The first thing tyrants (and those who support them) do is to dehumanize their enemies. In doing so, they give their allies and followers carte blanche to deal with the dissidents as if they were vermin. The logic of this action is as simple as it is macabre: it is not the same to beat up women on any given street, in broad daylight (what Castro’s thugs did over and over to the the late Laura Pollán, depicted in the photo above) than to just crush a pest who has already been conveniently stripped off her humanity.
Qaddafi had a name for those who opposed him: “rats.” Fidel Castro calls them “worms.” His niece, Mariela Castro Espín, calls them “despicable parasites.”
Mixing Memory and Desire 