My husband Wayne and I have been involved in Christian
ministry, disability advocacy, aged care and protection of the unborn for
decades. We have followed the course of legislation in our country of Australia
and elsewhere which has been both favourable for some of these groups and
sadly, which has in some cases been extremely detrimental to the wellbeing of
some, particularly in the area of abortion. In the state in which I live,
Queensland, a baby can now be killed in the womb from conception right up to
the whole of the third trimester and the politicians who enacted this
legislation were shown on television hugging and congratulating themselves for
passing it.
This guest article by my husband Wayne is an examination of
how the terminology, or the words we use, gives an indication of how human life
is viewed. I pray that the reader will find it thought provoking and a valuable
resource. May God bless you as you read.
The use of language as a tool for
desensitisation to the taking of human life, particularly in an otherwise
civilised society
Recently, when responding to a
vile affirmation of the murder of Charlie Kirk, which sadly came from a member
of my extended family, I was on the receiving end of an outpouring of vitriol
that ranged from an accusation that religion is the greatest threat to humanity
to the Palestinian question to aborted children being nothing more than clumps
of cells.
I was taken aback by the sheer
level of hate that can spawn from the simple declaration that violence is never
the answer to an opposing idea, which ironically emphatically proved the point
I was trying to make.
This has prompted me to address
firstly the veracity of the accusations levelled against religion and secondly to
explore the use of language as a tool to support or incite violence.
To begin let’s look at their
claim that religion (and knowing the person who made the statement I am
confident they meant Christianity in particular) has been responsible for more
deaths and suffering than any other motivator or ideology in history.
Personally I think most people
with a reasonable level of education and a capacity for rational examination of
history and evidence would dismiss such a claim outright, however if the reader
considers this is, or may be the case then I would ask them to weigh the
following and draw their own conclusion.
Firstly, have there been cases of
harm or death done in the name of Christianity? Unfortunately the answer is
yes. From the death tolls of the crusades and the inquisitions to the suffering
of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of people, churches and institutions
that claim Christian affiliation, the claims are undeniable. However as genuine
bible-believing Christians should know, these actions are not consistent with
the teachings of Christ and are therefore not Christian in their application.
True followers of Christ do not commit murder, rape, incest or paedophilia. To
be a follower of Christ is to share in His example of service and suffering.
This whole premise would be akin to discovering a serial killer had the same
surname as you and suddenly finding people are judging or avoiding you because
of that commonality.
In the case of the crusades
however, it could be said that they were a Christian political or military foil
to the rise of Islam as it swept through the middle east and across the
southern Mediterranean and that their determination to expel Islam from the
holy land was motivated by the notion that the land had been defiled.
Likewise the inquisitions were a
manifestation of brutality and violence that was motivated by a desire to
strictly control doctrine and dogma within the catholic world. This is most
evident by the response the early church had towards those believers who sought
to disseminate the word of God by translating it into the vernacular so that it
could be made more accessible to those who wanted a closer relationship with
their creator. Early bible translators paid with their lives and this was
motivated by nothing more than the desire of the church authorities (the pope,
cardinals, bishops and priests) to maintain ultimate power and authority over
the laity.
However, during the entire
history of the church the vast majority of believers have been people
dedicating their lives to the pursuit of growing in their relationship with God
and serving others sacrificially as Christ demonstrated.
The explosion of understanding
and revelation following the reformation begun by Martin Luther was an
unshackling of God’s word that transformed a captured church into the bride God
intended for His son.
Despite the failings attributed
to the church through the evil intent of individuals following their own
anti-Christian desires, the claim that Christianity has been the prime source
of death and suffering over the last two millennia is simply egregious and not
substantiated in any way.
What allows evil to flourish?
This work examines the ideologies
that have spawned the orgies of hate particularly seen over the last one
hundred or so years.
From this examination it is
apparent that a common strategy of the oppressors is to co-opt the general
population into their murderous intent, often by the use of language, imagery
and propaganda with the intent to dehumanise the targets of their hatred.
What is Dehumanizing propaganda?
This is portraying a target group
as vermin, disease, animals, or sub-human and has been a recurrent precursor
and facilitator of mass killing in the last 100–200 years.
