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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783489183 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 05/31/2017 |
| Pages: | 246 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Examining Genocides
Means, Motive, and Opportunity
By Michael P. Jasinski
Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.
Copyright © 2017 Michael P. JasinskiAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78348-917-6
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
While genocide has been the subject of countless articles and books dedicated to unraveling the logic behind the process, several key issues remain either unaddressed or, at the very least, the subject of intense controversy. They include the relative role of leaders and followers, the choice of the target in question — which can be identified in socioeconomic, ethnoreligious, or even political terms — and the level of violence that is ultimately unleashed.
The confusion concerning the choice of the group to be targeted is, for example, reflected in considerable confusion over the very definition of genocide. While historical evidence suggests the scapegoat can be identified along socioeconomic, political, or ethnoreligious lines, the original definition of genocide coined by Raphael Lemkin and incorporated into Article 2 of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the term as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
This definition does not cover victims who were targeted because of their political actions or social status. To be sure, Lemkin's original definition also included mass killing for reasons of race, ethnicity, national identity, religion or lack thereof, and regional identification. However, the Soviet Union's influence, and its desire to differentiate itself from Nazi Germany, meant that the final definition of genocide was tailored to condemn the crimes of Nazi Germany while leaving the crimes of Stalin's regime outside of its scope (Naimark 2010, 132; Staub 1989). Therefore since the term "genocide" has come to be associated chiefly with mass murder along ethnic lines, additional concepts sought to close the gap left open by the narrowing of Lemkin's original concept. For instance, "politicide" is defined as the mass killing of members of collectivities defined in terms of their political opposition to the regime (Harff 2003), and Rummel's term "democide" refers to a mass killing where the targets are defined by class, political allegiance, or political sympathies. The objective of a democide is the total extermination of the political opponents as well as their families, supporters, and possibly the entire communities from which they originate. It is a broader definition than genocide as it encompasses all large-scale murders of a country's inhabitants by its own government, irrespective of reason, but it does not necessarily imply a desire for complete extermination (Anderson and Anderson 2013, 7).
On the one hand, the proliferation of terms has preserved the uniqueness of the term "genocide," but, on the other hand, it tends to hinder the process of understanding these campaigns of mass killing, especially since the motives of perpetrators tend to be similar across all these cases, and the actual processes of extermination are not all that distinctive. Therefore, this is an unfortunate trend, for the use of two concepts implies distinctive phenomena even though the dynamics of targeting a group on the basis of their ethnic, political, or socioeconomic position within the society are largely the same (Naimark 2010, 123). Moreover, many mass killings cannot be neatly classified as there are often multiple discrete victim groups defined in either ethnic or sociopolitical terms. For example, Harff argues that the Iraqi al-Anfal campaign against rural Kurds in 1987 was a politicide because the effort was not to kill all the Kurds and it occurred in the context of an ongoing rebellion; she also argues that the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia was guilty of perpetrating both a genocide and a politicide since the victimized groups included ethnic groups as well as social classes (Harff 2003).
More critically, artificially breaking down mass murder campaigns into politicides, genocides, and so on makes it difficult to ascertain why a specific target collectivity was chosen, given the existence of alternatives. There is little effort to understand what motivates target selection, to explain the peculiarities and inconsistencies from case to case (such as why some ethnic groups are targeted while others are ignored — for example, the Kurds during the Armenian Genocide), or to explain why some killing campaigns occur mainly along socioeconomic lines even when ethnic minorities are "available," as in the case of the Jews of Soviet Union, who survived a decade of Stalin's genocidal rule relatively unscathed, only to fall victim to the Einsatzgruppen.
Fortunately, many more recent definitions of genocide have sought to break down these artificial barriers. Anderson and Anderson refer to genocide as a "systematic, cold-blooded, bureaucratically administered extermination of entire ethnic, religious, or political groups, by their own national governments, in the absence of anything that a rational external observer could consider an adequate reason." They also argue that since genocide and politicide are so similar in the motives of their perpetrators, the methods used, and the courses they take, they cannot be treated separately for purpose of analysis (Anderson and Anderson 2013, 7). The definition used by Harff identifies genocides and politicides as "the promotion, execution, and/or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents — or, in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities — that are intended to destroy, in whole or part, a communal, political, or politicized ethnic group" (Harff 2003). Fein writes that "genocide is sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity directly or indirectly, through interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members, sustained regardless of the surrender or lack of threat offered by the victim" (1993, 24).
