Throughout history, we have witnessed how individuals can be swept up in the tide of collective violence, perpetrating unspeakable atrocities against other people. Something that is common in most cases throughout history, is the fact that the people involved are all ordinary people. Not psychopaths, not born evil. So how is the mass killing of a community of people something that ordinary people are capable of? How is the participation in a genocide something that people are okay with?
“Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception.” - Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men.
Obedience -
One of the most famous psychological studies done on obedience is the Milgram study. Milgram recruited participants to play the role of a "teacher", who were paired with someone they believed was a "learner." The teachers were told to administer electric shocks for wrong answers, gradually increasing the voltage. The learner was actually an actor receiving fake shocks and pretending to be in pain, but the participants didn’t know that.
Whenever an authority figure was present (typically a lab coated researcher), many participants continued to deliver shocks even when the learner screamed in pain, protested, and pleaded to stop the experiment.
Despite their distress, 65% of the participants followed the authority figure's instructions, going up to the 450 volts even when the learner went dead silent at 330 volts.
Considering that the learner could’ve been perceived to be dead, the fact that so many people continued to deliver higher shocks is terrifying. These are all perfectly normal, mentally stable people, that became capable of doing something horrible to someone, because of the demands of a situation. This shows that any person is capable of acting in evil ways, on any scale.
But surely the presence of an authority figure cannot be the only thing that pushes people to act in such immoral ways.
Deindividuation & diffusion of responsibility -
Every warrior society till date has had a complete loss of individuality ; short cut hair, uniforms, etc. The aim is to eradicate any idea of individual identity, and make them parts of a group, so they can think and act as they’re told without assuming personal responsibility. This makes it easier to disengage from the moral consequences of the action.
Desensitization and moral disengagement -
After the Holocaust, Nazi soldiers in their testimonies, reported feeling horror when they were first asked to carry out the murders. However, the human brain is incredibly malleable and can easily adjust to new experiences, routines, and circumstances. If you do something enough times, your mind will make it easier for you. Additionally, your mind will disengage from the morality of the action in different ways, to protect itself from the possible trauma.
Dehumanization -
A popular way of morally disengaging is by dehumanizing the other group. Propaganda campaigns to dehumanize the other group is a significant part of any mass killing throughout history. Jews in nazi Germany were considered a threat to the German population. They were demonized, and represented as being incapable of human feeling. This is the most fundamental belief involved in the loss of moral barriers in genocide.
Victimization -
Not only is the oppressed group dehumanized, but a big part of the propaganda towards the oppressed group, would be the victimization of the oppressors. In nazi Germany, Jews were antagonized as part of the anti Semitic propaganda. The horrible economic state of Germany after the First World War was blamed on the Jews and their “greedy” nature. Germans were made to be the victims. The way they saw it — their money, jobs, and the life they could have, was being stolen by the Jews. This is exactly what is happening in the genocide of Palestinians. Palestinians are antagonized and seen as “taking over” Israeli land, when the objective reality is the opposite. This victimization makes it easy to morally disengage, and almost justify the evil.
Conformity and groupthink -
Asch experiment :
The Asch experiment was a study conducted by psychologist Solomon Asch in the 1950s. It aimed to understand how people conform to social pressure. Participants were shown a line and had to match it with one of three comparison lines. The other participants intentionally gave incorrect answers. The study found that many participants conformed and gave wrong answers to fit in with the group.
Conformity discourages dissent and critical thinking. This also happens in “groupthink” where people lose their individual beliefs, and values because they become one collective entity, with one singular thought.
When individuals are afraid to challenge the beliefs and actions of the group, it can perpetuate the cycle of violence and prevent necessary action needed to prevent or stop evil.
Bystander effect -
Kitty Genovese :
In 1964, a young woman called Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered outside her building in New York. The scene apparently had 38 witnesses : people who either saw or heard this attack. Yet, not one person helped or called the police. The Kitty Genovese is one of the most popular, and tragic cases used to help explain the concept of the bystander effect. This is a small scale case that includes one woman being attacked, who could’ve easily been saved had even one person stepped forward. We can only imagine the implications of this bystander effect on a larger scale, in a genocide. As a child, when you learn about the Holocaust, you instantly think if you were there, you would’ve been the person to step forward and help Anne Frank’s family. The reality is — nobody can afford to get personally involved ; especially not when there’s so much to lose.
Fear -
The most obvious reason that a genocide is able to be carried out, is fear of reprisal. People are reluctant to intervene because of the possibility of facing serious consequences and endangering their lives. The nazi regime made it impossible for anyone to speak out against the atrocities happening.
Human beings are not inherently evil, they’re helpless, and helplessness perpetuates evil.
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