Radicalization as cause and consequence of violence in genocides and mass killings

Omar Shahabudin Mcdoom

doi:10.1177/2633002420904267

Omar Shahabudin Mcdoom

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https://doi.org/10.1177/2633002420904267

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Abstract

Major theories of participation in genocides and mass killings offer seemingly opposing explanatory logics for how and why individuals come to commit violence. The long-standing consensus on “perpetrator ordinariness” contrasts with explanations that continue to highlight the prior, intensely held negative attitudes and beliefs about the victim group. I propose a theoretical reconciliation. Radicalization would be better theorized not only as an antecedent to the act of violence but also as a consequence of it. Killing transforms individuals. A well-established point in social psychology, not only do attitudes drive behaviors, but behaviors also shape attitudes. Some perpetrators dehumanize their victims, internalize exclusionary ideologies, and otherwise develop negative sentiments toward their victims following their participation in the violence. Attitudinal shift becomes a form of dissonance-reduction. Perpetrators come to espouse radical beliefs in order to justify their actions. This revised theorization has implications for our understanding of (1) perpetrator heterogeneity: individuals must vary in their vulnerability to radicalization, and (2) non-instrumental violence: why we often observe the infliction of gratuitous pain and suffering on victims. I re-interpret testimony of perpetrators from Rwanda, the Holocaust, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Cambodia to support the article’s central theoretical proposition.

Highlights

Are the perpetrators of genocides and mass killings radicalized before or after the act of violence? For nearly two decades, a scholarly consensus had prevailed on the character of perpetrators of atrocities and mass killings
Obedience to authority (Milgram, 1963), compliance and social influence (Kelman, 1958), conformity to group pressures (Asch, 1956), diffusion of individual responsibility (Staub, 1989), and situational role adoption (Zimbardo et al, 1973) all presupposed perpetrators need not be radicalized beforehand. This consensus sat uncomfortably with other prominent theories of genocidal and ethnic violence that implied individuals held extreme pre-existing negative attitudes and beliefs toward the victim group. These include explanations that emphasized the prior essentialization and dehumanization of the victim group (Hagan and Rymond-Richmond, 2008); the internalization of ideologies or narratives that are exclusionary of the victim group (Kaufman, 2006; Leader Maynard, 2014; Semelin, 2005; Snyder, 2000; Weitz, 2003); the emergence of animosities expressed as resentment, fear, and even hatred toward the victim group (Petersen, 2002); and the development of beliefs in the justification in targeting the victim group (Fein, 1990)
A well-established point in psycho-social theory, do attitudes drive behaviors, but behaviors may drive attitudes. It is in this way that individuals who participate reluctantly initially, may come to engage enthusiastically subsequently. In support of this proposition, I draw on survey evidence and perpetrator testimony from the Rwandan genocide as well as published interviews by other researchers of individuals who experienced the Holocaust, Bosnia-Herzegovina during the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, and Cambodia’s killing fields under the Khmer Rouge

Summary

Introduction

Are the perpetrators of genocides and mass killings radicalized before or after the act of violence? For nearly two decades, a scholarly consensus had prevailed on the character of perpetrators of atrocities and mass killings. Are the perpetrators of genocides and mass killings radicalized before or after the act of violence? Radicalization, in genocides and mass killings, is the process through which individuals develop intensely negative, that is extreme, beliefs and attitudes toward a perceived outgroup.

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