probablyasocialecologist:

Dehumanizing and vilifying a person or group of people can provoke what scholars and law enforcement officials call stochastic terrorism, in which ideologically driven hate speech increases the likelihood that people will violently and unpredictably attack the targets of vicious claims.

At its core, stochastic terrorism exploits one of our strongest and most complicated emotions: disgust.

[…]

Propagandists have fomented disgust to dehumanize Jewish people as vermin; Black people as subhuman apes; Indigenous people as “savages”; immigrants as “animals” unworthy of protection; and members of the LGBTQ community as sexual deviants and “predators” who prey upon children.

[…]

Researchers have estimated that transgender people are more than fourfold more likely to be the victims of violent crime than their cisgender counterparts, and while not a direct link to violence, other scientists have linked disgust sensitivity and authoritarianism to a higher opposition to transgender rights. Over the past few months, assailants repeating the groomer slur have threatened to kill drag queens and LGBTQ people, as well as educators, school officials, librarians, parents and lawmakers who have come to their defense.

In the lead-up to the midterm elections, a blitz of far-right radio ads targeting Black and Hispanic stations in swing states has repeated falsehoods about transgender people and a QAnon warning that the Biden administration will make it easier for children “to remove breasts and genitals”—an attempt to evoke disgust. Other ads aimed at white audiences claim minorities are the true aggressors and destroyers of social norms. One decries “anti-white bigotry.” Another warns ominously, “Stop the woke war on our children.”

The cynical appeal to protecting children by attacking minorities has exposed a bitter irony: disgust is an emotion that evolved to keep us out of danger, but people have long misused it to inflict cruelty and catastrophic harm.