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“When Trump came down the escalator and threw his hat into the ring, I watched his first speech in the run up to the Republican nomination… I was really scared, and I was really scared, because I study fascism.”—David Livingston Smith, Bette Dangerous Podcast Ep94
When I interviewed Professor David Livingstone Smith for my recent Hot Type column in Byline Times, I knew I had hit a rich vein and that there was much more work to be done.
Thankfully, the philosopher and writer on the subject of dehumanization agreed to allow me to interview him for what is turning into my next vital series: Understanding Dehumanization.
The subject matter is so important, I am rebooting the Bette Dangerous Podcast. In Ep94, we debut Part 1 of the series, where Smith lays out in very clear language what dehumanization is and how it is weaponized.
To center yourself in advance of listening to the podcast, I asked him for his boiler plate definition of dehumanization:
Dehumanization
Dehumanization is the attitude of conceiving of others as less-than-human creatures.
When I asked him how he defines fascism, he said he thinks “it’s wrong to think of fascism as an all-or-nothing affair. Political movements can be fascistic to a greater or lesser degree. That said, there are various typical features of fascist movements/regimes. I set these out in my substack essay: ‘Just how fascist is the Trump regime?’”
Please take 40 minutes and listen to our podcast interview.
A print report featuring excerpts from Understanding Dehumanization, Part 1 to follow.
And save the date: Smith will be our guest at Bette’s Happy Hour on June 30, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern. Look for an invite next week (there will be no Happy Hour on June 23).
Guest Bio:
Described as “a philosopher seeking not just to interpret the world, but to change it” by the Times Literary Supplement, Smith is the author of 10 books. He won the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Prize for nonfiction (awarded jointly with Yale historian David Blight), the 2023 Joseph B. Gittler Prize awarded by the American Philosophical Association for outstanding contributions to philosophy of the social sciences, the 2024 Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution, awarded by Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Association (awarded jointly with Cornell philosopher Kate Manne), and was shortlisted for the Nayaf Al-Rodhan Prize for Transdisciplinary Philosophy, awarded by the Royal Institute of Philosophy in the UK.
All of these awards were for his work on dehumanization. He is frequently interviewed in the national and international media on dehumanization, race, racism, national and international affairs, and related topics. He has given presentations at such venues as the 2012 G20 economic summit, where he spoke on dehumanization and mass violence.
Before transitioning to philosophy, Smith was a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and Freud scholar, and director of the MA program in psychotherapy at Regent’s College in London, England. Smith is a professor of philosophy at the University of New England in Maine, and he will be spending the 2026/27 academic year as the Tage Danielsson Professor at Linköping University, in Sweden.
You can find links to his books and published works here and for his Substack, go to Dehumanization Matters.
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