The Perils of Othering: Resisting Division in a Time of Manipulation

Photo by Nigel Tadyanehondo on Unsplash

This upcoming election feels like a moment that could possibly mark a great turning point in our collective lives. On the one hand, we have an increasingly delusional man who can’t keep his stories straight who insists that he will purge the country of immigrants and it might be “bloody,” and on the other we have a woman who won’t give an unscripted interview and was largely kept in the background (and we don’t know why) of an administration which recently inadvertently revealed the incapacitated state of our nation’s leader.

It ain’t great. Although I don’t feel like we know what we’re getting with Kamala, I certainly am willing to vote for her if it means avoiding what seems like a terrifying lurch in the wrong direction with Trump.

What terrifies me is Trump’s brilliant and instinctive use of “othering” people. He uses anger to stoke his audience and get them hooked on his message. When you control a person’s anger, you can very easily control their other emotions, too—as well as their actions.

He has hinged his entire campaign on repeating the lie that immigrants are somehow taking our jobs, raping our women and children en masse, and destroying our economy. And people believe this… mostly because they want to. It taps into their feeling of betrayal, of being left behind, of being without opportunities or places to go. So they see this “other” as coming along and taking “their” jobs, places, homes, women.

Let’s be honest. It’s much easier to look outside ourselves for a source of blame than it is to face the uncomfortable reality of our circumstances or the systems in which we live. This is what makes 'othering' so effective—it offers a target for frustration, and in doing so, absolves people of having to question their own role in the problem or the power structures they’re part of.

Tale as Old as Time

This is not a new game, either. In the Rwandan war, Hutu extremists went from town to town and systematically wiped out Tutsi, people who qualified as "the Other" in their eyes. These were their neighbors, people they knew throughout their lives. An estimated 800,000 people were killed over 100 days. They killed the men and raped the women, then killed the women and the children. They were convinced over a number of years that the people they were out to kill were to blame for their problems. They were the "cockroaches."

We saw the same thing with the Jews in Nazi Germany. Germany had lost a war and were in financial destitution, and they needed a common enemy to unite against. Hitler gave them the Jews, an easy target. Hitler blamed the Jews for every single problem Germany faced, and the people were so downtrodden and desperate after the first failed war and the economic fallout that they were willing to believe it.

We think of these crimes as not possible here, so atrocious that we can't wrap our heads around them. And yet, when it comes down to it, we have our own brand of atrocity. We know we’ve kept immigrants in what amounts to cages at the border, in inhumane conditions. We know immigrant children in custody disappear from their parents, for god knows what. We know there are programs that sterilize immigrant women, often without their consent. The seeds are already there… it’s just not happening out in the open.

These are not solely political or racial or ethnic problems. They run the gamut:

• Asia: During the Cambodian genocide, the Khmer Rouge regime, led by Pol Pot, systematically targeted and killed intellectuals, ethnic minorities, and anyone perceived as a threat to their agrarian utopia. An estimated 1.7 million people were killed. The victims were labeled as enemies of the state, "impure," and obstacles to the regime's vision for the country.

• North America: The treatment of Indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada offers another example. Indigenous communities were systematically displaced, and their populations decimated through violence, forced relocations (like the Trail of Tears), and disease. They were framed as "savages" by colonial powers to justify their eradication and the theft of their lands, which most of us reading this live on today.

• South America: In Argentina, during the military dictatorship known as the "Dirty War" (1976-1983), the government targeted suspected dissidents, students, intellectuals, and others deemed a threat. Tens of thousands of people were "disappeared" as the government sought to eliminate "subversives" in what they portrayed as a necessary campaign for national security.

• Australia: The colonization of Australia involved the systematic displacement and killing of Aboriginal peoples, who were often referred to as "primitives" by settlers. This dehumanization allowed colonizers to justify violent actions, including massacres and forced assimilation, leading to the near-eradication of many Indigenous cultures and populations.

• Africa: In Sudan's Darfur region, government-backed militias, known as the Janjaweed, carried out brutal attacks on non-Arab ethnic groups. The violence resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, with rape and displacement as additional tools of oppression.

• Europe: In the Balkans, the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s saw ethnic cleansing campaigns, particularly in Bosnia, where Bosniak Muslims were systematically targeted by Serb forces. The Srebrenica massacre alone claimed the lives of over 8,000 men and boys, framed as part of an effort to "purify" the region.

