The Psychology of Genocide, Massacres, and Extreme Violence: Why "Normal" People Come to Commit Atrocities

The Psychology of Genocide, Massacres, and Extreme Violence: Why "Normal" People Come to Commit Atrocities Donald G. Dutton Praeger Security International THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDE, MASSACRES, AND EXTREME VIOLENCE Praeger Security International Advisory Board Board Cochairs Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Public and International Affairs, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia (U.S.A.) Paul Wilkinson, Professor of International Relations and Chairman of the Advi- sory Board, Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St. Andrews (U.K.) Members Eliot A. Cohen, Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies and Director, Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University (U.S.A.) Anthony H. Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies (U.S.A.) The´re`se Delpech, Director of Strategic Affairs, Atomic Energy Commission, and Senior Research Fellow, CERI (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques), Paris (France) Sir Michael Howard, former Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regis Professor of Modern History, Oxford University, and Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, Yale University (U.K.) Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.), former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army (U.S.A.) Paul M. Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and Director, International Security Studies, Yale University (U.S.A.) Robert J. O’Neill, former Chichele Professor of the History of War, All Souls College, Oxford University (Australia) Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland (U.S.A.) Jusuf Wanandi, co-founder and member, Board of Trustees, Centre for Strategic and International Studies (Indonesia) Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International (U.S.A.) THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDE, MASSACRES, AND EXTREME VIOLENCE Why ‘‘Normal’’ People Come to Commit Atrocities Donald G. Dutton PRAEGER SECURITY INTERNATIONAL Westport, Connecticut • London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dutton, Donald G., 1943– The psychology of genocide, massacres, and extreme violence : why ‘‘normal’’ people come to commit atrocities / Donald G. Dutton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–275–99000–8 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–275–99000–1 (alk. paper) 1. Violence. 2. Social psychology. 3. Genocide—Psychological aspects. I. Title. HM1116.D88 2007 304.6’63—dc22 2007005293 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2007 by DonaldG. Dutton All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007005293 ISBN-13: 978–0–275–99000–8 ISBN-10: 0–275–99000–1 First published in 2007 Praeger Security International, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321 Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book, but in some instances this has proven impossible. The author and publisher will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgments in subsequent printings of the book and in the meantime extend their apologies for any omissions. Understanding now the human condition, I dedicate this book to my dog. To Babar: Would that all humans Shared your beastliness CONTENTS PREFACE ix CHAPTER 1: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE 1 CHAPTER 2: MASS VIOLENCE IN THE TWENTIETH 14 CENTURY CHAPTER 3: GENOCIDES 27 CHAPTER 4: THE HOLOCAUST 38 CHAPTER 5: MILITARY MASSACRES 62 CHAPTER 6: LYNCHINGS 73 CHAPTER 7: PRISON RIOTS 85 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER 8: SOCIETAL TRANSITIONS: THE NORMATIVE 96 SHIFTS IN GENOCIDE CHAPTER 9: INDIVIDUAL TRANSITIONS TO EXTREME 114 VIOLENCE CHAPTER 10: RAPE, SERIAL KILLERS, AND THE FORENSIC 123 PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR CHAPTER 11: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN VIOLENT 134 AGGRESSION CHAPTER 12: FINAL THOUGHTS 141 CHAPTER 13: POSTSCRIPT: THE FINAL SUMMATION 152 EPILOGUE 157 NOTES 159 INDEX 191 PREFACE Throughout film history men1 have been transformed into mythical beasts—to vampires and werewolves, each with a terrible violence that supposedly tran- scended the human condition. In fact, this may be a metaphor for the transfor- mation to brutality that we are capable of as humans. When we describe a kindhearted act, we call it ‘‘humane,’’ and heinous acts are performed on ‘‘dehu- manized’’ victims. Yet throughout human history humanity has been the most destructive species on the planet. Hopes that the Renaissance would produce a more enlightened, cultured, and nonviolent phase of humanity have long since been dashed. The twentieth century, just past, has been the bloodiest in human history.2 Our capabilities