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

by Ervin Staub

  There can be no exhaustive test of my conception of genocide, but I can provide significant confirmation by demonstrating substantial similarities in the psychological and cultural origins of these four disparate cases and the existence of extraordinary life problems.

  The definitions of genocide and mass killing

  The word genocide was introduced by the jurist Raphael Lemkin, who began a crusade in 1933 to create what was to become the Genocide Convention. In 1944, in a study of the Axis rule in occupied Europe, he proposed the term genocide to denote the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group, from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing).2 As a result of his efforts, on December 11, 1946, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) passed a resolution that said: “Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.... Many instances of such crimes have occurred, when racial, religious, political and other groups have been destroyed, entirely or in part.”3

  In subsequent work of UN committees on what became the Genocide Convention, passed on December 9, 1948, disagreements about content were substantial. The Soviet Union and other nations objected to the inclusion of political groups as victims of genocide, arguing that the etymology of the term should guide the definition: only racial and national groups could be objectively designated. Others argued that political groups are transient and unstable. Some objected that the inclusion of political groups in the convention “would expose nations to external intervention in their domestic concerns,”4 and political conflict within a country could become an international issue. Those who wanted to include political groups pointed out that the meanings of words evolve. They wanted genocide to refer to the destruction of any group.5 Even the inclusion of economic groups was suggested.

  The Genocide Convention as finally adopted did not include political groups. It defined the crime of genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” by killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, creating conditions calculated to bring about their physical destruction, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children to another group.6

  Killing groups of people for political reasons has become the primary form of genocide (and mass killing) in our time. There is no reason to believe that the types of psychological and cultural influences differ in political and other group murders. In this book genocide means an attempt to exterminate a racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, or political group, either directly through murder or indirectly by creating conditions that lead to the group’s destruction. Mass killing means killing members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group or killing large numbers of people without a precise definition of group membership. In a mass killing the number of people killed is usually smaller than in genocide.

  For example, in Cambodia the scale of murder was genocidal, but the identification of who was to be killed somewhat imprecise, as it frequently is in political genocide. In Argentina the reasons were also political, but the number of victims was much smaller, and their identification even less precise – a mass killing rather than a genocide. The ideology that led to the killings in Cambodia demanded many more victims.7

  Four mass killings/genocides

  I will here briefly describe what happened in the Nazi Holocaust, in the genocide of the Armenians, in the autogenocide in Cambodia, and in the disappearances in Argentina.

  The Holocaust

  The word refers to the extermination of about six million Jews by Nazi Germany from June 1941 to 1945. Another five million people were also killed: political opponents; mentally ill, retarded, and other “genetically inferior” Germans; Poles; and Russians. Gypsies, like Jews, were to be eliminated; more than 200,000 were killed, probably many more.

  The extermination of Jews had several phases.8 After sporadic killings, a policy of extermination, the Final Solution, was created. The policy took shape in 1941; it was institutionalized in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference. In 1941, Einsatzgruppen (literally, task forces; special mobile killing units) were established and sent to the eastern front. They lined up and shot groups of Jews at the edge of mass graves, which at times the victims were forced to dig. Later they filled trucks with Jews and drove them around until they died of the carbon monoxide that was routed back into the truck. About one and a half million people were killed in these ways.

  More and more, the killing took place in specially constructed camps, most located in Poland. Some were strictly extermination camps. Jews were told they would be resettled and gathered from all over Europe; in territories not occupied by the Germans but allied with them, governments were asked to hand over their Jewish population. The Jews were herded into freight cars and transported to camps. After days on end without food, water, or medical care, some died on the way. On entering the camps they were told to undress for showers. Instead, they were gassed to death. Their bodies were removed by Jews assigned to special working units and were burnt first in open fires, later in great ovens.

  Other camps were combined labor and extermination camps. The “selection” at Auschwitz is infamous. Those deemed capable of work or considered useful in cruel medical experiments were sent to the camp. Others were immediately taken to the gas chambers. Families were separated in this process.

  Other modes of killing were part of camp life. Inmates were deliberately starved. Those who became weak or ill were sent to the gas chambers. Some were killed in camp hospitals with injections into the heart. Others died for real or imagined infractions of inhumane camp rules; they were hanged or suffocated in tiny airless prison cells.

