Ok, but here's the problem with that... when you consistently dehumanize evil, people start to forget that in real life, evil looks just like us.
Terry Pratchett said it way better than I can:
"It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things."
Idk about anyone else, but I'm not saying 'don't dehumanize nazis' because I care about nazis or their feelings. I don't. I'm saying 'don't dehumanize nazis' because encouraging people to forget that nazis were humans just like us is the fastest way to create more nazis.
You're actually working against your own goal when you do that. You can't out-stubborn human psychology. People do not think of themselves as evil. If they align with evil things, they just move their definition of evil. It's stupid, but that's how our brains work.
You say '80 years of american media have used nazis as the villains' -- yeah, and that's part of the problem.
If the media tells someone nazis are brainless caricatures of evil, but then the actual nazis they meet are their coworkers who helped them when their car wouldn't start, people don't think 'oh wow, Joe is actually a horrible inhuman monster'. They think: 'wow, nazis aren't what I was told'. It sucks and it's stupid, but that is how people think. It's literally one of the first steps in how these groups recruit members.
If you want there to be less nazis, you have to do what Germany does and HUMANIZE them. Remind people over and over that nazis look just like everyone else. That nazis are just ordinary people who choose to align themselves with something that was evil, and that's why it's important to be self-reflective.
I've spent ten years working in a school in an area with a bad white supremacy problem. There have been nazi rallies in my fucking town. Some of my students attended these rallies. And my coworkers and I work every damn day to try to subtly un-knit the hate that these kids are being indoctrinated with at home and online. Dehumanizing them actually makes them dig in harder to their own beliefs. You don't have to help me, but at least believe me when I say that dehumanizing them actively makes them worse.
