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

by Ervin Staub

  As I have repeatedly stressed, even when the destruction of a group serves privilege, the perpetrators’ motivation is usually broader than self-interest. The privileged come to see their privilege as in the natural order of things, and the social arrangements that maintain it as just. Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines probably believed a statement that he made during the election campaign that led to his downfall: “God is with us. God knows that to protect the Filipino people (we) must win.”1

  Movements and ideologies often arise in response to injustice and cruelty. Victims of injustice and cruelty and their sympathizers need a vision of a better society or a better world to create and maintain the motivation to act. In the face of repression or tyranny, violence is sometimes the only means for change. The violence of the Argentine guerrillas and the Khmer Rouge began in attempts to improve genuinely unjust social conditions. But the danger inherent in a violent movement is great. When such a movement develops a sharply delineated abstract blueprint, with a total commitment to an ideology and sharp differentiation between the worthy “us” and the evil “them,” its destructive potential will be great. Any means become acceptable in the name of “saving” one’s nation or humanity or creating justice. The lives of real people become unimportant.

  Leaders and followers

  All along I stressed the importance of followers. The four cases I have discussed also show the crucial importance of leaders. They shape the progression of events and make the decision to kill whole groups of people. Leaders have choice. In no instance did the steps along the continuum of destruction make the final step of genocide or mass killing inevitable. However, usually at some point few avenues except mass killing remain available to fulfill motives of great importance to leaders, their followers, and the population as a whole.

  The relationship between leaders and followers in genocide or mass killing is not primarily a case of obedience to authority in the classic sense elucidated by the experiments of Stanley Milgram. Followers are not simply “agents” and their psychology “agentic.” Usually, followers join the leaders, and the direct perpetrators often unite with them in a highly authoritarian subsystem of society. Many of the followers freely join the group – many members of the Nazi Party and SS and officers in the Argentine military did. The Turkish leaders demanded cooperation by military, police, and administrative officers, but there is little indication that they had to overcome much reluctance. In Cambodia some members of the Khmer Rouge were inducted by force. Probably little continuing force was required to maintain their participation in genocide.

  In a tightly operating system such as the Khmer Rouge or the SS, members are shaped by the system and adopt its goals. Pressure to conform is inherent in the system. Identification with the group gives it great power over members. Coercion is normally not required. Often the beliefs, values, and aims of the whole group evolve together. Given their shared culture, shared difficulties of life, and similar evolution along a continuum of destruction, the motivation for destruction develops in both leaders and followers (and even in bystanders).

  The psychology and motives of perpetrators

  A complex of motives discussed in Parts I and II is the starting point for genocide (see Chapter 2, Table 1); motives evolve further with steps along the continuum of destruction.

  Motives of control and comprehension are important all along. Scapegoating, subordinating the self to authorities, joining a movement and adopting an ideology, assuming power over others through dominance and violence can all provide people with feelings of comprehension, control, and power. Some of these also satisfy the need for connection and support. Fear of the victims who are the designated enemy is important. It may have a realistic component, but the victims’ power or evil intentions are usually exaggerated. Although the fear is in part culturally and ideologically induced, it is also a defensive process whereby anxieties about life problems are projected onto a convenient target. Fear of an identifiable object is more bearable than unspecified anxieties. Anger, hostility, and hate that arise from frustration, threat, and attack of many kinds are focused on a culturally or ideologically selected scapegoat. Over time, the boundaries of this group enlarge and frequently more people are assigned to the victim group. Both leaders and followers invest themselves in an ideology or movement that comes to define their core identity. This helps to integrate and organize the followers’ motives, greatly contributing to their sense of wholeness and well-being.

  The psychological processes of groups

  Psychological processes in groups may have different meanings from those of individuals. If an individual blames members of a minority group for his problems and his beliefs are not shared, he will be seen as paranoid rather than visionary. Individual solutions to frustration, threat, or incomprehension may include individual violence, psychotherapy, or a new religious faith. Only shared problems, motives, and “solutions” will lead a group to turn against another. Eric Hoffer has suggested that “a rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrines and promises, but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of individual existence.”2 I agree that joining mass movements fulfills important personal needs, but in part it does so by providing doctrines and promises that offer hope, a vision, and a sense of significance.

  Membership in a group changes people. The change is greater in groups that exert more control over members and require more total commitment, more extreme actions, or greater sacrifice.3 Individual goals are supplanted by or integrated with group goals. The desire to achieve, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and the inclination for violence are invested into serving the group and its ideology. The enjoyment of violence and the breaking of social rules become acceptable in the service of the group. Not all personal goals can be integrated with group purpose. Some must be relinquished. After an initial commitment, sacrifice or suffering for the sake of the group can increase commitment.

