From: cadwallader@igc.org (Jackie Hulme)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.latin-america
Subject: 134 & 135 - Part III
Date: 28 Jul 92 03:53:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1473800114:000:17044
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!cadwallader    Jul 27 20:53:00 1992


898
 
July 27, 1992
THE GENOCIDAL MENTALITY
 
Chapter 1 - Part II
 
LEARNING FROM NAZI GENOCIDE
 
I Say with a deep consciousness of these words that Trident [the name 
of both the base and the nuclear submarines; each of the latter 
carries the destructive equivalent of 2,040 Hiroshima bombs. What 
about the Seawolf?] is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.
        --Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen
 
        If we are to grasp what is really involved in the genocidal 
mentality, we would do well to look at another historical situation 
in which it let to actual genocide. We might then be in a better 
position to take steps to prevent that outcome.
        Among modern genocides -- recently in Cambodia, Africa and the 
Indian subcontinent, as well as earlier in Turkey and the Soviet 
Union -- the one from which we have most to learn is that of the 
Nazis during the fifth decade of the twentieth century. Nazi genocide 
is particularly relevant to us as it was perpetrated by an advanced 
Western Christian nation and because it was linked with the 
beginnings of nuclear threat during the Second World War. 
        Among the writers, scientists, and religious leaders who have 
suggested parallels between the Holocaust and nuclear danger, 
consider Samuel Pisar's deeply troubled commentary on the production 
of weapons throughout the world:
 
        Everything seems poised for the apocalypse. It is as if an 
Auschwitz fever has taken hold of makind, pushhing it irresistibly 
toward the precipice, and Auschwitz ideology, characterized by rapid 
devaluation of the ultimate human right -- the right to life. [Much 
parodied by the Ultra Right in it's anti-abortion terrorist 
activities]. the combination of high technology and high brutality, 
which I had seen practiced on a piloot scale not so long ago, shows 
that man is quite capable of resorting to both the ideological 
premises and the scientific means for wholesale annihilation.
 