  In addition to the organized murders, there was both planned and capricious brutality in the treatment of inmates. Only the most limited bodily care was possible. Toilets were long rows of holes, with only seconds to use them. Inmates slept three or four to a bunk. They were ruled by other inmates who were former criminals and were exposed to degradations, mutilation in medical experiments, and torture.9

  The genocide of the Armenians

  In the midst of World War I, during the night of April 24, 1915, the religious and intellectual leaders of the Armenian community in Constantinople were taken from their beds, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. At about the same time, Armenians in the Turkish army, already segregated in “labor battalions,” were all killed. Over a short time period Armenian men over fifteen years of age were gathered in cities, towns, and villages, roped together, marched to nearby uninhabited locations, and killed.10

  After a few days, the women and children and any remaining men were told to prepare themselves for deportation. They were marched from Anatolia through a region of ravines and mountains to the Syrian Desert, where they were left to die. On the way, they were attacked by Turkish villagers and peasants, Kurds, and chettis – brigands who were freed from prison and placed in their path. The attackers robbed the marchers of provisions and clothes, killed men, women, and children, even infants, and raped and carried off women. Through it all, Turkish gendarmes urged the marchers on with clubs and whips, refused them water as they passed by streams and wells, and bayoneted those who lagged behind.

  Telegrams to provincial capitals captured by the British army and reports by witnesses, including diplomats like Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to Turkey, provide evidence that the extermination of the Armenians was planned and organized by the central government.11 Estimates of the number killed range from four hundred thousand to over a million; the actual number is probably more than eight hundred thousand.

  The autogenocide (Khmer killing Khmer) in Cambodia

  In 1975, after a five-year civil war, the communist Khmer Rouge, or Red Khmer, gained victory and power in Cambodia. They evacuated all the cities, including Phnom Penh, the capital, whose population had swelled with refugees to almost three million. All were brutally driven from the city and some were killed.

  Whoever the small gr
oup of dominant communist leaders, Pol Pot and his followers, regarded as potential enemies of the ideal state that they wanted to build or as incapable of living in and contributing to such a state was killed. That included officers of the defeated army, government officials, intellectuals, educated people, and professionals such as doctors and teachers. Communists who became victims of infighting were often interrogated and tortured before being killed. The killings were not entirely systematic. There were more in some parts of the country than in others, more during certain periods than others. The killing actually intensified toward the end of the Khmer Rouge rule in 1979.

  The populations of cities were driven into the countryside to build villages and irrigation systems and work the land. They were not allowed to settle in abandoned villages but had to build new ones from scratch. Peasants were allowed to keep some property, including small parcels of land. Those driven from the cities were allowed no property of any kind.

  The people were forced to work very long days with little food. They were not allowed to forage in the forest, a customary source of food for Cambodian peasants. They were killed for the slightest infraction of the many and stringent rules, sometimes without warning. Parents were killed in front of their children, brothers in front of brothers. About two million people died from execution and starvation between 1975 and 1979.12

  The disappearances in Argentina

  In 1976 the armed forces took over the government in a coup. They intensified the war against guerrillas who had been committing murders and kidnapping people for ransom. The military began to kidnap and torture even people who were merely suspected of association with the guerrillas or regarded as left leaning or politically liberal. The selection of victims was indiscriminate; not even pregnant women were spared.

  Most of those kidnapped and tortured were killed, alone or in mass executions. Some were drugged and dropped from helicopters into the ocean. The authorities gave away infants and young children of victims killed, often to military families, without informing relatives. When relatives asked about people who had disappeared, the authorities denied knowledge of their whereabouts. At least nine thousand were killed, with some estimates as high as thirty thousand.13

  Is mass killing ever justified?

  Are mass killing and genocide ever justifiable self-defense or understandable retaliation? How can they be? In both genocides and mass killings (but also frequently in war) the people killed include women, old people, children, as well as men who in no way harmed the killers. There may be antagonism or violence between some of the victims and the perpetrators. The perpetrators sometimes claim the victims provoked the mass killing. There was some “provocation” in each of our four cases except the Holocaust. But how can hostility by some members of a group, often in response to repression or violence against them, justify the attempt to exterminate the whole group; or violence by a small group of people who oppose a system justify the “creation” of a large group whose members are then killed?

  Nor are genocides and mass killings ever “rational” expressions of self-interest. The three genocides, at least, were highly destructive to the perpetrators. The fabric of society was impaired, many people essential to its functioning were killed, and desperately needed resources were used in the service of killing.c

  * * *

  a On October 12, 1987, NBC news presented a program on the killing of children in our modern age. According to this program, “Once children just died in the crossfire, now they are targets.” While always among victims of genocide, in the last twenty years children have increasingly become direct targets, killed in order to terrorize communities into political passivity.

  b Part of the overall conception I present and many of the specific concepts, ideas, and considerations also apply to individual violence within groups. One major difference is that the cultural and psychological influences that arise from the differentiation between “us” and “them,” ingroup and outgroup, need not be involved in individual violence. Another is that personal (rather than societal) characteristics and circumstances (or the characteristics of and conditions in families) become of primary importance.

  c The frequently self-destructive nature of genocides makes it unlikely that its function is to reduce population surplus, as one author has suggested.14 Certainly genocide does not seem to do this in an effective manner and does not appear to gain evolutionary advantage for the perpetrators.