to build more powerful weapons increase each year; our capacity to experience compassion for humanity as a whole does not. Indeed, as we will see in Chapter 1 of this book, the process of generating slaughter is no different in the twenty-first century than it was in the eleventh century: define an enemy, accuse that enemy of horrible actions or the potential for the same, generate fear and a sense of a just cause, and accuse those who do not fall into line of heresy or a lack of patriotism. A tribal passion ensues that generates the capacity for extreme rage and genocidal violence—the will to annihilate an entire people. The pathway to this tribal passion can occur through rapid societal change— the development of new norms defining violence as acceptable and targeting the victim group who are typically described as vermin or a virus. This view of the enemy group spreading generates rapid fear-based action to exterminate them as quickly as possible, even their infants. x PREFACE The drive to kill is fueled by a societal sense of power and destiny—a sense of entitlement called narcissism in an individual but nationalism in a country. Sada- kat Kadri,3 in his wonderful history of the trial, recounts an apocryphal tale told by St. Augustine in the fifth century. A captured pirate, asked by Alexander the Great how he dared to plunder the high seas, responded, ‘‘Because I do it with a little ship I am called a pirate, because you do it with a great fleet you are an emperor.’’4 Indeed, our moral judgments about murder are quite protean and are applied differentially in civilian and military contexts. Most Americans did not favor the punishment of Lt. William Calley for the rape and murder of Viet- namese women and children at My Lai.5 Calley spent just a few days in prison. Recent revelations6 indicate that his actions were not atypical. The U.S. 101st Airborne, nicknamed Tiger Force, cut a bloody swath through Viet Nam, tortur- ing, raping, and collecting body parts. In a civilian context, just one person acting this way would generate heightened police surveillance, as with Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer in Seattle. In war, it generates cover-up and indifference. Although there are individual societal differences in aggression, these appear to ebb and flow within a culture and to be generated by a time-limited hubris7 fol- lowed by decline. The capability for extreme cruelty seems not so much particu- lar to any one culture but more to any culture when the ‘‘perfect storm’’ of conditions descends. For this transcultural reason, sociobiologists tend to view extreme violence as an inherited and vestigial remnant of our predator past, of the ‘‘pain-blood-death’’ complex, a set of associations with successful hunting.8 Humans exhibit a greater capacity for cruelty than do other animals, leading some to think that a certain level of brain development, allowing for a ‘‘theory of mind’’ (i.e., how a victim would think), is essential for cruelty. Others wonder if our lack of success at contacting other forms of higher life, despite an array of satellites and detection equipment, could possibly mean that higher life forms destroy themselves and that extreme violence, a by-product of intelligence, has obliterated them. In this book, which could be described as a marriage of social and forensic psychology with history, I try to explain the psychological mechanisms that generate extreme violence. I do not call it ‘‘savagery’’ because highly civilized groups are as violent as the ‘‘savages’’ they disdain. If there is a child of this marriage, it would be a new field of study, which I call forensic ethology. I was inspired to write this book by reading Romeo Dallaire’s Shake Hands with the Devil,9 recounting the horror he lived through trying to save the Tutsi in Rwanda, as commander of the UN Forces there. I went to hear Dallaire speak and was moved by his courage and compassion—he is a remarkable man. I had earlier read Mark Danner’s10 recountingofthemassacreatElMozotein El Salvador and was stunned by the actions of the El Salvadoran army slaughter- ing civilians, including children. Now I know they were not atypical. Samantha Power’s11 amazing description of the problem of genocide in the twentieth PREFACE xi century was very inspiring as well. I had a background in social psychology but with a taste for the great thinkers like Eric Fromm12 and Ernest Becker.13 Their insights on the generic basis of the problem of ‘‘evil’’ in humans is outlined in Chapter 2 and best describes the general motivational base of extreme violence. Some social psychological experimentalresearchhassupportedthenotionsof Becker on out-group hatred as a response to one’s own sense of mortality,14 but generally laboratory research is not well suited to the issues raised here.

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