I wrote this paper years ago for a philosophy course on nonviolence. One of the assignments in that course was to develop a strategy to remedy a specific kind of contemporary violence. I feel like this paper is relevent to current events. I don’t know if the strategies put forth in this paper are enough to change the course of history, but at least it’s a place to begin.
Sorry about the formatting, especially the bib. Consider this a rough draft.
I visited Auschwitz once. Roughly eighty years after most of it was reduced to rubble, I could still smell the ashes.
A project of the scale and complexity of genocide can’t happen without the participation of many people working together.[1] It is so easy to think of the perpetrators of genocide as evil, psychologically abnormal, inhuman. But the unsettling reality is that genocides tend to be carried out, not by monsters, but by ordinary people.[2] As I left the concentration camps, I was thinking about each person who didn’t speak up and say, “I refuse to do this, this is wrong.” I haven’t stopped thinking about them since, and it’s been about two years. I can’t shake the feeling that, under the right circumstances, this could happen anywhere – I could find myself participating in unspeakable atrocity, and so could everyone else that I know.[3] I want to believe we could find a way to resist, if we needed to. Since I have also walked in cities which the Allied powers bombed into the ground, and there were children in those cities, and I don’t care whose children they were: I want to find a way to resist the worst of humanity in a way that doesn’t bring out the worst in ourselves.
In this paper, I will go to the roots of why genocide happens and explore patterns in human behavior which may help explain why ordinary people participate in genocide. I will develop ways to interrupt those patterns by nonviolent means. Nonviolent methods of resistance can help to counter indoctrination into genocidal ideologies, especially when it comes to fortifying communities and changing the way we respond to genocidal rhetoric and discourse.
In texts about Just War Theory and the strategic usefulness of nonviolence, genocide is a classic example of when arguing for a nonviolent solution seems futile. If violence is ever justified, it seems as though violence is justified for the sake of preventing or stopping a genocide. Gandhi challenged the notion that “the ends justify the means,” because just as an acorn will grow into an oak tree every time, violent means are likely to produce a violent outcome.[4] One of the five conditions of Just War Theory is that war is only justified if we have first exhausted the non-violent alternatives. I tend to believe that it’s rare that we have truly exhausted the peaceful alternatives, because I think there is usually an alternative path forward, if only we take a moment to look. Precisely because nonviolence is so often dismissed as not being useful in this instance, I think it’s worth taking the time to think about it more carefully.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about the idea that in order to effectively use nonviolence to push back against the things which are unjust, it is first necessary to spend time learning about them.[5] Understanding a little bit about the roots of genocide, particularly the individual capacity to help perpetrate genocide, gives me a framework for thinking about how to go about creating effective resistance.
The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as … [certain] actions undertaken “with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a racial, ethnic, national or religious group.” Genocide is an indiscriminate attempt to annihilate a group of people – usually noncombatants – based on their identity, based on who they are.
Gan discussed the old and pervasive myth that there are “good guys and bad guys” in this world. The belief that a group of people is irredeemably bad or incapable of goodness is harmful because it allows us to justify using violence against them.
David Livingstone Smith said that it is “very difficult to look another human being in the eye and kill or torture them.”[6] It’s also nigh on impossible to look into the face of another human being and not recognize them as being one of us. Since it is often advantageous to violate and destroy other people, we’ve developed a cognitive mechanism for overriding that inhibition: we think of the “other” as “appearing to be human, but not really being human on the inside where it matters.”[7] Dehumanization is “closely related to the commission of … atrocities which would be difficult to commit unless we thought of the victims as less than human.”[8]
On a similar vein, Nussbaum writes about anger – the retributive instinct which accompanies a perceived injury against ourselves. During tumultuous times, we go looking for someone to blame for the problems of the world. With that blame, the impulse to get payback, the attitude that “it-doesn’t-matter-if-they-get-hurt-because-they-have-hurt-me,” also becomes a dangerous mechanism for decreasing inhibitions against violence, for increasing indifference to the suffering of a group.
Genocides consistently happen in places where it feels like the world is falling apart, when people are shaken and scared and insecure. Shaken and insecure people find solace in belonging to an identity group. Especially when we’re afraid, our “universe of moral obligation” is confined to the people we’re closest to, the people with whom we most identify. When times are bad, we take care of our own. The problem is that identity groups are defined in terms of who doesn’t belong. Existential dread increases wariness towards outsiders, intolerance of differences. In times of upheaval and turmoil, we turn inwards towards the warmth of what is familiar, wary of unknowns outside in the cold. We “assuage our own fear of death through the death of the other.” Indifference towards the suffering of people who are outside of our in-groups is heightened when we are afraid.
