Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"No historian can claim to have insight into the motives of living individuals. But history does show that a heightening of rhetoric against a certain group can incite violence against that group, even when no violence is called for. When a group is labeled hostile and brutal, its members are more likely to be treated with hostility and brutality. Visual images are particularly powerful, spurring actions that may well be unintended by the images' creators.

"The experience of Jews in medieval Europe offers a sobering example. [...]

"Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jews were massacred in towns where they had peacefully resided for generations. At no point did Christian authorities promote or consent to the violence. Christian theology, which applied the Psalm verse 'Slay them not' to Jews, and insisted that Jews were not to be killed for their religion, had not changed. Clerics were at a loss to explain the attacks. A churchman from a nearby town attributed the massacres to 'some error of mind.'

"Some may well have been insane. But sane or deranged, they did not pick their victims in a vacuum. It was repeated and dehumanizing excoriation that led those medieval Christians to attack people who had long been their neighbors."

-- Sara Lipton, 2015-12-11 [thanks to nancylebov for pointing to this]

(This is another "go read the whole thing" piece -- though some of y'all will already be familiar with the history)