Seattle employs age old propaganda tactic against Gas Works Park victims

The City fired its opening salvo in the Gas Works Park nuisance lawsuit filed after the death of 15 y.o. Matthies Johnson.  This is how the City’s Answer begins:

“The City admits that some trespassers at Gas Works Park who have climbed or attempted to climb the appurtenances to the fenced-in towers have been injured and died in falls.”

The City does not refer to Matthies Johnson or the other 14 young people as humans with names and ages, families and friends.  It classifies them as negative disembodied entities.  Law breakers.  Bad people.  Trespassers.

David Livingstone PhD., describes why the propaganda of dehumanizing others is so dangerous:

Dehumanization is the attitude of conceiving of others as less than human creatures…

Dehumanization doesn’t arise spontaneously in the human mind. It’s not like, out of nowhere, people think of other people as non-human or subhuman. Our psychology works against that. Our exquisite sensitivity as social primates to others inclines us to see them as fellow human beings.

If you look at all the examples of dehumanization that can be studied, they begin with ideology and propaganda. It’s not spontaneous. People with an investment in getting us to do terrible things to other people give us a picture of those other people as less than human. In doing that skillfully, it exploits certain psychological vulnerabilities that we have that enable us to readily fall into that way of thinking.

David Livingstone Smith – On Dehumanization – The Voices of War

The City had 20 days to craft its first response to the GWP nuisance lawsuit.  Its attorneys, executives, and PR consultants huddled together and deliberately chose to employ propaganda in dehumanizing and blaming the victims. 

The City had a message to send and sent it.  But all eyes should be on the messenger.