Humans are vulnerable to the sort of rhetoric, discourse, and propaganda which portrays other people as being to blame for the problems of the world, or incapable of goodness, or somehow less than human.[9] Anyone who is interested in inciting violence, in getting people to bypass their inhibitions against violence, depends on that vulnerability. And there will always be people out there who are interested in taking advantage of that human capacity to look into the eyes of another person and, somehow, justify destroying them.
Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic propaganda resonated with an old tradition of demonizing Jews in Europe. In Rwanda, a Hutu newspaper and radio station fueled an ideology of prejudice and hatred against the Tutsis – or “cockroaches,” as they were called. Facebook helped spread propaganda which demonized the Rohingya people in Myanmar. It only took a few weeks of non-stop news coverage of planes flying into the towers for the murders of Muslims in the U.S. to exceed the death toll of the attack on the world trade center in 2001.
One way to counter genocidal ideology is to try to stop it from spreading: to find the loudest voices in genocidal discourse and work to stop the flow of ideas from the source. Philip Gourevitch speculated that bombing the Hutu power radio station in Rwanda might have slowed the genocide. Who knows how many lives this could have saved.
One of Gene Sharp’s “pillars” which upholds the spread of this kind of ideology is the discourse and rhetoric in the media, as well as social media platforms. Bad news sells advertising. News media both thrives on and exacerbates public existential dread. It’s in the interest of for-profit news media to draw our attention to the worst things that are happening, all the time – even if that means becoming a platform for dehumanizing propaganda targeting a particular group. Decent public access to information may conflict with the best interests of the mediums which provide that service.
Online spaces create epistemic “bubbles” or “echo chambers” where ideologies are shared and reinforced. In a sense, each one of us is carrying around a printing press in our pockets, and each one of us is a radio tower – rebroadcasting the things we’ve heard, amplifying perspectives, constantly sharing the thoughts of strangers with everyone we know. Instead of having to travel to meet people who have also bought into eliminationist rhetoric, it’s possible to connect with people from halfway across the world.
Perhaps we ought to boycott mediums which make money off of existential dread, especially if they’re providing a platform for propaganda which dehumanizes specific groups of people. Doom scrolling on social media or constantly watching the news is such an ingrained part of the lives of so many that I think asking people to stop might be impractical, because engaging with the world like this is like an addiction for many people. Coordinating large numbers of people who log off for short periods of time, perhaps on a routine basis, could make a noticeable dent in the analytics at social media headquarters. This might help people who feel the same way about this issue realize that they’re not alone. It may become a starting point for conversations challenging the messages of bigotry and hate.
Even if we do somehow manage to change the nature of the platforms where this discourse is so often exchanged and shared, I’m hesitant to say that this will successfully stop the spread of genocidal discourse. The relationship between public information and the internet and news media “wasn’t always like this. Not very long ago, just before your time/right before the towers fell, circa ’99,”[10] the mediums that we used to share ideas with one another were different – but variations on these same ideas, in one form or another, have been being exchanged for millennium. The “myth of good guys and bad guys” is old and pervasive, and maybe it has always existed.
I’m at the epistemic disadvantage of being approximately the same age as the internet, as it exists today, and much of my connection to current events in my adult life – beyond my immediate surroundings – has happened through the lens of a small rectangle of blue light that fits into the palm of my hand. People have been engaging with genocidal ideology through other mediums for millennium. So “get off your phone and go lay in the grass and talk to a real person” may not be the revolutionary breakthrough that I want it to be.
This practice might be more useful at the individual level – taking time away from engaging with that feeling of existential dread is useful. We can focus that time and energy and attention on other things which are tremendously important. Also, sometimes current events are so awful that “it can be damaging even to look.” I believe that our minds were not built to hold an awareness of the suffering of billions from all over the world all at the same time, but we now have the technology which allows us to do this. I am not suggesting that we turn our backs on the problems of the world. But when we engage, I think we ought to hold onto perspective with everything we’ve got. Do this carefully. We are of no use to anyone if we’re overwhelmed with despair, and we are perhaps more vulnerable to being indoctrinated with genocidal ideologies if we’re full of existential dread. In order to fortify ourselves against indoctrination into genocidal ideology, we need to learn how to take what we hear on these platforms with a grain of salt.
In the long run, trying to mediate the spread of ideas is too much like putting a band-aid on an old and festering wound. At the heart of this issue, there is something uncomfortably human that needs to be dealt with. The problem is not just that genocidal discourse is out there, it’s that humans are uncomfortably susceptible to this kind of ideology. While we may focus on restricting circulation of this kind of discourse, effective strategy ultimately comes down to how we respond to the ideology when it comes across our path.