        Ad the physicist I.I. Rabi (<And now we have the nations lined 
up, like those prisoners of Auschwitz, going into the ovens, as 
waiting for the ovens to be perfected, made more efficient>) as well 
as Elie Wiesel and the Catholic archbishop of Seattle (See epigraphs 
in praface and at the beginning of this message).
        All spoke from considered reflection, three from direct 
knowledge: Weisel and Pisar are Auschwitz survivors, and Rabi was one 
of the physicists who contributed to the work at Los Alamos on the 
atomic bomb. None of these commentators would equate the Nazi 
Holocaust with nuclear threat; nor would we. But we, and tyey, 
believe that in these very different historical situations there are 
certain parallels having to do with levels of destruction and casts 
of mind.
        It is neigher easy nor pleasant to invole the Nazis for 
comparison with groups within our own democratic society. Our image 
of the Nazis tends to be that of thugs and muirderers, an image they 
did much to ear. But students of Nazi genocide have long stressed 
what recent work on the Nazi doctors has confirmed: namely, that 
ordinary Germans became involved in killing, people who had 
previously shown no particular inclination twoard violence. These 
findings are especially troubling because they bring the Nazis closer 
to the rest of us. We are much more comfortable viewing them as a 
separate tribe of demons. But the painful truth is that they are more 
part of our century, more involved in historical and psychological 
questions that still bedevil us, than we have wished to acknowledge. 
In our present genocidal predicament, responsibility lies in seeking 
to draw from the Nazi project lessons that might head off the 
utlimate nuclear Auschiwtz.
        To use the Nazis comparatively in this manner is in no way to 
deny the uniqueness of their Holocaust. No other historical genocide 
has been so systemitically carried out against an entire people, even 
to the attempt to round up Jews from virtually all over the world in 
order to kill them. We therefore reject the <revisionist> position of 
some German historians to the effect that the Holocaust is just one 
of the many examples of cruelty that dominate human history, and 
should by given no special emphasis. We would, in fact, insist upon 
stressing differences or "disanalogies" between the Nazi and the 
nuclear situations. As Charles S. Maier explains, while exploring 
similar questions, *Comparison is a dual process that scrutinizes two 
or more systems to learn what elements they have in common, and what 
elements distinguish between them. It does not assert identity; it 
does not deny unique components.>
        the most fundamental difference, of course, is that Nazi mass 
killing is a matter of historical record, so that (as one observer 
pur it) even if nucolear-weapons arrangements are viewed as <an 
Auschwitz waiting to happen, no one is being gassed or cremated.> The 
distinction is between the actual and the potential. Another 
funeamental difference has to do with intent. The Nazis killed 
designated victims -- primarily Jews, but also Gypsies, Poles, 
Russians, mental patients, and homosexuals. In contrasdt, the stated 
nuclear intent is to prevent war, and the killing would take place 
only with a failure of that structure of deterrence. Still another 
difference is the reality of a dangerous adversary: the Jews posed no 
threat to the Nazis, but the Soviets pose[d] a real military threat 
to us [further discussion is in order]. And many more differences 
would emerge with a fuller exploration of the complexities of German 
history. There is a final, sobering difference havintg to do with 
victimizers and victims. There was a clear-cut distinction between 
thye Nazis themselves as perpetrators and those they decided to kill. 
In the nuclear case, should the weapons be used, there would be no 
such distinction: everybody would become a victim. At Nuremberg, 
after the Second World War, there was an attempt to hold individuals 
and groups accountable for their role in killing. There can be no 
nuclear Nuremberg: hope lies only in establishing responsibility for 
genocide prior to its ocurring -- responsibility for participating in 
a genocidal system and a genocidal process.
        When one probes these differences more carefully, as we shall do 
in later chapters, they turn out to be far from absolute. Concerning 
potential versus actual, a leading authority has argued that a 
nuclear genocide has already occurred with the bombings of Hiroshima 
and Nagasaki; and others have claimed that the larger nuclear 
genocide has also begun via our planning for it because <an 
act....like omnicide...is begun in the preprations of thousands.> And 
while the distinction in terms of adversary definitely holds, 
nuclear-weapons advocates have frequently exaggerated if not 
falsified the tghreatening postures of the Soviet Union. Even the 
difference concerning victimizers and victims can be qualified in 
relation to Hitler's final "scorched earth" orders for Germany, which 
if carried out, would have been a form of self-genocide.
        But these basic differences between the Nazi and the nuclear 
situations should nonetheless be kept constantly in mind. One can 
then focus on the issue of how comparison, if it has <a plausible 
basis in fact> and goes <beyond mere taxonomy,> can <add ... to 
knowledge,> and <offer perspectives that the single case might not 
suggest..,.[and] help reveal a wider historical process at work.> 
Such comparison can enable the observer <to discern a common causal 
mechanicm other wise unrevealed -- to diagnose, in a sense, a human 
illness.> Hence, in deriving principles of behavior from a specific 
historical event, that of Nazi genocide, we do not question the 
specificity of that event. What we do claim is that different 
historical events con include parallel features and related forms of 
behavior. It is because the Nazis were so extreme that they become 
useful in epitomizing certain destructive patterns that may operate -
- less visibly, more subtly -- in nuclear weapons policies.
        It was the Nazis who provided the impetus for the legal naming 
of a very old crime. The word genocide was coined (from the Greek 
genos, *race, tirbe,* and the Latin *cide* - killing) in 1944, and 
defined by the United Nations General Assembly in 1946, as <a denial 
of the right of existence of entire human groups.> The Convention on 
Genocide, passed by the UN General Assembly in 1948, and finally 
approved by the United States Congress IN 1988, associated the 
concept with killing, seriously harming, or interfering with the life 
continuity of <a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.> The 
distinguyished legal scholar Raphael Lemkin fought hard to establish 
the concept. He spoke of it as <an old practice in its modern 
development,> and clarly meant the principle to pply everywhere. We 
believe that our efforts here to explore common patters in Nazi 
genocide and potential nuclear genocide are in the spirit of Lemkin's 
work.
        One such common theme is that of a genocidal ideology: in the 
case of the Nazis, the ideology of racism or of the <biomedical 
vision> (the idea that a cure for the sickness of the Nordic race 
lies in destroying the infecting agent -- namely, the Jews); and in 
the case of the weapons, the ideology of nuclearism, the exaggerated 
embrace of the weapons, and dependency on them for security, peace, 
and something close to salvation. Both ideologies were embraced as a 
resolution of *cure* for a severe historical trauma: the humiliating 
defeat in the First World War in the case of the Nazis, and the 
appearance of atomic weapons and their use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 
in the nuclear case (see Chapter III). Both of these ideologies, 
moreover, include near worship of science and technology and the 
claim of breathrough in these areas (Nazi versions of biology and 
technocratic attatudes of nuclear strategists [see Chapter IV]). 
Another parallel lies in the overall participation of professionals 
in the genocidal system: for example, physicians and biologists in 
the Nazi case, and physicsts and strategists in the nuclear 9see 
chapter 5). and still another parallel is the vast societal 
involvement in a genocidal project, creating dangerous forms of 
bureaucratic momentum that can carry one across the threshold into 
genocide -- as happened in the Nazi case, and threatens to happen in 
the nuclear situation (see chapter 6).
        In both cases, these tendencies create a compelling narrative, 
one focusing on heightened collective life rather than on mass 
killing. The narrative takes on herioc dimensions, and those who play 
leading roles in it can come to wear the mantle of the individual 
hero. It becomes the master narrative for those in power and for many 
others, to the extent that alternative views can find little 
expression.
        Both Nazi and nuclear narratives are crucially sustained by 
certain psychological mechanisms tht protect individual people from 
inwardly experiencing the harmful effects, immediate or potential, of 
their own actions on opthers. These mechanisms, all of which blunt 
human feelings, include dissociation or splitting, psychic numbing, 
brutalization, and doubling. <Dissociation>, or <splitting,> is the 
separation of a portion of the mind from the whole, so that each 
portion may act in some degree separately from the other. <Psychic 
numbing> is a form of dissociation characterized by the diminished 
capaicty or inclination to feel, and usualy includes separation of 
thought from feeling. <Doubling> carries the dissociative process 
still further with the formation of a functional second self, related 
to but more or less autonomous from the prior self. When numbing or 
doubling enables one, with relatively little psychological cost, to 
engage in sustained actions that cause harm to others, we may speak 
of <brutalization.>
        Nazi doctors, for instance, required extreme forms of psychic 
numbing to avoid experiencing the pain of their victims. As the 
doctors, over time, participated in killing, they underwent 
progressive brutalization. That brutalization could also be enhanced 
by their experneice of doubling: the formation of an <Auschwitz self> 
adapted to themurderous work of that environment, while making use of 
their prior self in periodic visits with wives and children. Various 
bureaucratic procedures, by divesting the individual of a sense of 
responsibility for destructive collective behavior, could greatly 
enhance numbing and doubling as well as brutalization. In the nuclear 
case, the domination of technology makes the numbing all the easier. 
Patterns of doubling are observable in certain physicists and 
strategists, including the formation of a <nuclear weapons self>, but 
in a much less extreme psychological form than in the Nazi situation. 
They also undergo what could be called <silent technological 
brutalization,> an increasing capacity to take actions that could 
result i enormous destruction, the entire process so distanced by the 
technology that one must assert one's moral imagination to reconnect 
cause and effect. From that definition, the policy of nuclear 
deterrence is a form of silent brutalization and depends upon various 
forms of dissociation in those who promulgate it (see Chapter 7).
        these dissociative tendencies -- numbing and doubling and 
brutalization -- are part of the mind's repertoire. Likely to be 
called forth in connection with any expression of cruelty, they are 
certainly required for any form of mass killing or genocide. that is 
why the historian Charles S. Maier,  when reflecting on the 
Holocaust, suggests that human beings may function with <a fragmented 
self>, and that <the psychologist and moralist as well as the 
historian must deal with the issue of how men and women can be 
apparently normal and yet killers.>
 
