The Psychology of Genocide and Violent Oppression This page intentionally left blank The Psychology of Genocide and Violent Oppression A Study of Mass Cruelty from Nazi Germany to Rwanda RICHARD MORROCK McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Morrock, Richard. The psychology of genocide and violent oppression : a study of mass cruelty from Nazi Germany to Rwanda / Richard Morrock. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-4776-3 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Genocide—History. 2. Genocide—Psychological aspects. 3. Political violence—Psychological aspects. 4. Psychohistory. I. Title. HV6322.7.M67 2010 304.6'63—dc22 2010010464 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2010 Richard Morrock. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover image ©2010 Shutterstock Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com To the memory of Jean Jackson, primal therapist Acknowledgments Many psychohistorians have assisted me in this long project, with infor- mation or encouragement, or by allowing themselves to serve as sounding boards. In no particular order, they include Lloyd deMause, Allan Mohl, Jacques Sza- luta, Gerrold Atlas, Evan Malachowsky, Geraldine Pauling and Dennis King, Robert Young and Barbara LaMonica, David Beisel, Harriet Fraad, Joan Lachkar, Peter Berton, Joe Reilly, Jay Sherry, Don Nelson, Landon Dowdey, Henry Law- ton, Robert Schaeffer, Barbara Legutko, Deborah Tanzer, David Lotto, Helen Gallant, Aurelio Torres, Jay Gonen, Mary Coleman, Marvin Goldwert, Mel Kalfus, Mel Goldstein, Daniel Dervin, Herbert Barry, Eli Sagan, Rudolph Bin- ion, and James Villareal. Hannah Lessinger, Fred Mackey, and Robert Kearney gave me invaluable assistance with my research on Sri Lanka, as did Jennifer Davis on South Africa, and Warren Weinstein on Africa in general. I had the good fortune to be able to discuss Iranian politics with Dr. Jack Moadel in the delightful ambience of Club Med Martinique. My cousin Mel Weiselberg gave a useful critique of the chapter on Cambodia. Thanks, of course, to Arthur Janov and Vivian Janov for coming up with primal therapy. And thanks to the incredibly effective crew of therapists at the New York Primal Institute: Jean, Tracy, Skip, Alix, Scott, Ditto, Cindy, John, Ann F., and G.P. Thanks also to Joel Carlinsky for his insights into the Reichian movement. And a special thanks to my buddy John Leicmon for his insights during the early stages of my research. Needless to say, none of these friends and colleagues should be held respon- sible for any factual errors in the text, or for my conclusions, which are entirely my responsibility. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgments vi Preface 1 1. A Psychohistorical Perspective on a Violent Century 5 2. Germany: The Complex Roots of National Socialism 19 3. Northern Ireland: The Politics of Fear 35 4. Yugoslavia: Prisoners of Myth and History 47 5. Rwanda: Rage, Anxiety and Genocide 62 6. Sri Lanka: Emotional Repression, Social Stratification, and 75 Ethnic Violence 7. Cambodia: Displaced Anger and Auto-Genocide 87 8. China: Mao’s Cultural Revolution as Reaction Formation 102 9. Sudan: Entitlement Fantasies and Occidentophobia 116 10. The Muslim World: The Psycho-Geography of Hate 125 11. Iran: Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution: Shadow and Substance 137 12. Italy: Birth Trauma, Expansionism, and Fascism 153 13. Argentina: Fear of Abandonment, Caudilloism, and the 171 Dirty War 14. Haiti: A Nation of Origin-Folk 187 15. South Africa: The Psychology of Apartheid 205 16. Conclusion: Psychohistory Looks Ahead 220 Chapter Notes 225 Bibliography 241 Index 249 vii This page intentionally left blank Preface As an undergraduate, studying history and political science during the early 1960s, I came to believe that no full understanding of politics—particularly the rise of fascism dur- ing the previous generation—was possible without comprehending the crucial role of psychology. The problem was that academic psychology was then dominated by Skinner- ian behaviorism, which struck me as a refined form of sophistry having nothing to add to our understanding of the human mind. The behaviorists brooked no opposition. If Sig- mund Freud made an appearance in the classroom, it was typically in the literature depart- ment. Over the next few decades, I witnessed, among other events, the Chinese Cultural Rev- olution, the continued conflict in Northern Ireland, the ethnic war in Sri Lanka, Pol Pot’s bizarre revolution in Cambodia, and the transformation of modernizing, secular Iran into a theocracy. It seemed that a new way of looking at political extremism was necessary. It wasn’t even a question of the old approach being outdated—there was no old approach. Conventional historians and political scientists were attributing these horrors, along