We sometimes describe aggressors as “brainwashed” by propaganda that dehumanizes their victims, so much so they are “hypnotized” into committing atrocities. But what if the “dehumanising” propaganda rather legitimizes cruelty, makes it ordinary, and the aggressor sees the victims' humanity all too clearly?

– Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler (PublicAffairs 2024), chap. 4.