There is likewise considerable difficulty in explaining why some killing campaigns consist of an attempt to kill every member of the targeted group while in others the perpetrators are satisfied with "ethnic cleansing" or deportation, procedures that entail a much lower loss of life (Jones 2006, 22). If the objective of genocide is, as often suggested, the elimination of political enemies or simple scapegoating to trigger a "rally around the flag" effect, both of these objectives can be met with low levels of violence (Coser 1956). Yet in many cases (such as Rwanda, Cambodia, or the Holocaust) the level of violence is so great that it becomes counterproductive by attracting unwanted international attention (for example, Yugoslavia in the 1990s) or (as in the case of Nazi Germany) diverting resources from other national objectives — to the point that its instigators and organizers are described as irrational. Moreover, the level of violence aimed at a specific ethnic or socioeconomic group in a given country can vary considerably from one year, decade, or century to the next. Thus in the 1890s, for example, the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire experienced pogroms and massacres, but in 1915 and 1916 they fell victim to a genocide. Why pogroms and massacres in one instance, and a genocide in the other?
What accounts for the variety of perpetrators and different levels of violence within the rather broad term "genocide" is also not clear. While genocide tends to be an activity with fairly widespread participation (Midlarsky 2005, 264), the nature of the participants varies from case to case. The agents may be official state entities, though with nonstate actors and even private individuals playing supporting or dominant roles (Jones 2006, 21).
These questions, particularly the relative influence of leaders and followers, the level of participation, and the relationship between the leaders and the followers, have been the subject of the extensive debate between the intentionalist and functionalist perspectives, with the former asserting that an extermination occurs because of a leader's or ruling elite's desire to exterminate a specific demographic and the latter arguing that the escalation of violence occurs because of factors beyond the control of the primary perpetrators (Jones 2006, 36–37). However, in addition to dealing with this fundamental disagreement, scholarly literature has helped shed light on the motives of leaders and followers, which vary from case to case even as the relative responsibility of leaders and followers is not the same in every eventuality.
Scholars representatives of the intentionalist camp include Anton Weiss-Wendt, who places the blame squarely on the state by arguing that the militias rarely operate on their own but rather are performing tasks with at least tacit approval by state authorities (2010, 81), with genocide itself the product of the official ideology. Weiss-Wendt argues that whereas in most cases scapegoating is used to attain or retain power, the counterproductive nature of most genocide means that its objective is mass murder (2010, 84). Valentino also sides with the intentionalist argument, asserting that the "specific goals, ideas, and belief of powerful groups and leaders" — rather than social or governmental structures — are the most important factor in genocide (2004, 66–67). Valentino attributes genocide to a relatively small group of people who are recruited by the regime's leaders in order to carry out the genocide, downplaying the role played by the institutions of government and the society at large, which is a mere observer in the process after being reduced to acquiescence (2004, 3–7). Valentino furthermore argues that genocide is not a mass phenomenon: the killing process is conceived by leaders who then recruit a relatively small number of people into military or paramilitary forces to perform the actual killing, with the remainder of the population reduced to compliance or passivity. The leader's intent, however, is not the actual extermination of the target, and violence rarely has the aim of total annihilation; instead, it is a means to achieve specific political objectives that is embraced after other approaches have failed. Valentino does acknowledge that the intent is to force the target group to adopt new ways of life, to give up property and possessions, or to cease support for a specific cause (2004, 2–3). Valentino also argues that support for mass killings may be "negative" in that the masses do not wish to risk persecution by opposing the violence inasmuch as there is no organized opposition to the regime, which in itself suggests the regime must be somehow effective in securing positive support on a large scale. This contradicts Valentino's argument that genocides are the product of a small fraction of society, since mass support is not required in any event (Valentino 2004, 35).
