The word has a history. Every time it has been used at scale, something worse followed.
Literal meaning: Subhuman describes a person or group as less than fully human — beneath the threshold of humanity that commands moral consideration. The word and its equivalents (untermenschen, “animals,” “vermin,” “parasites”) have a documented role in preparing populations for mass violence: they remove the psychological barriers against harming members of the target group.
Origin: The term has a documented history in genocidal rhetoric, most explicitly in Nazi ideology where Untermenschen was used to classify Jewish people, Roma, and others as racially inferior. Academic research by Gregory Stanton (genocide scholar), James Waller, and Ervin Staub has established dehumanising language as a predictable precursor in the sequence leading to mass atrocity. The term’s circulation in contemporary digital discourse — applied to migrants, minorities, and political opponents — has been documented by researchers including Vidhya Ramalingam and organisations including the Global Network on Extremism and Technology.
Language that positions a person or group as less than human — with a documented historical role in preparing populations for violence.
The Appeal: From the perspective of those who use it: the term makes extreme political positions feel justified. If the target group is genuinely subhuman, then policies that would otherwise be unacceptable become proportionate responses. The dehumanisation is the permission structure.
The Friction: Dehumanization — Bandura’s moral disengagement framework — describes the psychological mechanism: once a group is categorised as less than human, the inhibitions against harming them are systematically reduced. The research is not speculative — it is reconstructed from genocide perpetrators’ own accounts. Digital platforms accelerate the circulation of dehumanising language by treating it as expression rather than as the precursor stage of a documented harm sequence. Great Replacement — conspiracy theory framing migrants as existential threat — is the ideological context in which subhuman language currently circulates most actively. Deplatforming is the primary countermeasure; its effectiveness is contested.
Why This Matters: Subhuman is a word that functions as a stage in a sequence. Knowing the sequence — dehumanisation, persecution, mass violence — makes the word’s presence in mainstream discourse a different kind of signal than general offensiveness.
Related terms: Dehumanization · Great Replacement · Groomer · QAnon · Deplatforming · Social Contagion
Read more:
- Becoming Evil — Waller, J. (2002). Oxford University Press
- Genocide Watch — Ten Stages of Genocide — Stanton, G. (1996/2016). Genocide Watch