On Monstrosity

There was a discussion over on Skepchick discussing Jenny McCarthy, Nazis, and the concept of a Tipping Point for crimes against humanity. I had a few comments and I thought I'd repost them here.

My initial comment was a response initially to a poster identified as k-rex and to the initial post:

@k-rex:
(First: to be fair, the Nazis murdered not just Jews, but other groups of people: Roma, gay men, disabled people, Polish citizens of any faith, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The total of non-Jews killed was something like 5 million altogether.)

So good to see this as the first comment. Two of my husband’s great grandfathers were among the Polish nationals killed in concentration camps. Incidentally, genocide is my main interest of study.

I think there’s really something to be said for the query of tipping point. I mean, was there really some grand awakening between 1914 and 1938 which taught humanity that “extermination of any kind is unacceptable!”? It certainly didn’t stop the American government of the time (or governments in the Americas for nearly 500 years prior). It didn’t stop King Leopold. It didn’t stop the Young Turks. Speaking of which, it was Hitler himself who said “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” I think it was a question of a tipping point. It certainly made a lot of news, but how many schools teach Rwanda? How many fewer teach that 94 wasn’t the first genocide there? How many cover the current crimes in the DRC and their connection to Kagame? Sure, it’s on the news now, but it’s not in schools, even those with Holocaust classes. How many people are really familiar with what happened in Bosnia? We know there was a war.

Genocide hasn’t ended. If it wasn’t the numbers, we would have to see evidence in overwhelming public outcry and international acts of solidarity and judgement. Sure we have the ICC, but not all that much in the way of mass public outcry. Especially not when American Idol is on.

I do think it’s a bit over the top to discuss Jenny McCarthy and Hitler in the same sentence, though I think the malignancy that’s assigned to Hitler is also over the top. I mean. He was a bad person. But he’s not some super-human evil. It’s far too convenient to assign all the guilt for humanity’s history of xenophobia to one man. The monster is us. But will there be a tipping point when people start realizing the harm that anti-vax brings? I hope we never get there.

This was followed by a comment from Buzz Parsec:

@whatbluedot: I clicked through to your blog, which reminded me of something that sometimes gets lost in the noise. What more people need to keep in mind is that every one of those 7 million Jews and 5 million others and all the millions of Armenians, Bosnians, Rawandans, Sudanese, native Americans, etc., etc., etc. was just as loved and needed as your aunt Ellen.

The difference is that everyone recognizes that cancer is a terrible thing and wants to find cures but we just don’t know how yet. Genocide, on the other hand, is trivial to cure. Since it is entirely a volitional act by human beings, people can cure it by just not participating, and by imprisoning, as sociopathic murders, anyone who does. There’s no deep scientific or medical mystery. Reminds me of an old 60′s bumper sticker, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”

Okay, nothing original here, but I think it bears repeating.

And my reply:

@Buzz Parsec:

You’re right. That does often get lost in the shuffle. It’s a big part of the genocide studies world to share the stories of individuals to remind us why we do what we do.

Since it is entirely a volitional act by human beings, people can cure it by just not participating, and by imprisoning, as sociopathic murders, anyone who does.

It’s a bit more complicated than that, unfortunately. It’s not a matter as simple as criminals and mental illness. In the case of the leaders (and there’s always a responsible hierarchy), sure. But genocides cannot be carried out by a few individuals. They’re carried out by large groups of people who have been spurred into action by long campaigns of dehumanization and threat. They are convinced that the target group is distant and monstrous (the word “cockroach” is a shockingly common feature). They’re told that this group is plotting to destroy them. Then they’re given a way out of this certain doom. Just eliminate this invading force of subhuman creatures. In my opinion, and I’m still a nascent scholar, it’s an extension of self-defense, which under ordinary circumstances would be socially accepted. It seems horrifying, but there has to be a reason why so many ordinary people would participate in such atrocious activities. Particularly in Rwanda, these aren’t soldiers, conditioned to take orders and having diminished reaction to horror. These are ordinary people committing extraordinarily awful deeds. They can’t all be insane. These are people often with no criminal record whatsoever. And as far as locking them up, a huge percentage of the population in Rwanda was involved in these crimes. Is it really reasonable to try and punish upwards of 175,000 persons in a nation that needs every available hand to rebuild the economy? Add into that calculation the fact that the Hutu were an oppressed majority underclass for hundreds of years because of colonial manipulations. Add to that the genocide of Hutu in Burundi in 1972 and 1993, and the threat of annihilation by Tutsi becomes less of a specter.

For the record, in response to the genocide court load Rwanda officially abolished the death penalty and set up a novel court system based on tribal tradition and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission system called Gacaca. It has a strong focus on reconciliation and not retribution, but does have the ability to sentence up to life in prison. However, in reality, it has been loaded with false accusations and a 20% acquittal rate, nevermind the thinly veiled retributive crimes being committed by the government which may have and may continue to amount to genocide and are STILL destabilizing the area.

You know, in case anyone thought my focus had shifted.

And I think this is an important feature that many people miss. The work on retributive genocide is slim. Google the quoted phrase and there are just over 1,000 results. A big part of the news coverage in these types of conflicts centers on it being simply a back and forth of tribal wars. This is most assuredly not the case. But there is a system of retribution that can be built, and has been in the former Belgian Congo nations. It crossed borders; it destroys so much; it has sucked away lives for decades; and there's evidence that it isn't over. But this retributive cycle does not change the reality of the crimes against individuals and cultures and humanity as a whole. It only makes the resolution of this conflict that much more pressing.