Scholars distinguish forms of
dehumanization (e. g. , animalistic — likening people to animals, vermin, or
parasites — and mechanistic — treating people like objects or machines).
Dehumanizing language reduces empathy, increases moral disengagement, and makes
violence easier for both leaders and ordinary participants to accept.
Scholars of genocide emphasise
that dehumanization is one of several social-psychological and political
building blocks (alongside ideology, political opportunism, historical
grievances, and organizational capacity) that commonly precede genocides and mass
atrocities.
Across multiple historical
episodes, perpetrators and propagandists used a recurrent vocabulary and set of
frames:
·
Vermin/pest metaphors (rats, cockroaches,
insects) implying exterminability and contagion.
·
Disease/parasite metaphors (infection,
contamination) implying the target threatens the body politic.
·
De-human descriptors (beasts, sub-human, vermin)
to reduce empathy and legal/moral protections.
·
Existential threat framing (they are an internal
enemy/traitors/plotters) to justify pre-emptive violence.
·
Cultural-civilisational frames
(foreigners/aliens/outsiders) to justify “cleansing”.
These patterns recur because they
leverage basic psychological responses (disgust, fear, disgust-induced moral
exclusion) and can be transmitted efficiently by mass media, state
institutions, religious or paramilitary channels.
The following examples
demonstrate how language has been used to dehumanise certain ethnic, racial or
political groups in order to justify their elimination.
Many readers will recognise the
well-known instances of genocide or mass killings listed here however as will
be shown, there is one particular case not generally associated as a genocide
that far outstrips anything seen before in all of human history.
This document examines historical
cases where such rhetoric was used to desensitise populations and mobilise
perpetrators. I will also examine another case, rarely considered a genocide
but which outstrips their combined numbers by a significant margin.
I will show how the same
strategies are being employed today in regard to one particular genocide to
make allies among the general population and quash dissent when questioned.
The Holocaust
Generally regarded as occurring
between 1933 and 1945 the Holocaust was the attempted systematic extermination
of the Jewish race. It was conducted in part under the justification of the
Eugenics movement which had its origins in the United States in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.
The essence of eugenics is the
desire to purify the racial profile of a nation by the systematic elimination
of people of undesirable races, ethnicities or disabilities. It was this
ideology that underpinned Hitler’s desire to create an Aryan master race of
blonde-haired blue-eyed super men and women. In his twisted mind not only were Jews
inferior genetically and socially but were also largely responsible for
Germany’s economic woes after its defeat that ended the first world war.
Jews were seen to possess
disproportionate control over national finances through the banking and lending
institutions and were also seen as more immune to the impacts of the hyper-inflation
that ravaged Germany after world war one due to their ability through their
wealth to diversify their investments in foreign sources, thereby making them
less impacted by internal economic woes.
In order to bring the general
population on board with Hitler’s ideology a campaign of demonisation of the
Jewish people was begun. Movie theatres would show propaganda films in which
the Jews were characterised as rats which had grown to plague proportions and
therefore needed to be culled in the interest of national purity. In this way
the Nazis were able to dehumanise a whole sector of the European population and
thereby justify their extermination.
The repetition of biological and
vermin metaphors helped normalise dispossession and violence by framing Jews as
a public-health problem or pest to be eradicated rather than fellow citizens.
By May 1945 it is estimated that
six million (6,000,000) men women and children had been murdered. This figure
doesn’t include Slavs, gypsies, homosexuals and other groups deemed undesirable,
not to mention political opponents and the resistance movements.
Stalin’s Ukrainian Famine and the Great Purge
After the death of Vladimir Lenin
the Soviet Union was ruled by Joseph Stalin, a man who transformed Lenin’s more
pure Marxist vision for the USSR into more of a personality cult, somewhat akin
to the Kim dynasty of North Korea today.
Stalin had a Russia-centric view
of the USSR. This became evident in the early 1930’s when he virtually starved
the people of Ukraine by commandeering their food production to supplement
Russia.
During what became known as the
Holodomor famine an estimated three and a half million (3,500,000) people died
of starvation in Ukraine. In order to justify this to the general population he
labelled Ukraine as a hot-bed of counter-revolutionaries and class-enemies and
ultimately a threat to the security of the union.
