Our friends, Marina and Ira, have family in Russia. Not long after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, they spoke with those family members. Those in Russia expressed their disgust that people in Ukraine were eating children. Marina and Ira’s reaction was naturally surprise and horror.
In the early days of the war, back in 2014, state-controlled Russian news agencies had started to run a story about a young boy that had been crucified in Ukraine’s eastern territories. The narrative was that this was what Ukrainians were doing to Russian speakers. It didn’t take long for the story to be debunked. But this was primarily outside of Russia, most people within Russia kept hearing this story, and stories like it. Over the years, the stories grew to the point where Russian citizens were hearing that Ukrainians were regularly eating babies.
This is why Marina and Ira were having this conversation. They told their relatives that what they had heard was wrong. People weren’t eating babies in Ukraine. Marina told us that it felt surreal to even have to say those words. I find it surprising that people blindly accepted these stories. But what happened next was the truly surprising thing. Marina and Ira told their relatives that babies weren’t being eaten and the response wasn’t reflection, it was accusation. They accused Marina and Ira of being turned by Ukrainian propaganda.
Many people in Ukraine have relatives in Russia. We have heard of many of them having similar conversations to those Marina and Ira had. I haven’t heard of a Russian family member who has been reflective, and said, I heard it on the news, but you are actually there and I know you, therefore I’m going to reconsider what I’ve been told. Not a single person.
What we have seen, though, is normal Russian soldiers being willing to kidnap children, among a myriad of other war crimes. When you understand that the Russian population has been convinced that Ukrainians are eating babies, meaning that they are not really humans, then it starts to make at least some sense, why there would be a massive project aimed at getting as many children out of Ukraine as possible. But this narrative is false. The consequences are over 20,000 young people that Ukraine can confirm as being taken (the real number is much higher) and those children being radicalized against Ukraine and the young men being shipped to military training facilities so that they can continue the war against their own country, against their own families.
Inside of Russia there is almost no resistance to this. Because they chose to believe a lie. If Ukrainians are evil enough to eat babies, then Russians feel justified in crossing lines to stop them.
This have been very sobering for us to watch, and has made me grateful that I am an American, and could be insulated from it to an extent. That was, until I realizing that we aren’t insulated.
At the 2024 presidential debate, former President Donald Trump said that immigrants were “Eating the dogs, they are eating the cats!” My stomach sank. That week as the story was debunked from every major news network and the actually people who were in Springfield, I watched as Trump, Vance, and many people I knew on Facebook chose to believe that, while some of the elements of the story may not be true, the story itself was true. It was easier for many to believe that immigrants were eating dogs and cats than to accept that they had been lied to. It was easier to believe that this group of people were subhuman. I watched as people were attacked on social media for challenging the lie.
Trump ran on the promise of launching the largest deportation project. This will involve the building of massive detention camps. Those camps will predictably be filled with people in inhuman conditions. This will be shocking to our consciences. However, if you have convinced yourself that these immigrant have been eating dogs, cats and other pets, it will be easier to convince yourself that this is acceptable, after all, they are basically animals.
This is nothing new. You can still find Nazi era comics depicting Jews as deformed or animal like, or any number of things that are not quite human. This was very powerful in keeping the public quiet as the Jews were treated like animals and forced into the ghettos and then loaded like cattle onto trains and then forced into the concentration camps. Its hard to do those kind of things to fellow humans. It is much easier justifying this treatment for sub humans.
Recently, I stumbled across another conversation, and realized that evangelicals like me have been primed for decades to believe these type of dehumanizing stories. Someone had accused those who were pro-choice of sacrificing babies to Molech. Wait, What?! I was shocked … for a moment.
Then I realized that I had grown up hearing that there was no other way to think of abortion than as murder. Was it really so hard to think that some would take that perspective a step further and say that its not just murder, it is ritualistic child sacrifice to a pagan God? It seems to be more and more common for people with large platforms to declare that those who are pro-choice “love killing babies.” If you ask any normal person who is pro-choice if they want to kill babies, their answer will be no. Most people want their to be the right to abortion, AND want to take steps to reduce the number of abortions. You may not agree with their stance, but child sacrifice and bloodlust are simply not a part of the motivation.
What retaliation isn’t acceptable for people who are ritualistically sacrificing babies? That question haunts me. Where will this line of thought ultimately lead?
There is a fine line between finding differing opinions concerning or even alarming, and allowing yourself to believe propaganda that dehumanizes. We have so many current and historical examples of how dehumanizing a group is a precursor to atrocities being committed against our fellow humans.
We must always be vigilant.
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