  Characteristic psychological processes operate in groups. The boundaries of the self are weakened. The “I” becomes embedded, enveloped, and defined by the “we.” This makes emotional contagion easier, a form of empathy that I have called “empathic joining.”4 It exists even among animals; for example, it causes the spread of fear and the propensity for flight in herd animals.5 In human groups the speedy spread of feelings can lead to lynchings or mob violence. Emotional contagion is both a means of mutual influence and a source of satisfaction for group members.

  The members’ perception of reality is shaped by their shared belief system and the support they receive from each other.b Thus, members of the John Birch Society could interpret the killing of sixty-seven peaceful demonstrators in South Africa in 1960 as necessary self-defense by the police against a mob of “frenzied savages.”7 Intense group beliefs are intensely defended by denial, selective perception, selective exposure to information, and other methods.

  Steps along the continuum of destruction

  As I have noted, individuals and groups change along many dimensions. Many influences contribute to change. Aside from those already discussed, there is evidence from research that children are more likely to learn helpfulness through participation in helping acts if they are also given reasons for helping, for example, if they are told of its benefits.8 Explanations and information even help people deal with pain.9 Propaganda, a type of information and explanation, is an important tool in the hands of perpetrators and an important force moving people along the continuum of destruction.

  Further study is needed to specify and quantify the dimensions of change in individuals and groups that lead to group violence. A classification scheme might also specify the social institutions involved in varying forms of mistreatment and their evolution.

  Historical hindsight about steps along the contiuum of destruction is not enough. As individuals and societies we must learn to foresee the potentials at an early stage. We must not allow small evil to pass until great evil triumphs.


  The obligation of bystanders

  People do not see themselves as bystanders (or perpetrators). They notice some events but not others. They process some events they notice while actively removing themselves from others.c How they respond depends on their motives, values, and aims. Frequently, they are inhibited by fear. But frequently they are so resocialized that they do not oppose, even in their hearts, the perpetrators’ aims. This has great “therapeutic” value, because it eliminates or short-circuits guilt, sympathetic distress, and fear. At times, the bystanders’ aims include protecting victims or helping people in need. Do witnesses to the mistreatment of other people have an obligation to act?

  All groups teach values, some of which have an imperative quality to which members are held strictly accountable. But societies do not normally require or expect their members to endanger their lives or sacrifice themselves for the persecuted, especially for people defined as enemies of their own society. We do know, however, that victims are often innocent. We should hold up the ideal of effort and sacrifice in behalf of people in extreme need or danger. At times this requires great courage –

  an important component of moral character.d

  To avoid the catastrophes of group violence, people often need to act at an early stage, which requires a feeling of responsibility and often the social and moral courage to deviate, but normally not physical courage. Living in highly interdependent social groups, the well-being of all requires that people feel responsible for the welfare of others. We can expect people to engage with the world as responsible actors in shaping their immediate circumstances as well as the broader social order. We can expect them to see themselves as agents of human welfare, the welfare of others as well as their own.

  In sum, we can expect that people will observe and make efforts to inhibit the mistreatment of members of their society – or of human beings anywhere. Thus, bystanders do have obligations. For these obligations to be fulfilled, certain social conditions must be created, and members of society must be socialized in certain ways (I will discuss this in Part IV). In the meantime, we must educate people about the “bystander role": the insidious effects and moral meaning of passivity and the psychological processes by which people distance themselves from those in need.

  More and less central origins of genocide

  What is the relative importance of various factors in the origin of genocide?

  Cultural characteristics and life conditions act jointly. Difficult life conditions are unlikely, by themselves, to lead to genocide. Certain cultural characteristics are more central than others. Devaluation is highly central. Real pluralism prevents the development of broad support for harming the victims. Genocide is unlikely in a society with a moderately positive cultural self-concept; a positive evaluation and relatively equal treatment of subgroups; pluralistic culture and social organization; and the absence of a firm, authoritarian blueprint for a better society or better world. Unfortunately, most societies have at least some of the predisposing characteristics and therefore some propensity for group violence.

  A strong pattern of predisposing characteristics may be enough by itself to make a group turn against another group, guided by motives that need not arise from life problems, such as the desire for economic gain or even images of the glory of war (see next chapter). In the Americas desire for land and economic expansion caused the mass killing of Indians, who were excluded from the pluralistic process.e Moreover, some life problems will inevitably arise in any society as a result of technological or other changes.