It’s difficult to learn how to recognize our own preconceived notions and ideologies from the inside. In order to recognize hatred and intolerance and prejudice for what it is, we have to understand what it looks like.[11] Teaching this skill in public school and college curriculum is frustratingly contentious. However, school curriculum represents only a tiny fraction of all of the possible ways to communicate ideas. Books, poetry, music, art, graffiti, theatre, film – everything from allegory to satire to masterful subtlety – these are some of the best “methods of persuasion” we’ve got, to help put beliefs in the context of a better understanding of the world.
Sometimes it is easier to learn about this for the first time in a context that is less personal, less close to home. That way, the first time we go looking for darkness in the places we least want to find it, we already know what we’re looking for. Learn about the Nazis, first, so that when we learn about the U.S.’s prison industrial complex or read about what’s happening on the border with Mexico, we can recognize something hauntingly familiar.
I have also found that works of fiction are excellent vehicles for communicating about things that are difficult to face in the context of real life. Good storytellers are some of the best teachers, because it is the work of a storyteller to notice the world as hard as possible and then come back and tell everyone else what they see.[12] A well-told story can orient a moral compass just about as well as anything that happens in real life. This works well for children, but once in a while I stumble on grown-ups who also enjoy reading made-up stories.
Perhaps I have strayed too far into the realm of books and internet spaces, and have wound up too far away from the real world.
People are much more vulnerable to taking genocidal ideology seriously when they are frightened and insecure and tired, and we are much more likely to be in that state when it feels like the world is falling apart around us. If it feels like the world is falling apart because it actually is falling apart, as it often seems to be, then it makes sense to try to hold the world together with everything we’ve got. This is a lot to ask for, because this world seems so unfathomably broken. Just speaking for myself, I often feel powerless in the face of that brokenness. And I tend to think that in spite of the best efforts of many good people, there will be times when trying to hold the world together isn’t going to work. For the sake of the times when there’s a chance that it could work, I think it’s worth thinking about how to hold the world together when it’s falling apart.
Gandhi stressed the importance of self-reliance for comprehensive nonviolent resistance. The Stanford Prison Experiments demonstrated that “if you give a person power over someone else who is powerless, someone who has been demonized or made to seem less human, then that absolute power corrupts absolutely”[13] Relying on a broken system for support gives that system power, puts us at the mercy of bad circumstances and instability and insecurity. This at once makes us more vulnerable to being dehumanized and also dehumanizing others. Having that independence, having practices for supporting ourselves which don’t rely so heavily on those systems, returns some of that power to communities.
At the grassroots level, a more secure world involves having networks of people who are up to the task of taking care of each other, even when times are bad. When larger systems are failing to take care of people, mutual aid networks allow communities to take care of one another. Basic fluency in the skills necessary to support each other is useful for not feeling powerless in the face of a world that feels like it’s falling apart.
Across the board, people who’ve gone out of their way to stand up to genocidal ideologies have tended to have a “universal sense of the altruistic bond.”[14] They’ve been close to people who were being targeted. They haven’t wanted to see an entire group of people erased from the face of the earth, because that would mean losing their friends. Afterwards, they often said things like, “I did what anyone would have done,” or “I had no other choice,” or “you would have done the same for me.”[15] Friendship might be like an immunization against prejudice – and personally, I have found that once I have laughed with someone, once I have loved a person who is different than me, there is no going back. I think it’s important to create strong communities which transcend the boundaries of identity groups, to build bridges between unexpected places. I suspect that the trick is to connect people, not on the basis of identity, but over things which most people have in common no matter who they are – i.e., music, food, games, stories. (i.e., the “Break Down The Walls” documentary discussed a NYC prison abolitionist movement which doubled as a nightclub in the evenings.[16]) So share food, even if you have to add more water to the soup. Teach someone how to cook, if you know how – teach them the recipes you grew up with. Make music together, even if all you have is a singing voice that couldn’t carry a tune if it had handles and a couple of top 40 songs with words that everyone half-knows. You probably know someone who has a deck of cards, and if you don’t, yes you do, you can borrow mine, they’re a little bent out of shape but that doesn’t matter. Be the person in the room with the patience to teach the new kid how to play. Catch the misfits, the people most likely to wind up in dangerous places if they don’t have somewhere safe to come home to.
Stronger communities also tend to sooth that insecurity which makes people vulnerable to being indoctrinated. Sometimes all it takes to pull someone back from the brink of extremism is one person in a room who is able to be peaceful and considerate and kind when nobody else can. One solid presence in a room full of shaken people has a stabilizing influence.[17] I guess if I could ask you to do one thing to work to push back against the prejudice which precedes genocide, I would ask you to work at becoming that presence in a room – in any room. I’ll try, too.
