It’s the othering that always works.

It mostly starts off as jokes or diatribes about "them" "those people" whatever label they can throw, something to ridicule of stigmatise some aspect of some group, label them all as one, ignore any individuality, and humanity of people.

That’s how we start the dehumanisation.

The jokes, the slights, the labelling of their differences as strange, wrong, immoral.

You don't have to care about the "other".

Whatever happens to them cannot happen to you. I mean sure, they are treated badly, but don't they deserve it? For being strange? For being different? They're not like you and me. They're weird.

And that's how you do it. Thats how you get the consent of the majority to persecute and in its most successful form, eradicate, the minority. 

And then, the hate mongers, knowing how well the playbook works, go on to their next target.

"Them" "Those People"

And the jokes, the humiliation, the labelling, it all starts again.

The othering becomes acceptable until they are no longer part of the common, seen as human, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.

And then the people wonder why things are so horrible, in a world they let hate grow because it was about "those people"

Zainab Carver - Speech at Equal Justice Conference