All of this is to say that “othering” is not a problem that “other” people do. This is not a political, ethnic, or religious problem… it’s a problem of human nature. The desire to eradicate the other shows its ugly head in different forms but at its root, it seems to be driven by the same energies.

It All Comes Down to Those Pesky Emotions

The people leading these events all used the emotions of hate and anger to turn people against one another.

It’s often easy to do because of the great sense of pain hiding below the surface — the anger, defeat, frustration, hunger, lack of opportunity, lack of safety, etc.

Anger and hate are powerful, stoking emotions. Unlike sadness, hopelessness, or depression, which can feel lethargic or paralyzing, anger gets people moving. It gives them something to do. Have you ever sat with a problem you were angry about and felt energized? That’s what anger does. It doesn’t drain you — it charges you up.

That activated energy needs an outlet. And how convenient when it can be channeled en masse and aimed at a targeted group of “inconvenient” people.

The Jews were not responsible for Germany’s misfortunes. Hitler simply hated Jews — perhaps because he ultimately hated himself. In turning that hatred into national policy, he achieved two goals: he unified his country by giving people a common enemy and eradicated a group he despised.

Similarly, the Tutsis were not "cockroaches." They became scapegoats for Rwanda’s problems. The leadership used them to channel the public’s rage, while also eliminating an ethnic group they wanted gone.

What’s also interesting is how this tactic diverts attention away from leadership. “Oh no, don’t look at us. Look at those people over there! Focus your anger on them, not on what we’re doing behind the scenes: restructuring the government, appointing loyalists, silencing (jailing or murdering) dissent, and enriching ourselves. Those people are the problem, not us.”

Othering, building an enemy, and dividing and conquering takes place through emotional manipulation, and Trump is excellent at it. It’s an effective and time-worn tactic for people who crave power. My question is: if he truly carries out his promise to eradicate the US of immigrants, what will he be doing while we are all distracted?

I share this only to highlight that we already possess the capacity to fall into this trap. Our national identity, rooted in American exceptionalism, is being twisted into something vulgar. We are told, over and over, that we are better than whatever group we’ve deemed as "the Other." The Other might be radical leftists, or conservative Christians. If we continue to allow ourselves to be whipped into a frenzy—through social media and partisan rhetoric—believing that the "radical left" is out to strip away our freedoms or the "radical right" is preparing for war, we will inevitably end up fighting each other.

The only way to halt this slow, dangerous slide is to resist the urge to turn those we disagree with into enemies. Instead of canceling, unfollowing, or blocking, we need to engage in conversation. It is no longer enough to simply walk away. There’s too much at stake. Ask questions, not with the intent to attack, but to genuinely understand what someone believes and, more importantly, how they came to believe it.

I know this is hard but it is not impossible. There's a man named Daryl Davis. Some people call him the "Nazi whisperer." Back in the 90s, he began having conversations with white supremacists, members of the KKK, and Nazis, with the goal of asking: "Why do you hate me when you don't even know me?"

Daryl is a Black man, who in the act of engaging in these conversations, had a lot to fear and a reason to be angry, but he went into every conversation without any goal. There was no attempt to convert, convince, condemn, or do anything that might put the other person on their back foot. He wanted to connect and understand, and where he could (and only if he felt he had earned their trust) he gently pushed back on misinterpretations of historical events or media stories.

Over time, some of the people he interviewed became friendly toward him—all while maintaining their memberships in these organizations. Over still more time, many of these people began to question their beliefs and allegiances. I don't know the exact number and he doesn't boast, but in 30 years of this work, he has been mailed hundreds of pieces of Klan or Nazi paraphernalia when members ultimately decide to stop engaging with these groups as a result of his conversations and friendship.

I just co-edited his book, which will be re-released in November. It's fascinating and humanizes "the other" of Nazis and racists. His story is as heartbreaking as it is uplifting and hopeful. But his patient work is the ultimate testimony to being willing to engage—even with people who might be a threat to us.

We are being intentionally driven apart. We know this. So resist the manipulation. Lean into your discomfort, your anger, and use it as an opportunity to listen, to connect, to disrupt the cycle of division. The future depends on whether we are willing to break the cycle of division, not by turning away, but by coming closer. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary. Our collective fate depends on it.