Under extremely difficult life conditions certain motives dominate: protecting the physical well-being of oneself and one’s family and preserving one’s psychological self, including self-concept and values; making sense of life’s problems and social disorganization and gaining a new comprehension of the world, among others. It is difficult, usually, to fulfill these aims by improving the conditions of life. Instead, people often respond with thoughts, feelings, and actions that do not change real conditions but at least help them cope with their psychological consequences. These include devaluing other groups, scapegoating, joining new groups, and adopting ideologies – all of which may give rise to the motivation for, and diminish inhibition against, harming others.
What motives arise and how they are fulfilled depend on the characteristics of the culture and society. For example, a society that has long devalued a group and discriminated against its members, has strong respect for authority, and has an overly superior and/or vulnerable self-concept is more likely to turn against a subgroup.
Genocide does not result directly. There is usually a progression of actions. Earlier, less harmful acts cause changes in individual perpetrators, bystanders, and the whole group that make more harmful acts possible. The victims are further devalued. The self-concept of the perpetrators changes and allows them to inflict greater harm – for “justifiable” reasons. Ultimately, there is a commitment to genocide or mass killing or to ideological goals that require mass killing or genocide. The motivation and the psychological possibility evolve gradually.
Such a progression is made more likely by the passivity of bystanders – members of the society not directly affected and outside groups, including other nations. Active opposition by bystanders can reactivate the perpetrators’ moral values and also cause them to be concerned about retaliation.
In the next chapter I will present a more detailed description of the core concepts. In subsequent chapters of Part I, I examine in greater detail each component of the conception, including the psychology of individual perpetrators, bystanders, and heroic helpers. In Part II, I apply the conception to a detailed analysis of the Holocaust; in Part III, to the analysis of the other genocides and mass killings.b
In Part IV, I discuss how, with some changes and extensions, this conception provides an understanding of the origins of war, the other major form of group violence. The difficult life conditions that lead to war may include internal problems, problems in the international order, and conflicts with other nations.
Genocide and mass killing are tragedies for the perpetrators also. Their characters are affected, and at times the cycle of violence makes them victims as well. To diminish the chance of such tragedies, we must identify elements of culture, institutions, and personality that reduce hostility and aggression and enhance caring, connection, helpfulness, and cooperation within and between groups. To promote these ends we must create crosscutting relations that allow members of different subgroups (and of different nations) to work and play together; we must help groups develop positive reciprocity in their relationships; and we must guide individuals and groups to act in others’ behalf. In these and other ways we can create a progression, an evolution of caring, connectedness, and nonaggression in opposition to the continuum of destruction. How the young are socialized by parents and schools is also essential. In Chapters 17 and 18, I present an agenda for creating caring and nonaggressive persons and societies.
Differences and similarities and the selection of cases. This book searches for the origins of genocides and mass killings. The outcomes differ greatly (for example, in the number of people killed and methods of killing), and the influences that lead to genocide are not identical. Difficult conditions of life vary. Severe economic problems, political violence, war, and even rapid, substantial social change can result in social chaos and personal upheavals. Of the cultural-societal characteristics that have the potential to generate violence, only some may be influential in a given instance. The continuum of destruction takes various forms as well. In some cases a society has progressed along this continuum for decades or even centuries. In other cases, the progression develops over a much shorter time under the influence of difficult life conditions or of the ideologies adopted to deal with them.
Why did I choose the Holocaust, the genocides in Turkey and Cambodia, and the disappearances in Argentina for study and analysis? Each is significant in its own right, yet they differ in many ways. If we can identify commonalities in their origins, we can gain confidence in our understanding of the origins of genocides and mass killings in general.
The Holocaust is an instance of suffering and cruelty that informs our age. It gave rise to a deep questioning of the nature of individuals and groups, of human beings and human societies. For many, the evil embodied in the Holocaust is incomprehensible. For some, it is preferable not to comprehend, because comprehension might lead to forgiving.1 But as I have noted, only by understanding the roots of such evil do we gain the possibility of shaping the future so that it will not happen again.
The genocide of the Armenians is the first modern genocide. Turkey and the Turks have never admitted that it happened. The say it was self-defense, the deportation of an internal enemy in time of war. For this reason alone, the Armenian genocide deserves attention. There are other important differences between the Holocaust and this genocide. The Holocaust made use of bureaucratic management and advanced technology in the framework of a totalitarian system. The genocide of the Armenians was less planned, with limited bureaucratic organization and very little advanced technology in its execution.
Paradoxically, in this highly technological age, we are horrified by the nontechnological brutality of the Cambodian genocide, its direct, primitive methods
