Assistant Professor Juliana Bidadanure: "Demonization"

In the age of individual responsibility, those at the bottom of the income hierarchy are routinely shamed. Out-of-work benefits claimants are subject to particularly severe forms of vilification, their unemployment often being portrayed as resulting from personal failings. When these shortcomings are constructed as moral failings, we enter the space of what I call “demonization”. Demonization is the act of treating individuals as morally inferior or dysfunctional, and as a wicked threat to the community. Benefits recipients are demonized when they undergo sustained attacks on their moral character, when they are viewed as deliberately choosing idleness over hard work. The trope of the lazy free rider living at taxpayers’ expense is remarkably uniform across advanced economies and has been an effective strategy to undermine support for welfare. Despite its social significance, demonization has received little attention from political theorists. And yet, because demonization diminishes its target’s moral standing, it poses a critical threat to our ability to stand as equals, which contemporary theorists allege to be an essential component of a just and democratic society. Starting from the example of benefits recipients, my paper analyses the definitional features of demonization, examines its social function, and characterizes precisely what makes it wrongful.