The History and Psychology of Genocide By Sherrie D.

Larch

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The History and Psychology of Genocide










The History and Psychology of Genocide By Sherrie D. Larch

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Authors Note:
This paper was for a class I took called The Psychology of Genocide it was a very
interesting and enlightening class. It is so sad that we never learn from history and keep
repeating to destroy other people through our hatreds. This paper is not in full term paper format
and is not a teaching tool on how to write a college/university term paper.











The History and Psychology of Genocide By Sherrie D. Larch

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Throughout history humans have been killing one another without mercy, because of
racial, ethnic, religious, political and other differences. What we call genocide and ethnic
cleansing today has been happening, in one way or another, throughout human history. We never
seem to learn from the past the right lessons, only how to do the killings more effectively and
efficiently, without mercy or regret. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Burning Times, The
Shoah (Holocaust), and genocidal crimes in Tibet, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, and many more
places throughout the world, past and present, show the inhumanity of the human race towards
each other, and these crimes will go on into the future, genocide inspires genocide. It seems
history must repeat its self over and over again; humans will not get past the psychology of hate.
Lessons which should be learned are lost in ignorance.
Even defining the word Genocide is difficult for many governments and individuals,
though its definition seems very clear: The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial,
political or cultural group (The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2004). But this definition leaves
many gray areas that groups and governments can use to get around global laws on human rights
and genocide, to go on with their own criminal agendas. The definition does not explain or
define what really makes up a group of people, or how many people in that group can be killed
before it is considered a genocidal incident and not just an ethnic cleansing event. The question
here is: How can you stop something that cannot be fully defined? And if it is defined, will
global governments really come to the rescue of the other? An Early warning Systemand a
coalition of support (Rittner, Roth and Smith, (2002) Will Genocide Ever Stop? (Essay)
Controlling Genocide in the Twenty-First Century, Herbert Hirsh (pages 131 to 137), may help
in some cases of genocide, but changing the human psychology towards indifference and hate
may be the only way to really stop the killing. But this is no easy task either, when religion and
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even science can be used to excuse this type of crime, to keep the majority in the mind set of
hate.
The view my tribe is better than youre tribe, seems to be somehow ingrained in the
human psyche. That we are somehow different, not even the same specie. We must have
someone we view as the other, who is below us, the scapegoat for all our troubles. Those who
start genocidal crimes use this weakens in the human psyche to promote their agendas through
propaganda. Dehumanization is one of the key tools to the destruction of a group of people,
using their differences from the society around them to show that they are aliens in their own
country or region, using science and religion to back this up. Categorizing the targeted minority
as a threat to the whole, desensitizes the majority, allowing the justified killing of the group,
without question. A common belief of this kind is that all members of a group share a
common essence -- an invisible something that distinguishes the group from other groups
and leads to common group characteristics, or at least the tendency to develop these
characteristics (Rittner, Roth and Smith, (2002) Will Genocide Ever Stop? (Essay)
Psychological Foundations, Clark McCauley, Page 77-82). Leaders in genocidal acts will use all
available tools to spread the hate that enables them to commit their crimes, keeping the
psychology of hate into play. During World War II Hitler and the Nazi Party used old prejudges
and myths towards the Jews to label them as the dangerous outsiders, who threatened the
Christian German Aryan majority in Germany. Jews were labeled as an impure race that needed
to be eliminated; images of vermin (rats and cockroaches) were used as propaganda symbols.
Old religious myths were also brought into political play; Jews were labeled as Christ killers,
which meant as a group they all most suffer, their Christian neighbors had a duty to make this so.
The myth from the 1st century of what is called Blood Libel; the claim that Jews kill gentiles
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motivated by ritual/demonic impulses (Dennis, Rabbi Geoffrey W. (2007) The Encyclopedia
Of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism, Page 36 to 37) was also used in Nazi propaganda. All
these psychological tools of hate increased the hatred and fear of the Jews in Germany, the rest
of Europe, and the world during this time, closing borders and any hope of escaping the
nightmare. This type of propaganda plays on our need to have the other to fear and hate. In
Rwanda the Hutus used faulty science and anthropological research to prove that the Tutsis were
another race or even another species from themselves. The Tutsi were labeled as being
something less than the Hutus, the other, who had to carry different identification cards. This
goes back to the human mind set saying my tribe is better than youre tribe. Charismatic
leader play on this mind set to pull the majority into the crime, making them believe that it is
being done for them out of care, for the good of the majority. That it must not be stopped,
because it is saving them from the invisible Boogie Man, the enemy, that their leader preaches
about and that faulty religion and science proves as some type of evil threat to their group.
Perpetrators of genocidal crimes also rely on putting their victims into a never ending
psychology of fear, humiliation, and guilt. Labeling a group of people with something different
than the majority (like identification cards, symbols or special laws that only pertains to them),
can affect the victims psychologically. Torture (including rape), starvation, slave labor and
public executions also are used to wear down and destroy the targeted group or groups, to break
their spirits, minds and destroy their bodies. The victims may live in such fear that they just shut
down emotionally, and may give up completely. Others may even start believing that something
is truly different and wrong about themselves, and that the perpetrators are right in some way.
After living through such inhumanity the crime of genocide goes on in the surviving
victims psyche. The individual may feel humiliation from being raped or tortured themselves or
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watching this done to others, and not being able to do anything, blaming themselves for being
weak physically or spiritually, when in reality they could do nothing. They may have flash backs
of the horrors they have seen and experienced, and have survivors guilt. Post-traumatic stress
syndrome, phobias, drug and alcohol problems, and other emotional and mental problems may
affect the victim for the rest of their lives. A victims physical health may also be affected
because of the tortures and neglect that they have experienced and they may also suffer from
various disabilities because of injuries received by their abusers.
Genocide and its crimes live on in the survivors and the souls of the dead that it leaves in
its destructive path. But human beings ignore even those who have lived through it and their
experiences, repeating it over and over again. The cry for never again, seems to be ignored by
the global community. Indifference and hate goes on in the world, though human beings have
witness such horrors, we do nothing to stop the next tragedy. We ignore real science, which
proves the human race is all connected genetically and biologically, inside we are all made the
same, blood, bone and tissue. We are all creatures that need love and safety, to be mentally and
physically healthy. We also ignore the religions around the world, that all speak of loving youre
neighbors, youre fellow human beings. That killing another is an abomination to humanity and
the Universal Soul. But we still keep killing each other.