Midlarsky similarly argues that since the response, in the form of genocide, is disproportional to the alleged offenses imputed to the scapegoat, the genocide itself must be the product of a deliberate decision, even if an imprudent one, on the part of the leaders (2005). He does, nevertheless, acknowledge that genocide is not pursued solely out of ideological considerations. Instead, he views genocide as springing from a sense of loss, which in turn creates a demand for leaders who will make good the material losses and reintroduce a sense of unity. This very much suggests that followers are motivated by the desire for material gain and that the leaders are driven by their own desire to attract followers in order to satisfy their material concerns. Scapegoating, and the subsequent "altruistic punishment," therefore becomes a means toward that end (Midlarsky 2005, 168–70).
Semelin likewise argues that the annihilation of the Jews was Hitler's primary aim. The Final Solution was the logical consequence of his aim because he convinced his followers the "Jewish threat" was genuine (Semelin 2007, 47), and Hitler himself played the "principal vector" because of his doctrinal and charismatic authority (Semelin 2007, 55). At the same time, Semelin acknowledges that followers are not intimidated into obedience; rather, they believe in the propaganda because they are already inclined to believe it, suggesting the leader is catering to the needs of the followers (2007, 95). As to the actual process of killing, Semelin argues that it is the outcome of a "deliberate mobilization launched to implement a policy of destruction" whose "decisive impetus" originates from senior leadership (2007, 166). The followers then respond to their leader's call, though the actual participants consist of both official state actors and improvised, spontaneously formed killing forces (Semelin 2007, 182), to the point that the masses shift from their initial indifference toward active participation in the persecution (199). However, Semelin also argues that the objective of the mass killings consists of a combination of subjugating the target group, eradicating the target group, or triggering a revolt (2007, 327), which ignores the possibility that mass killings are part of a strategy to raise the mass movement in the first place.
Straus also adopts an explanation centered on the elite, framing genocide in terms of elites facing a threat from a malevolent group and then setting out to defeat that threat. However, the intent here is not necessarily genocide, but rather the defeat of the menacing group (Straus 2015, xi). Leaders condition genocide on the idea of an imminent threat that is "akin to a race war," with the battle lines running not between countries but rather between nations (Straus 2015, 11). In order for genocide to occur, there must be elite consensus, subnational alliances, and popular compliance, all of which suggest the creation of a movement, though without describing how the three components interact or how scapegoating is used (Straus 2015, 79). When it comes to the motivations of the followers, Straus lists a whole range of possibilities, including careerism, propaganda effects, coercion, fear, obedience, and so forth, but without addressing the matter in greater detail (2015, 83).
An opposing point of view is represented by the functionalist argument, which focuses on the preferences of the followers as well as on the bureaucratic processes that were necessary to implement genocide in practice. As Harff notes, "It is tempting to exaggerate the role of individuals, to blame leaders for leading their citizens to genocide. But is it not the case that citizens and leaders are able to make choices? Clearly, the decision to destroy a certain people is the product of the many involved" (Harff 2009, 108). Gerlach likewise argues that intent is irrelevant in establishing whether genocide had taken place, emphasizing instead the role of government functionaries who represent the interests of larger segments of society and not merely the chief executive (2006). While the elites play crucial roles, ordinary people should not be considered mere tools in the hands of the leaders (Gerlach 2010, 270). In that respect, Gerlach probably underestimates the role and therefore also the intent of specific leaders in each case by saying that the state is part of the society at large and that state policies, by being better documented, tend to gain more attention than mass participation in mass killing (Gerlach 2010, 4). Gerlach argues that genocide (a term he eschews) is a mass phenomenon, with motives for individual participation that include profiteering. For example, Armenian properties in 1915 were looted, and Jewish businesses were often "Aryanized" because the government, seeking to appropriate resources for itself, was unable to prevent the individual participants in the attacks or its own officials from appropriating these properties for themselves (Gerlach 2010, 109). While Gerlach examines a variety of cases, including "communist" and "ethnic" mass killings, he does not delve into the reasons regimes select particular ethnic, political, or socioeconomic targets. Ideology by itself is an insufficient explanation, for communist regimes were capable of singling out ethnic groups, and there was nothing in the National Socialist ideology that prevented Hitler from following in the footsteps of SA leader Ernst Roehm and accusing the upper classes of being traitors to the German nation.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Examining Genocides by Michael P. Jasinski. Copyright © 2017 Michael P. Jasinski. Excerpted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd..
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