  As I noted in Chapter 1, for many reasons the frequency of mass killing and attempts at genocide have been great since World War II. Extensive worldwide communication allows learning by example. Modeling influences many types of behavior, including aggression. The first airplane hijacking was immediately and repeatedly imitated.12 Knowledge about the Holocaust and other mass killings and about torture and terrorism has a cumulative impact. Such violence represents worldwide steps along a continuum of destruction. Furthermore, the threat of nuclear destruction may diminish the seeming magnitude of “lesser” violence. Such interconnected change can lead to a worldwide lessening of moral concern and an increase in the ease of killing. We must take steps to counteract this process.

  Predicting genocide and mass killing

  The model I have outlined may help us identify societies likely to commit mass killing or genocide.f I shall briefly consider, as a demonstration, the potential of the United States for genocide.

  U.S. culture includes a sense of superiority, even a belief in the right to dominate others (or at least to bring to them the “right” values and ways of life), and there is also an underlying insecurity about worth, moral goodness, and recently even about competence, a dangerous combination. The individualism of American culture is a double-edged sword.13 On the one hand, it makes people likely to speak out and avoid blindly following leaders. On the other hand, people standing alone may intensely feel the need for connection and support in difficult times. This makes them vulnerable to such movements as survivalist groups, the Ku Klux Klan, or extreme fundamentalism.

  Devaluation and discrimination still exist in the United States but have been diminishing. There is some cultural awareness that negative images often are not representations of reality but expressions of prejudice. This is an important and difficult advance. Efforts to expose and eliminate stereotypes and negative images have to some degree been institutionalized in laws. In all this there has been continuous progress for decades, with only occasional backlash. But the joblessness and poverty of previously devalued groups, the result of many forces, provide a renewed basis for devaluation.

  Respect for and obedience to authority are moderate, which creates less potential for mass killing. Society is pluralistic, both culturally and procedurally. Self-censorship by the media (see Chapter 17) makes it somewhat difficult for certain views to gain an audience and somewhat limits pluralism. Still, extremely varied groups have been accepted in the open forum of society. It seems progressively less likely that certain groups will have neither access to the pluralistic process nor the opportunity to define their rights. This is not a simple, linear process: the poor, homosexuals (especially in the era of AIDS), and Hispanics are emerging targets of devaluation. However, devaluation in the United States generates contrary processes; this demonstrates a relatively healthy pluralistic system.

  Pluralism, freedom, and respect for the individual limit the potential influence of destructive ideologies within the United States. Valuing freedom and pluralism, as well as capitalism, and a past history of antagonism toward the Soviet Union created an intense anticommunism. This, in combination with an elevated self-concept and with the role of a great power, has led to an “ideology of antagonism” toward the Soviet Union. All these characteristics have also led to a disregard for the human rights and well-being of people in certain nations, which is related to a recurrent policy of support for violent, repressive, but capitalist, governments, coupled with hostility to governments inclined toward communism.

  Finally, the United States has a history of aggressiveness, both on the individual level and between racial groups. Aggression against blacks and Indians arose from deep-seated devaluation, exclusion, and economic motives. Substantial inequalities between groups provide a potential for political and intergroup violence. An increase in economic problems could intensify feelings of injustice, and the resulting anger would increase the potential for violence.

  In sum, despite some predisposing elements, the total cultural pattern for genocide or mass killings does not seem to exist in the United States. (Much more detailed and formal analyses are possible, using the conception I have outlined.) But for a full picture we must also consider the nature of life conditions and their contribution to a genocidal potential. The United States has experienced moderately difficult life conditions and undergone social upheaval in the last twenty-five years, with effects that have further contributed to soci
al disorganization. There was the civil rights movement, a struggle for cultural and societal change, with sit-ins and demonstrations and resulting in police brutality and violence. There were the assassinations of leaders. There was the Vietnam War, with the loss of life, the protests, the emergence of a youth movement, profound political conflict, and after-effects such as posttraumatic stress in veterans, economic problems, and threats to and changes in societal self-concept, world views, and culture. There has been rapid technological change.

  There have been profound changes in social mores and practices: the acceptability and frequency of divorce and abortion, changes in sexual practices, and widespread drug use. Even though some of these changes, like the movement to create equality for women, are inherently positive, they have contributed to the existence of one-parent families, which in turn have led to problems in the socialization of children.

  Although there has been increased concern with social justice, there has been an increase in poverty, homelessness, and unemployment among the youth, especially black youth, with bleak prospects for the uneducated poor. Movements like the Moral Majority and white supremacist groups have come to serve the needs that have been created by all this upheaval, in turn contributing to divisions in society.