Vox has the article The dark psychology of dehumanization, explained.

Dehumanizing policies can kick-start a cycle of retribution and hostility

During the Republican presidential primary, Kteily and Bruneau surveyed 200 Muslims in the US, and asked them to respond to statements such as, “Donald Trump sees people from Muslim backgrounds as sub-human,” and, “Donald Trump thinks of people from Muslim background as animal-like.”

On average, the Muslims in the sample “felt strongly disliked and dehumanized by both Trump and non-Muslim Americans more broadly.” On a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 indicating that Muslims did not feel dehumanized at all and 7 meaning they felt it intensely, the group average was 5.66, well beyond the halfway mark. (Similar results were found in a concurrent study of Latino Americans.)

This survey wasn’t designed to be nationally representative of all the Muslims living in America. Instead, it was designed to figure out what happens inside the mind of someone who feels dehumanized.

“And the consequences were big,” Bruneau explains. The more Muslims felt dehumanized by Trump, the more they dehumanized Trump. The more they felt dehumanized, the less likely they were to say they’d report suspicious activities in their communities.

The research predicts a vicious cycle. Trump’s policy and rhetoric gin up fear and dehumanize Muslim Americans. That provokes a more violent response from certain individuals in the Muslim community. Trump responds. And suddenly the whole country is a more hostile, less safe place for everyone, the researchers conclude in a paper that was recently published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

“We want to be careful to say that any backlash that we might expect isn’t unique to minority groups. In fact, some of our earlier work showed that Americans, too, who think they are dehumanized by Muslims are more likely to dehumanize Muslims,” Kteily says. “We think of this working both ways.”

This is a great explanation of the phenomenon that I have observed many times throughout my life. In Army training I experienced in 1967, I saw this dehumanization process used to take the civilization out of soldiers in training so that they could learn to be killers of other humans. I see this dynamic working in both directions the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I see it in the India/Pakistan conflict. This process was used throughout the Cold War that I lived through.

The article explains what has helped me to stand back and see this as it is.

Overall, the experts I spoke to all said that the No. 1 way to combat dehumanization is also, frustratingly, one of the hardest to accomplish: simply getting to know people who are different from us.

In my life, I have had many opportunities to get to know people of different cultures and from different parts of the world. It is hard to dehumanize people you know who are quite obviously just as human as anyone else.

The New York Times published the article Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry Into Trump Associates on January 19, 2017.

WASHINGTON — American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.

Perhaps it is just a technicality that makes Trump’s accusations about wire tapping “truthfully” deniable by the “intelligence” community and the FBI. Perhaps he just used the wrong words in describing how the eavesdropping was done or who the target was. Of course this story comes from the highly unreliable New York Times who can say in one story that Trump associates were eavesdropped on, and in another story that Trump is crazy to think he is the target of eavesdropping.

How about this quote from the article?

The American government has concluded that the Russian government was responsible for a broad computer hacking campaign, including the operation against the D.N.C.

The American government has not come to any such conclusion no matter how many times the corporate press says this. If you look at the evidence the American government has published, you will see that it is full of assumptions and it ignores its own evidence that points away from their assumptions.

Also note, that the “intercepted Russian communications” says nothing about how they were intercepted. Wouldn’t you think that inquiring minds would want to know even if The New York Times reporters don’t seem to have inquiring minds?