A SPECIES FUTURE
        R.G. Collingwood, the British philosopher of history, declared 
that "the chief business of twentieth-century philosophy is to reckon 
with twentieth-century history.> We would claim that the same is true 
of twentieth-century psychology, with the added requirement that we 
begin to anticipate twenty-first-century history as well. We must 
bring what Isiah Berlin spoke of as <imiaginative insight> to bear on 
the <possible world> of the future. For there is still time to 
reverse the genocidal mentality of those promoting the nuclear 
project once we recognize it clearly.
        There is a generational discrepancy here. People born after the 
development of nuclear weapons have never known a world from which 
these were absent. The weapons come to be viewed as more or less 
given, and may even be perceived psychologically as something close 
to elements of nature. It then may becopme as difficult to imagine 
getting rid of them as it is to imagine, say, getting rid of a river 
or a mountain. Yet that sense of resigned acceptance of the weapons 
has also shown itself to be increasingly vulnerable to truths about 
what the weapons are and do. Those truths are painful but they unite 
the generations in reasoned evaluation and in the capacity to act.
        When one recognizes the nature of our present threat -- that it 
is not primarily to a particular group or nation but to the human 
species itself -- one's relationship to enemy nations and people 
radically changes. One becomes aware of the principle of shared fate. 
An American can say to an individual Soviet counterpart, <If you die, 
I die,> --  who can respond in turn, <If I survive, you survive.> As 
that awareness takes shape, enemies no less than friends feel 
compelled to collaborate on behalf of their comon survival. Each 
takes on a measure of species consciousness. The sense of self -- 
one's way of symbolizing one's own organism --becomes bound up with 
every other self on the planet. One can then begin to identify 
oneself with the rest of humankind -- to give shape to a species self 
(see Chapter 9). That is what Lewis Mumford tried to tell us more 
than three decades ago:
 
        Man's principle task today is to create a new self, adequate to 
command the forces that now operate so aimlessly and yet to 
sompulsively. This self will necessarily take as its province the 
entire world, known and knowable, and will seek, not to impose a 
mechanical uniformity, but to bring about an organic unity, based 
upon the fullest utilization of the varied resources that both nature 
and history have revealed to modern man ... a new vision of a self 
capable of understanding and cooperating with the whole.
 
        Here Mumford was referring to a species self, and to the 
beginnings of species politics and species ethids. But in order to 
enhance that shift, we must first take a hard look at the evolution 
of the genocidal mentality.