with earlier ones like the Holocaust, to the evil impulses of a few leaders. But it was clear to me that something was going on with the masses who were eagerly following these leaders. Whatever Ayatollah Khomeini’s personal grudges against the world, millions of Iranians stood behind him against both the Shah and rival anti-royalist movements. The enthusi- asm of many Germans for Hitler was almost orgasmic. Likewise, the anti–Catholic bigot the Rev. Ian Paisley won enough popular support among Northern Ireland’s Protestants to supplant the existing Unionist establishment, which had held power for generations. A new paradigm for the understanding of political extremism was necessary, and the horrors of Cambodia during the 1970s, and Rwanda during the 1990s—not to mention al-Qaeda’s attack on the United States on September 11, 2001—were making it all the more urgent. Not to understand history, it has been often said, is to risk repeating it. In the following pages, I discuss events in sixteen countries in various regions of the world during roughly the past century, looking at them as expressions of neurotic symp- toms which were widely shared by members of that society. Other countries, such as Rus- sia, France, or Japan, might also lend themselves to such an approach, but will have to wait for other authors. And having been trained in history and political science, I have empha- sized political developments, perhaps to the detriment of the study of childhood. But in putting the “history” back in psychohistory, I believe I have avoided the trap of reduction- ism. 1 2 Preface Like many activist intellectuals who came of age during the 1960s, I developed an interest in the theories of Wilhelm Reich, the brilliant but eccentric psychoanalyst whose works sometimes appear to have been written about some alternate universe. Reich’s Sex- Pol Essays, and even more his Mass Psychology of Fascism, took an approach that cast the rise of fascism in Germany (and particularly his native Austria) in a new light. He was, aside from the more conventional Erich Fromm, the only one who was interpreting mass delu- sions in a psychological manner, instead of merely focusing on the pathology of individu- als like Hitler. Yet there still seemed to be something lacking in Reich’s theories. Did sexual repression cause the right-wing political extremism Reich was describing? Or was sexual repression merely the consequence of class oppression—a consequence that made it possi- ble for the masses to tolerate their oppression without rebelling? Reich appeared to be tak- ing both positions, and it was never clear whether he thought that the answer to fascism was on the barricades or in the psychoanalyst’s office. While he noted that the sexual repres- sion that followed the Bolshevik victory in Russia soon reversed itself, turning into a strange form of sexually repressed “Red Fascism,” Reich seemed unable to explain why. He never answered the question of why millions of people, having been liberated from both social and sexual repression, should have decided to put themselves back into the straitjackets from which they had just been freed. The short answer is that they were suffering from repres- sion of feelings, not just their sexuality. The psychological theorist who put feelings at the center was Arthur Janov, founder of primal therapy, first developed in California in the 1960s. Basic to Janov’s approach is that defenses are bad. Instead of protecting us from Pain (he prefers to capitalize the word), they prevent past traumas from being felt, causing them to remain in our unconscious and keeping us neurotic. Most other psychological approaches—the Reichians are a bit ambiva- lent on this question—believe in building up the patient’s defenses. In primal therapy they are rendered inoperative, one at a time. To simplify things, the human mind has four functions: Memory, Consciousness, Repression, and Pain. For thousands of years, only the first two had been recognized. Freud made the next step at the end of the nineteenth century, when he identified Repression. But without an understanding of Pain, Freud’s psychoanalysis remained flawed, with many patients failing to improve. Developments in psychotherapy since Freud have represented, in my judgment, retreats rather than advances. Alfred Adler’s “individual psychotherapy” dropped Freud’s concept of Repression, and reverted to the sort of ineffective common sense approach that long pre- dated psychoanalysis. Karen Horney proceeded along the same lines, as did Anna Freud and the pioneers of “ego psychology,” essentially cognitive therapy in psychoanalytic garb. Freud’s onetime follower Carl Gustav Jung dropped Memory from the repertoire of his “analytical psychology,” replacing it with myth. This led him to welcome the rise of Nazism, although he soon grew disenchanted.