The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence

of that, we were, for the first time, hungry.... It was just about when we had reached the lowest ebb in our morale that, one day towards the end of March, Kurt Franz [a guard] walked into our barracks, a wide grin on his face. “As of tomorrow,” he said, “transports will be rolling in again.” And do you know what we did? We shouted “Hurrah, hurrah.” It seems impossible now. Every time I think of it I die a small death; but it’s the truth. That is what we did; and that is where we had got to. And sure enough, the next morning they arrived. We had spent all of the preceding evening in an excited, expectant mood; it meant life – you see, don’t you? – safety and life. The fact that it was their death, whoever they were, which meant our life, was no longer relevant.³⁶

Sociologists have explained social movements and revolutions in terms of threat to interests. However, participants often represent varied elements of society – the “heterogeneity problem.” Thus, members of the lower middle class, who were small merchants and artisans powerfully affected by the financial problems in Germany after World War I, were long regarded as the main supporters of the Nazi movement. The actual evidence indicates, however, greater complexity. A recent analysis argues on the basis of new evidence that the elites voted for Hitler and had a substantial role in bringing him into power.³⁷ Participation in the French Revolution also came from varied social groups.³⁸

Difficult life conditions affect people in many different ways, such as material loss and suffering, diminished social status, and threat to values. In different groups the cultural preconditions for violent reactions are present to different degrees. A larger percentage of Lutherans than Catholics supported the Nazis in Germany. There were probably several reasons for this: for example, a connection between nationalism and Protestantism in Germany and Martin Luther’s intense anti-Semitism (see Chapter 9).

Religious groups and groups with conservative values and life-styles will be greatly threatened by societal changes such as the acceptance of homosexuality, feminism, permissive child raising, and drugs. In Latin American countries small rich elites (and their military supporters) are materially threatened by challenges to the status quo. But they also regard their power and privilege as right, natural, and maybe even God-given, they devalue the poor, and they hold a strong anticommunist ideology.

Analyses might specify how different subgroups are affected psychologically by difficult life conditions. This would help us predict which groups will join social movements, including those that lead to genocide. On an individual level, personal characteristics also affect what motives arise and what avenues for satisfying them are acceptable and appealing.

The long-term effects of combat experience

The persistent stress and intense danger that soldiers experience in combat have many long-term effects, as indicated by past work and recent research with Vietnam veterans.

Veterans with a significant long-term stress reaction are diagnosed as suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Major symptoms are uncontrollable reexperiencing of the traumatic event(s) (through intrusive recollections, dreams, and in other ways), “numbed responsiveness” to the external world, and denial and avoidance of memories and experiences associated with the traumatic events.

These veterans often lack goals; they have lost a sense of self, identity, meaning, and control. They give the impression of being “empty shells.” Other symptoms are easily stimulated anger and rage and sensation-seeking, the need to engage in dangerous activities.³⁹ They have lost faith in legitimate authority.⁴⁰ They no longer believe that the world is a benign, orderly, and controllable place or that they themselves are worthy and that other people are worthwhile to relate to.

Three of the four genocides and mass killings that I will analyze were associated with war, often in multiple ways. In Germany, life problems following World War I contributed to Hitler’s rise to power, and the genocide itself began during World War II. Turkey had suffered defeats in wars of liberation; the genocide of the Armenians occurred soon after one such war and during another war, World War I. In Cambodia, the genocide followed an intense civil war. In Argentina the disappearances followed left-wing terrorism and right-wing death squad murders – a civil war on as yet a limited scale.

All wars produce some people with posttraumatic stress disorder. They are likely to be attracted to a movement and leader offering them a sense of significance as well as scapegoats and enemies. Their need for activity and excitement may make the pseudomilitary roles that perpetrators sometimes start with (and later the actual role of perpetrator) appealing.

The effects of traumatic combat stress probably depend partly on the nature of the experiences, partly on personality, and partly on culture, which shapes responses to stress. The feeling in the United States that the Vietnam War was meangingless, a mistake, and even immoral may have shaped and intensified the posttraumatic response of veterans. The loss of World War I, the abdication of the kaiser, and unemployment after the war may have shaped the experience of German veterans in a similar way. Both wars involved movement back and forth over terrain that was won and lost repeatedly; this would heighten the sense of meaninglessness.^d43

Strategies for coping and goal satisfaction

When the motives that I described earlier arise from difficult life conditions, certain internal, psychological modes of satisfying them may cause aggression.

Devaluation and scapegoating. When there is no aggressor or the aggressor is too powerful or the source of responsibility cannot be identified or the responsibility is one’s own (or one’s group’s), identifying a scapegoat will have “beneficial” psychological effects.⁴⁴ A cause is found, and life problems become comprehensible. Known danger is preferable to vague anxiety about an unspecified threat. Finding a scapegoat makes people believe their problems can be predicted and controlled; and it eliminates one’s own responsibility, thereby diminishing guilt and enhancing self-esteem.

Devaluation and assigning people to outgroups (seeing a group or its members as “them” rather than “us") are widespread human tendencies that often serve as a basis for scapegoating and