1112: Demonization of Religious Conservatives
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/04/26
“Liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.”
Lenny Bruce
2009
“The absence of empathetic imagination — the inability to see members of the ‘pariah’ group as being like oneself — is the psychological foundation for participation in dehumanizing a fellow human being.”
Beverly Eileen Mitchell
2012
“Liberals misunderstand conservatives more than the other way around.”
Jonathan Haidt
2015
“The impulse to divide people into good or evil, I call ‘pathological dualism,’ a mindset that can fuel violent action.”
Jonathan Sacks
“There is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization, which would divide it into these two camps.”
Pope Francis
“Genocide is only possible when dehumanization happens on a massive scale, and the perfect tool for this job is propaganda: it keys right into the neural networks that understand other people, and dials down the degree to which we empathize with them.”
David Eagleman
2017
“The White House is a huge soapbox…The demonization of Muslims and Islam will become even more widespread.”
Asma Afsaruddin
2019
“Violence is most likely to occur when political leaders use dehumanizing language against their opponents.”
Boaz Hameiri
“The shaping of the public into antagonistic tribes…is a recipe for social disintegration. I watched competing ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia seize rival mass media outlets and use them to spew vitriol and hate against the ethnic group they demonized.”
Chris Hedges
“Trump is ‘summoning demons,’ whipping up a mob poised to perpetrate violence and invite retributive violence.”
Rod Dreher
2020
“That is often where things lead,” he said. “As either a justification post hoc for treating somebody differently or, in some cases, a precursor to treating a group differently.”
Alexander Theodoridis
“While we can all accept that bullying and abuse betray a lack or loss of respect for other human beings, there is a deeper issue: the devaluing of human life; and that in turn indicates a lack or loss of respect for the Giver of human life and dignity, God Himself. The message a bully sends is a mockery of God’s handiwork, a lie that slanders God’s nature and negates His love for us.”
Frank E. Peretti
–
1844
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
Karl Marx
1878
“I think it would be impossible for the imagination to conceive of a worse religion than orthodox Christianity. It is nothing but a hideous distortion of good and a fearful embodiment of evil.”
Robert G. Ingersoll
1989
“It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”
Richard Dawkins
2003
“I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.”
Matt Stone
2003
“Conservatives think liberals are stupid, and liberals think conservatives are evil.”
Charles Krauthammer
“This administration works closely with a network of rapid-response digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for ‘undermining support for our troops.’”
Al Gore
2004
“The Republican party is the party of nostalgia. It seeks to return America to a simpler, more innocent and moral past that never actually existed. The Democrats are utopians who seek a future that cannot possibly be achieved. Together, the two parties function like giant down comforters — comforting, but incapable of accomplishing anything.”
Jon Stewart
2005
“I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for.”
Howard Dean
“I think religion is a neurological disorder.”
Bill Maher
2006
“Faith is like a mental illness, a great cop-out, the excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.”
Richard Dawkins
2007
“We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common, we call them religious; otherwise, they are likely to be called mad, delusional, or psychotic.”
Sam Harris
2007
“Religion poisons everything.”
Christopher Hitchens
“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
Christopher Hitchens
2008
“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Barack Obama
2011
“Unfortunately, not exactly like [Yasser Arafat]. I wish [Congressional Republicans] were f — -ing dead.”
Dan Savage
2013
“They are the Taliban wing of American politics. We all ought to be a little worried about them.”
Julian Bond
“At this point, the Tea Party is no more popular than the Klan.”
Rep. Alan Grayson
“Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do.”
Bill Maher
2016
“Islam at this moment is the mother lode of bad ideas.”
Sam Harris
2016
“You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”
Hillary Clinton
2018
“It’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you — that’s called mental illness.”
Joy Behar
2020
“[Trump supporters are] the credulous boomer rube demo that wants to think Donald Trump’s the smart one, and y’all elitists are dumb.”
Rick Wilson
2021
“The monsters had grown fat on the lie of a stolen election. They’d grown brazen and entitled and violent on falsehoods.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
“He [Senator Joe Manchin] wants us all to be just like his state, West Virginia: poor, illiterate and strung-out.”
Bette Midler
2022
“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”
President Joe Biden
“Some of the answers will come from Republicans — not the extremists that we’re dealing with every single day. We’ve got to kill and confront that movement.”
Rep. Tim Ryan
2024
“You know that I give Republicans in Congress a hard time. But every so often you’ve gotta just step back and appreciate how much harder of a time they give themselves.”
Stephen Colbert
“Religious faith gives people a gold-plated excuse to stop thinking.”
Daniel Dennett
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