Alongside and continuing
throughout his rule, Stalin conducted what became known as the Great Purge, a
systematic eradication of opponents with counter ideologies.
During this time people were
encouraged to denounce anyone who was perceived as being less than 100%
committed. This of course was fertile ground for abuse to settle old scores.
The same thing was seen in China under Mao as well as Islamic theocracies implementing
Sharia law.
It is estimated a further one and
a half million (1,500,000) Soviet citizens were killed under the great purge.
Therefore conservatively Stalin was probably responsible for around five
million (5,000,000) deaths collectively.
Other significant genocides/mass killings
Alongside these examples are the
Khmer Rouge atrocities of dictator Pol Pot from 1975 to 1979 with an estimated
one million six hundred thousand (1,600,000) deaths, the Armenian genocide
carried out from 1915 to 1923 by the Ottoman Turks of around one million two
hundred thousand (1,200,000) people. The Rwandan genocide between April and
June of 1994, costing around eight hundred thousand (800,000) lives and the
Srebrenica Massacre of July 1995 causing an estimated eight thousand (8,000)
deaths.
All of these examples employed a
form of dehumanising propaganda to incite and justify violence.
In summary
While not an exhaustive list of
atrocities carried out by dictators, autocrats and psychopaths the total of
just over 14,600,000 likely represents the majority of the officially
recognised numbers of fatalities.
The unspoken genocide
If the figure of 14,600,000
deaths attributable to the major atrocities of the last one hundred or so years
seems shocking then consider a conservative death toll approaching one hundred
million (100,000,000) due to a single cause that is rarely regarded a genocide
at all.
I’m speaking here of the
estimated number of abortions carried out primarily in western nations since
the early 1970’s.
Since that time a conservative
estimate of the number of abortions carried out in the USA, France, UK, Germany,
Australia and Canada sits at just under ninety-six million (96,000,000) with
the USA representing the vast majority at almost sixty-six million (65,700,000).
Again, almost 100 million unborn
children killed.
So, how
does the abortion issue mirror the same pattern as a genocide?
Before
abortion became a post-conception contraceptive (an ironic oxymoron) it was
touted as being an act of last resort, limited to cases of rape or incest, or
in cases where the pregnancy would likely result in the death of the mother.
However
with greater accessibility and a conditioning of the population by activists
and corporate abortion providers, abortions are performed in most western
countries with little or no questions asked, often for any reason and are commonly
legal up to the moment before birth. This has resulted in the deaths of
millions of children for reasons as trivial as being the wrong gender. While
not included in the statistics because of a lack of data, consider the Chinese
“one child” policy that ran from 1980 to 2016.
Anecdotal
evidence suggests a disproportionate number of girls were aborted in China due
to a cultural preference for boys, given a boy was perceived as more valuable
in rural/agricultural regions and would carry on the family name. When only one
child was allowed many considered it must be a boy. This has now led to a
drastic gender imbalance among the younger Chinese population with stories of
girls being abducted from urban areas (and neighbouring countries) to satisfy
the demand for wives in rural areas.
Like all
other events mentioned here abortion advocates utilise certain language to
achieve the same goal of conforming the general public into supporters. The
most common is to dehumanise the unborn child by referring to them simply as a
foetus or even more dismissively a “clump of cells”. This language is intended
to assuage the conscience of a woman having an abortion by equating the
procedure to little more than having tonsils or an appendix removed.
Another
common catch-phrase is the “my body my choice” often used as a chant at
pro-abortion rallies or when trying to shout down opponents. This slogan
ignores the fact that the unborn child, while temporarily sharing its mothers
body, is not part of the body, in that it consists of its own unique DNA and
therefore is an individual, unique from its mother or father.
When
challenged with the genetic uniqueness of the child, proponents of abortion
struggle to justify the clump of cells argument and will often spiral into an
unhinged rant about bodily autonomy. Despite this many western nations have
legalised the abortion of a child virtually up to the moment before birth, a
procedure so horrific that most advocates will not discuss the details of how
it is performed.