How do we find it in ourselves to do this? Whatever helps each of us hold onto perspective is excellent – a sense of humor, spirituality, medicine, whatever it may be. It’s different for everyone. Thich Nhat Hanh writes about the usefulness of being mindful, and practicing that skill until you are able to be mindful wherever you find yourself and whenever you need to be.[18] The Taoists discussed the importance of knowing when and how to yield, to let somebody else have their way, because over the course of time, the water the flows around the rocks that stand firm in the middle of the river will eventually wear the rocks down to nothing.[19]
Every so often, I look down at the blue veins on the inside of my wrist and remember they’re blue because of a molecule called hemoglobin which is responsible for carrying oxygen to my cells, and that hemoglobin contains trace amounts of iron, and iron can only be forged in the heart of a star that is dying. And so those blue lines on my wrist are literally full of stardust, which became part of the earth when it formed 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years ago, and traveling at the speed of light, which is as fast as it is possible to travel, it would take 81,000 years to get to the nearest star aside from the sun, and that is only the beginning.[20] This makes all of the problems on the surface of this exceptional little planet seem smaller, somehow, and perhaps more important for all of their smallness – because of all the possible lives I could have lived, I ended up living this one. Might as well make the most of it while I’m here.
From this perspective, it is easier to see that although humans are eminently capable of believing the worst of each other, of doing horrible things to one another, of succumbing to a hate so strong that erasing a group of people off the face of the planet sounds like a reasonable idea – this is not an inevitable outcome. Far from it.
There are documented case studies of nonviolent resistance to the Holocaust.[21] All across Europe, there were hundreds of networks of people who stood up to the Nazis. There were people who resigned in protest when they were asked to do unspeakable things. There were people who stayed on in those jobs, only to use their power to get people to safety. There were marches, strikes, boycotts, there were underground newspapers. There were people who sheltered innocent families in their homes, or helped them get to safety. There was resistance. These are the people who were not won over by the ideologies of prejudice, and who weren’t swept up in circumstance. Which means that there is hope.
Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. A Report On The Banality of Evil
Attenborough. Gandhi. 1982.
Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men.
Baum, Stephen K. Psychology of Genocide.
Barnett, Brian. Gandhi’s Philosophy of Nonviolence.
Chenoweth, Erica. “Why Civil Resistance Works: Nonviolence in Past and Future.”
Cherry, Myisha. “David Livingstone Smith on Dehumanization,” Unmuted.
Collins, Phil. Break Down the Walls.
Dudai, Ron. Understanding Perpetrators of Genocide
Gan, Barry. Violence and Nonviolence: An Introduction.
Goldhagen, Daniel. Hitler’s Willing Executioners
Gourevitch, Phil. We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families
Hoff, Benjamin. The Tao of Pooh.
Holmes, Robert. “Understanding Evil from the Perspective of Nonviolence.” The Acorn.
How To Start A Revolution.
Introduction to Astronomy. OpenStax.
Johansen, “Hitler and the Challenge of Non-Violence”
Jones, Adam. “Social Psychology Explanations,” Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction
Milgram, Stanley. Studies on the Nature of Obedience
Nonviolent Tactics Database. https://www.tactics.nonviolenceinternational.net/
Nussbaum, Martha. Anger and Forgiveness
Paxton, George. Nonviolent Resistance to the Nazis
Sharp, Gene. From Dictatorship to Democracy
Sharp, Gene. “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action.”
Sinclair, “Resisting the Nazis in Numerous Ways: Nonviolence in Occupied Europe”
Thich Nhat Han. Being Peace.
“War,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/
Zimbardo, Philip. The Stanford Prison Experiments: Studied on the Psychology of Imprisonment.
[1] Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy
[2] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
[3] Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men
[4] Brian Barnett, Gandhi’s Philosophy
[5] After genocide was made punishable under international law, African American folks in the U.S. were the first to write to the United Nations asking that their treatment – particularly the transatlantic slave trade, I think – be recognized as genocide. The request was denied.
[6] Myisha Cherry, Unmuted. 160
[7] Cherry, 159
[8] Cherry, 160
[9] Cherry, 162
[10] Bo Burnham, “Welcome to the Internet.” Inside.
[11] David Livingstone Smith
[12] Ursula Le Guin
[13] Wilson
[14] Stephen K. Baum, Psychology of Genocide
[15] Baum, Psychology of Genocide
[16] Phil Collins, Break Down the Walls
[17] Thich Nhat Han, Being Peace
[18] Thich Nhat Han, Being Peace
[19] Benjamin Hoff, The Toa of Pooh
[20] Introduction to Astronomy
[21] George Paxton, Nonviolent Resistance to the Nazis