Genocide. According to Justin Holcomb, University sociology and religious studies lecturer, it is a loaded word. It is government violence against civilians, the regular bombing of schools, the forced starvation of entire communities and the rape of these communities' mothers and daughters.
"It involves the intent and motivation to destroy," Holcomb said. "It's the experience of hatred and the experience of being isolated from the international community."
Although students typically learn about the physical and social aspects of genocide, Holcomb said, "we kind of skim over the psychological dimension."
Holcomb and Assoc. History Prof. Jeffrey Rossman? spoke at an April 10 event organized by Students Taking Action Now: Darfur titled "The Psychology of Genocide." Holcomb discussed the mindset of the targets of mass murder, and Rossman addressed the psychology of the men and women who perpetrate it.
A specialist in the history of the Soviet Union and the secret police during the Holocaust, Rossman explained several theories about why people choose to participate in mass murders. He credited one of the theories to James Waller's book, "Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing."
Waller, according to Rossman, says there is a potential for extreme evil and extreme good in everyone.
"It is not who you are, but where you are," Rossman said, noting that under the right conditions, 80 percent of the population would choose to participate in a mass genocide.
While he is not sure why 20 percent of individuals refrain from participating in genocides, Rossman said he believes it "comes down to individual choice and individual sense of morality and consciousness."
The conditions conducive to these extreme behaviors include peer pressure and the adoption of a group identity where individual responsibility is lost and extreme views are shared.
To his knowledge, Rossman said, there is no dominant personality trait shared by those who carry out mass murder; therefore, it can be assumed that ordinary personality traits lead to evil behaviors, if and when they are activated. Rossman said Waller names three causes of activation. First, political leaders of one group construct a world view that labels another group as detrimental to the collective. Second, leaders socialize an aversion to this other group. Third, leaders instill a need for social dominance over "the other" until enough people are socialized to believe and defend it.
Peer pressure, the desire to conform and the development of an us-them mindset can restrict or even suspend the individual's ability to act in accordance with his or her moral obligation, Rossman said.
"Humans can become killers when the social death [the denial of a member or class of society as human by the larger group] of the victim occurs," he said.
First-year College student Loren Monk, vice president of S.T.A.N.D., said she was surprised by Rossman's analysis.
"It's really scary that it tends to be ordinary people who carry out these genocides," she said before introducing SOC 220, "Death and Dying" lecturer Holcomb, who spoke about the experience of those persecuted as a result of genocide.
"There is something to being a target ... when you know you are the hunted," Holcomb said. "The thing that keeps them going is desperation."
He told stories from his visits to southern Sudan, about women who were raped and dismembered when they left their communities in search of water or firewood. Holcomb said a group of men with machetes or guns allowed a captured woman to make a choice of which body part she wanted them to cut off: her hands, breasts, lips or ears.
Women who were raped returned home to be shunned by their families and neighbors. Because there is a very high stigma regarding rape, Holcomb said, almost no women who had been sexually assaulted remained married.
Holcomb also discussed the sense of hopelessness felt by targets of genocide. He said many people commit suicide because they see no way out of their present circumstances or future for their people.
Yet some good can come from such bad circumstances, Holcomb said; in Rwanda, "genocide triggered a move for forgiveness." He described "circles of forgiveness" in which Tutsis embrace the same Hutus who previously condoned or participated in mass murders against them.
"You can either give up or go back and create," Holcomb said.
In his studies of genocide and mass murder, Holcomb said one matter has become certain.
"The human spirit is resilient," he said.
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