The
abortion genocide is not only linked by its use of slogans. Like the Holocaust
it has its roots in the same ideology and indeed shares some of the same key
figures.
Eugenics and Margaret Sanger
As
mentioned earlier in reference to Nazi Germany, the eugenics movement played a
major role in creating the environment into which the abortion movement has
flourished.
Margaret
Sanger, born in 1879, was an early advocate for women’s rights and was virulent
in her views of what she deemed defective families and races. A staunch racist
and antisemite she was guest speaker at KKK meetings and wrote extensively on
the need to restrict the breeding of what she called “human weeds”. This
included non-white races, particularly African Americans, and families with a
history of less than desirable IQs.
There is
a trove of her comments supporting these views in her own published works and
also candidly in correspondence later made public. To offer just a few, these
are some of her own words.
1.
"We don’t want the word to go out that we
want to exterminate the Negro population." — from a letter to Dr. Clarence
J. Gamble, December 10, 1939, p. 2.
2.
"The most merciful thing that the large
family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." — Woman and the
New Race, Chapter 5, "The Wickedness of Creating Large Families."
(1920).
3.
"But for my view, I believe that there
should be no more babies." — Interview with John Parsons, 1947.
4.
“More children from the fit, less from the
unfit—that is the chief aim of birth control.” — Birth Control Review, May 1919.
5.
“The most urgent problem today is how to limit
and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.” —
The Birth Control Review, 1921.
6.
“Our failure to segregate morons who are
increasing and multiplying… demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant
sentimentalism. … Every single case of inherited defect, of mental
defectiveness, or of disease such as tuberculosis, syphilis, cancer, should be
considered as a definite indication for sterilization or segregation.” — The
Pivot of Civilization, 1922.
7.
“The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed,
not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. … The
procreation of this group should be stopped.” — The Pivot of Civilization, 1922.
8.
“Birth Control is nothing more or less than the
facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth
of defectives or of those who will become defectives.” — Woman and the New
Race, 1920.
9.
“The campaign for birth control is not merely of
eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal with the final aim of
eugenics: to make the racial stock more fit, to eliminate the less fit, and to
prevent the birth of defectives.” — Birth Control and Racial Betterment, 1919
speech.
10.
“The most urgent problem today is how to limit
and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective. …
Birth control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly
practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements
in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual
extinction of defective stocks—those human weeds which threaten the blooming of
the finest flowers of American civilization.” — A Plan for Peace, 1932.
Margaret
Sanger is the founder of the organisation “Planned Parenthood” in the United
States which is the largest provider of abortion services in that country. An
interesting side fact is that the majority of their “clinics” are located in
predominantly black neighbourhoods.
Data
sourced from the US government’s “Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC)” for the year 2019 shows precisely how Margaret Sanger’s mission is being
accomplished.
In 2019,
among all races of women who obtained abortions in the USA around 38.4% were
African American while around 33.4% were White.
The
distribution of women aged 15-44 was: 53% White and 14% African American.
Based on
this data African American women in America have abortions 4.5 times more often
than white women.
Conclusion
Much of
the information provided here might suggest this is an American-centric problem
and while the vast majority of abortions listed in publicly available data
supports this, it is a first-world problem. This is likely due to the cultural
shift in the affluent west towards self-interest and the glorification of one’s
right to do whatever one wishes rather than considering others, or God. It has
spawned the age of relative morality where each individual decides what is
right or wrong within their own bubble without reference or regard to any
higher authority than themselves.
In
short, selfishness and narcissism are the new religion.
Virtually
every western nation now supports abortion and perhaps the most telling
anecdote supporting the conjecture is the virtual eradication of children
diagnosed prenatally with Down’s syndrome in Scandinavian countries such as
Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Iceland boasts an almost 100% abortion
rate in such cases. This is despite such prenatal testing not being guaranteed
completely accurate.
By every
measurable metric the worldwide abortion issue is a genocide. It is a genocide
of unprecedented proportions.
Will it
stop?. Unfortunately, probably no, however in the spirit of truth and
transparency it is patently dishonest to describe the practice as anything
other than the greatest genocide in the history of the world and to say it is
being conducted on an industrial scale is barely adequate to describe its scope.
