notice, I'm a very peaceful person by nature. It just so happens that the person in question is a shitstain alcoholic who I can't imagine ever doing a worthwhile thing with his life, and after throwing a plastic lawn chair he decided to get first in my friend's face, and then in my face trying to pick a fight. He was drunk off his ass or I'm sure he would've been a lot smarter than to challenge 3 people bigger than him, especially when at least two of them basically do not value his life, and would not feel bad at all about him dying.

...No...Fuck nazis!