Why does dehumanising language so reliably precede mass violence – and why is it, on its own, never quite enough to explain it? That question runs through “Pathologies of Exclusion: Patterns and Narratives of ‘Othering’ Across Rwanda and the Holocaust,” a new article by David J. Simon of Yale University, now available online in Eastern European Holocaust Studies (EEHS) ahead of upcoming special issues.
Simon argues that almost every case of mass killing of non-combatants has been preceded by a rhetorical campaign of dehumanisation. Yet, dehumanisation alone cannot explain how perpetrators arrive at the point of violence against a targeted group. Drawing on Fein’s framework of “social exclusion,” he reframes dehumanising language as one means among several of casting a group as unworthy of belonging in the wider civic community, and makes the case that this lens better accounts for the effect of such rhetoric – including what it implies for the work of social reconstruction post-atrocity.
The article is the first to appear from Othering, Occupation, Violence, and Denial: Historical Analogies and Presentism in Studying the Holocaust, a project led by the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre with EEHS, the interdisciplinary journal of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre, together with Ukraina Moderna, and the Austrian Service Abroad, funded by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The project examined topics under the central themes including the way in which historical analogies and presentism in studying the history of the Holocaust are used to foster deeper understanding and critical thinking about the Holocaust, current armed conflicts and the rise of hate speech. As well as the ways in which oversimplifications, misrepresentations, distortions, and denial of these topics can be challenged and safeguarded against will also be grappled with, alongside testimonies, resistance, education, remembrance, and the collection and preservation of history. Selected papers are being published in English in EEHS and in Ukrainian via Ukraina Moderna.
David Simon will speak at the JHGC on 30 July on AI and Holocaust Testimony. Details here.
Read the article: https://doi.org/10.1515/eehs-2025-0035
Read the previous EEHS special issue, co-edited by Tali Nates and Mirjam Zadoff on museums: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/eehs/2/2/html