  2 The origins of genocide and mass killing: core concepts

  I believe that tragically human beings have the capacity to come to experience killing other people as nothing extraordinary. Some perpetrators may feel sick and disgusted when killing large numbers of people, as they might feel in slaughtering animals, but even they will proceed to kill for a “good” reason, for a “higher” cause. How do they come to this? In essence, difficult life conditions and certain cultural characteristics may generate psychological processes and motives that lead a group to turn against another group. The perpetrators change, as individuals and as a group, as they progress along a continuum of destruction that ends in genocide. The behavior of bystanders can inhibit or facilitate this evolution.a

  A conception of the origins of genocide and mass killing

  Difficult life conditions

  Human beings often face hard times as individuals or as members of a group. Sometimes a whole society or substantial and potentially influential segments of society face serious problems that have a powerful impact and result in powerful motivations.

  Economic conditions at the extreme can result in starvation or threat to life. Less extreme economic problems can result in prolonged deprivation, deterioration of material well-being, or at least the frustration of expectations for improved well-being. Hostility and violence threaten and endanger life, whether political violence between internal groups or war with an external enemy. Political violence threatens the security even of people who are uninvolved. Widespread criminal violence also threatens life and security. War threatens the life of at least some individuals and affects many aspects of the life of a society. Rapid changes in culture and society – for example, rapid technological change and the attendant changes in work and social customs – also have the psychological impact of difficult life conditions. They overturn set patterns of life and lead to disorganization.

  The meaning assigned to life problems, the intensity of their impact, and the way groups of people try to deal with them are greatly affected by the characteristics of cultures and social organizations. By themselves, difficult life conditions will not lead to genocide. They carry the potential, the motive force; culture and social organization determine whether the potential is realized by giving rise to devaluation and hostility toward a subgroup (or a nation; see Chapter 16).

  Difficulties of life vary in nature, magnitude, persistence, and the accompanying disorganization and chaos in society. As a result, the impact also varies: the threat may be to life, to security, to well-being, to self-concept, or to world view. In all four cases I discuss, political violence, civil war, or external war was involved. Political violence may create a new political system that changes traditional ways of life and values; this has the impact of difficult life conditions. The new system can further cultural and social characteristics that contribute to genocide. In all four cases I will examine, changes in political systems preceded genocides and mass killings by less than a decade.

  One important cultural characteristic is the rigidity or the adaptability of a society. Monolithic societies, with a limited set of acceptable values and ways of life, may be more disturbed by change. For example, the disruptive changes in technology, ways of life, and values under the shah probably contributed to the intensity of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran. Rigidity and flexibility partly depend on societal self-concept, the way a group and its members define themselves. Greater rigidity makes the difficulties of life more stressful.

  Psychological consequences: needs and goals

&n
bsp; Difficult life conditions give rise to powerful needs and goals demanding satisfaction. People need to cope with the psychological effects of difficult life conditions, the more so when they cannot change the conditions or alleviate the physical effects. Hard times make people feel threatened and frustrated.b Threats to the physical self are important, but so are threats to the psychological self. All human beings strive for a coherent and positive self-concept, a self-definition that provides continuity and guides one’s life. Difficult conditions threaten the self-concept as people cannot care for themselves and their families or control the circumstances of their lives.

  Powerful self-protective motives then arise: the motive to defend the physical self (one’s life and safety) and the motive to defend the psychological self (one’s self-concept, values, and ways of life). There is a need both to protect self-esteem and to protect values and traditions. There is also a need to elevate a diminished self.

  Disruption in customary ways of life, the resulting chaos, and changing mores can profoundly threaten people’s assumptions about the world and their comprehension of reality. Because understanding the world is essential, people will be powerfully motivated to seek a new world view and gain a renewed comprehension of reality. Without such comprehension life is filled with uncertainty and anxiety.

  When their group is functioning poorly and not providing protection and well-being, people’s respect for and valuing of the group diminish; their societal self-concept is harmed. Because people define themselves to a significant degree by their membership in a group, for most people a positive view of their group is essential to individual self-esteem – especially in difficult times. The need to protect and improve societal self-concept or to find a new group to identify with will be powerful.