Genocide

Genocide. The UN Genocide Convention, passed on 9 December 1948, defined genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group…” Although political groups were not included—due to objections by the Soviet Union and other nations—most students of genocide consider such acts against political groups as genocide. UN conventions and statements of principles have created a body of “international law,” but enforcement mechanisms have been nonexistent, highly limited, or ad hoc, like the tribunals created to try perpetrators in Bosnia and Rwanda, and usually ineffective.

Perpetrators of genocide tend to offer justifications, such as destructive actions or intentions by the victims. Usually, these justifications are unfounded or greatly exaggerated; moreover, since old and young, women and children are killed, genocidal violence, even if partially defensive, is never morally justifiable. To understand the origins of genocide, it is necessary to consider societal conditions, the political system (genocide is less likely in a pluralistic, democratic society), cultural characteristics, the psychology of perpetrators and of internal bystanders (members of the society in which genocide takes place who are not themselves perpetrators), and the role of external bystanders (especially other nations).

Difficult social conditions are frequently the starting point for genocide. These are created by intense economic problems; by intense political conflict within a society—which can take varied forms, one of which is conflict between a dominant group and a subordinate group that is poor and has limited rights; or by very great and rapid social changes; or a combination of all these factors.

Under such conditions, people often scapegoat a subgroup of society for their problems, or create an ideology that promises a better life but identifies an enemy that stands in the way of its fulfillment. As the group or its members begin to harm the scapegoat or ideological enemy, they begin to change. Individuals and groups “learn by doing,” changing as the result of their own actions. Perpetrators further devalue their victims, exclude them from the human and moral realm, and create institutions to harm and kill them. An evolution of increasing violence leads to genocide.

All this is more likely to happen in cultures with certain characteristics. One of these is a history of devaluation of the group that becomes the victim. Cultural devaluation is usually deeply set and becomes influential when conditions are difficult, as was the case with anti‐Semitism in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. At times instead of devaluation by one group of another there is a history of conflict and violence between two groups, and intense mutual antagonism, as was the case in both Rwanda and Bosnia, in the 1990s. Other characteristics of culture that make the genocidal process probable include a strong respect for authority, a monolithic rather than pluralistic society, certain ways members of a group see their group, and a history of violence in dealing with conflict.

The evolution toward genocide is usually made possible by the passivity of both internal and external bystanders. Their passivity affirms the perpetrators. Early strong reactions by bystanders, such as protests, boycotts, and sanctions, occurring before the perpetrators have developed strong commitment to their ideology and murderous course, could inhibit this evolution.

There is a history of passivity. While internal enemies and the Jews were increasingly persecuted in Nazi Germany, all nations went to Berlin to participate in the 1936 Olympics. At the same time, U.S. corporations did business in Germany. Jews were kept out of the United States—only about one‐tenth of the legal quota of Jewish immigrants was filled. During World War II, the Allies refused to bomb Auschwitz or the railroad leading to it. At the time of the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks in World War I, the United States had limited influence over Turkey, but Germany, Turkey's supporter and ally, did nothing. In Cambodia in the 1970s, U.S. actions destabilized the country. Once the Communist Khmer Rouge took over, the United States had little influence over Pol Pot's genocidal regime. However, after Vietnam invaded Cambodia and stopped the genocide, the United States showed strong hostility toward Vietnam and joined with China to insist that the Khmer Rouge government was the legitimate representative of Cambodia in the United Nations. In the 1980s, the United States supported Iraq against Iran, even though it was using chemical weapons against its Kurdish citizens. Washington turned against Iraq only after it invaded Kuwait.

Early nonviolent actions by the community of nations might have inhibited the evolution and continuation of violence in the former Yugoslavia. However, the bombing of Serb positions in Bosnia, and the subsequent peacekeeping role of NATO and the United States, set a positive precedent.

The influences that give rise to genocide create other forms of violence between groups as well, including mass killings, and, at times, war. In the course of the evolution described above the targets of violence may expand, to other groups within a country, or to other countries. In Argentina, the murder of dissenters in the late 1970s was followed by the Falklands War. At times war provides a cover for genocide, or its violence makes genocide easier to commit, as it did in Nazi Germany, 1939–45, and in Turkey, 1915–16.

Cultural characteristics and political organization in the United States now make genocide unlikely, yet the history of exclusion of Native Americans and African Americans from the public domain rendered violence against them probable. The violence in the United States against Native Americans is perhaps best described not as genocide but as group violence, including mass killings. However, genocide and mass killing have fuzzy boundaries. Intense devaluation, self‐interest in gaining territory, conflict and mutual antagonism, and learning‐by‐doing probably all shared roles in the violence against Native Americans.
[See also Atrocities; Bosnian Crisis; Holocaust, U.S. War Effort and the; Native American Wars: Wars Between Native Americans and Europeans and Euro‐Americans; War Crimes.]

Bibliography

Bernard W. Sheehan , Seeds of Extinction, 1973.
David S. Wyman , The Abandonment of Jew: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945, 1984.
Ervin Staub , The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, 1989.
Helen Fein , Genocide: A Sociological Perspective, 1993.

Ervin Staub