Genocide: Nightmare At Your Doorstep

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Genocide Nightmare At Your Doorstep
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Reasons To Avoid This Topic

• Too controversial
• Traditional social psychology topics like
  conformity, attribution, aggression, etc.
• Less time can be spent talking about research
  from my laboratory
• There are many topics that I and other persons
  know more about

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Reasons To Examine This Topic

• The importance of the topic suggests that social
  psychologists should have been studying this for
  years
• Social psychologists have skills and have
  developed a knowledge base not available to
  politicians, journalists, historians, etc
• Chance to talk about where we are going rather
  than where we have been

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Premises We Will Adopt

• No moral judgment is implied in the labels
  terrorist, guerrilla, and state. These
  simply describe activities that individuals and
  organizations employ to gain social influence.
• Terrorist, guerrilla and state organizations form
  a continuum. Larger organizations retain all the
  capacities of the smaller organizations, but
  smaller organizations lack some of the capacities
  of larger organizations.

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Premises We Will Adopt

• Conceptual structures are best formed by allowing
  permeability between disciplines. Our structure
  will take from psychology, history, philosophy,
  art, politics, etc.
• No new forms of social interactions have occurred
  since 09-10-01. Thus, while we will not avoid
  discussing the present international climate,
  analysis of the current political situation is
  unlikely to yield any new principle of social
  influence.

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Three Themes Will Introduce Our Topic

• Themes introduce some persons whose lives will
  help us understand terrorism, guerrilla and
  international war
• Themes begin a search for a structure to study
  terrorism, guerilla war and state conflicts as
  mechanisms of social influence

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Theme 1 The Villa
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Theme 1 My Friends Father

• What had produced the metamorphosis from
  executioner to kind father
• Was the image of the kind father a ruse
• Did the kind man and executioner co-exist
  concurrently

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Theme 2 Beautiful Art

• Michaelangelo
• Jack Kerouac On the Road

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Theme 2 On The Road

• Hitchhiking as a vocation
• Blizzards and the failed photo essay
• Rescue in Ames
• Exit on Powell Street

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Theme 2 Reappearance of Our Rescuer

• What social experiences led Kaczynski to renounce
  a successful career to become a techno-terrorist?
• Do monsters have redeeming qualities

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Theme 3 A Contrast of Leadership

• JFK at the Ambassadors Residence
• The impracticality of Pope John XXIII
• Vatican Deathwatch The morality of states

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Theme 3 JFK in Berlin

• Rudolph Wilde Platz
• June 26, 1963

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Theme 3 Arlington

• Gawking at the procession
• Dreams unfulfilled, a lack of closure

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Theme 3 Arthur Schlesinger

• Advisor to President Kennedy
• A Thousand Days
• Age of Jackson
• The Age of Roosevelt

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Theme 3 Schlesingers Analysis

• A sit-about Christmas Schleisinger envisions the
  21st century
• 20th Century marked by great ideological
  conflicts WWI, WWII, the Cold War
• Triumph of Democracy Destruction of empires,
  colonialism, fascism and Communism

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Theme 3 Schlesingers Analysis

• Triumph of democracy creates a power vacuum
• Power vacuum allows expression of old hatreds
• Creates an international environment dominated
  by
• Genocide
• Terrorism

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Joshua at Jericho
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Salem Witch Trials

• In 1692, 20 were executed in Massachusetts

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Turkish-Armenian Genocide

• 1.5 million of 2.5 million Armenians in Turkey
  were exterminated between 1915 and 1923.
• "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation
  of the Armenians?"

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Holocaust

• Six million Jews (67 of Europes population)
  were exterminated
• Others Roma, mentally retarded, mentally
  disturbed, 3 million Soviet POWs, homosexuals,
  Jehovahs Witnesses, Communists, Socialists

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Cambodia Killing Fields

• Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge kill 1.7 million (21 of
  population)

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Rwanda

• In 1994, within 100 days 800,000 Tutsis and
  moderate Hutus are exterminated

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Kosovo Ethnic Cleansing
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Questions Involving Genocide

• Will genocide be a consistent state of affairs
  during the next several decades?
• Under what conditions should the US intervene to
  prevent genocide?
• To what extent should color, culture, religion
  and economics matter?
• What social conditions lead otherwise good women
  and men to kill their neighbors?

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William Shirers Analysis

• Pioneering foreign correspondent
• Wrote Berlin Diary
• Wrote Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

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William Shirers Analysis

• Why did so few Germans resist working in the
  concentration camps?
• A summation of western history since the Magna
  Carta
• Flaw in German national character
• Implies that a German-style concentration would
  not flourish in the US, Britain, France, Italy,
  etc

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Adolph Eichmann

• Supervised trains during the Final Solution
• Imprisoned in American POW camp
• Captured by Israelis in 1961, tried and executed

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Hannah Arendt and Adolph Eichmann

• Arendt was a prominent social philosopher
  employed by the New York Times to cover the
  Eichmann trial
• Summarized her conclusion in Eichmann in
  Jerusalem On the Banality of Evil

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Arendts Question What kind of person would
contribute to the deaths of millions of people?

• Slightly above average intelligence, no sign of
  pathology on psychological tests, good organizer
• Other than during the Final Solution there is o
  evidence of criminal activity
• Viewed himself as a good soldier who believed
  that not one Jew died because he was born
• Arendts Hypothesis In obedience to authority
  the average person will commit extreme
  anti-social actions such as mass murder.

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Mai Lai
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William Calley

• Led massacre of 300 unarmed women, children, and
  elderly
• Sentenced to life at hard labor
• Served 5 months and was pardoned by Nixon
• Married and living a normal life outside of Ft
  Benning, GA

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Hugh Thompson

• put his guns on Americans, said he would shoot
  them if they shot another Vietnamese, had his
  people wade in the ditch in gore to their knees,
  to their hips, took out children, took them to
  the hospital...
• Awarded Soldiers Medal in 1996
• Living a normal life

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Theories of Obedience to Unjust Authority

• Nazis were an aberration in history
• Shirer Flaw in German character
• Arendt Flaw in human character
• Milgram A social psychologist looks at obedience

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Milgrams Baseline Procedure
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Milgrams Baseline Procedure

• 63 shock to the limit (STL)

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Questions From Milgrams Paradigm (1)

• Is blind obedience to authority a distinctly
  American characteristic?
• Did the teacher enjoy shocking the learner?
• Does the status of the authority figure affect
  obedience?

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Questions From Milgrams Paradigm (2)

• Does the personality of the victim affect
  obedience?
• Are the personalities of the maximally obedient
  and maximally rebellious subjects different?
• How would a moral person respond in Milgrams
  study?

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Questions From Milgrams Paradigm (3)

• Were Milgrams results predictable?
• Why are Milgrams results surprising?
• A naive belief in the relationship of morality to
  behavior

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Ethical Criticisms of Milgrams Work

• No true informed consent
• Participants experienced significant stress
• Long-term negative effects on self-worth

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Milgrams Response To Ethical Criticism

• Extensive debriefing
• Follow-up surveys were generally favorable
• Benefits to society

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Follow-up of Milgrams Participants

• 80 reported that they were Very Glad or Glad
  they participated.
• 15 had No Strong Feelings
• Just over 1 were Sorry or Very Sorry
• 80 said more research of this kind should be
  done.
• 74 said they learned something of lasting value.

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A Question Mark The Cost of Ethics?

• ?

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How To Get Good Men and Women To Murder Their
Neighbors

• Get them to say
• I hate or
• I would never