How Ordinary People Come to Take Part in Extraordinary Evil

Ever since 9/11 we have all been bombarded with the word evil as it has been resurrected once again to dehumanize one group in the effort to mobilize another group before marching off to war. I don’t much like the term evil because it is easy to use but very difficult to explain. It seems to me that acting inhuman, based on our evolutionary past, would mean living in peace with our neighbors, not killing them. We are collectively living under a falsehood—that humans prefer peace at any cost over collective action against others for their own advantage.

A recent book sheds some light on this subject entitled Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing by James Waller, 2002. This book covers a lot of ground, so I will only touch on what I believe is relevant to our current situation in the West with regards to the war on terror. The first part of the book discusses different genocides but especially focuses on the Nazis as it has been the most studied mass murder. In short, what the research shows is that the top echelons of the Nazi party were ordinary men of higher than average intelligence; nothing stands out that would differentiate them from our leaders today. Likewise, the average German soldier as well as the average Soviet soldier slipped into genocidal acts of brutality, because all humans are capable of such actions once certain social conditions are met.

As Waller explains, his model of evil actions are “Framed in the context of a four-pronged model, this explanation examines the forces relevant to the actor (our ancestral shadow and the identities of the perpetrators), the context of the action (a culture of cruelty), and a definition of the target (social death of the victims) that help shape our responses to authority.”

Numerous books that have been coming out of the behavioral sciences support Waller’s contention that “ethnocentrism (the tendency to focus on one’s own group as the ‘right’ one), xenophobia (the tendency to fear outsiders or strangers), and the desire for social dominance (often leading to aggression and violence)” underlie our actions that sometimes leads to warfare and oftentimes genocide. Research by others (forthcoming reviews) support this observation and show that it is derived from our evolutionary past. Once humans became superpredators, able to occupy almost every ecological niche worldwide, they turned to competing with each other more than against nature itself, creating an arms race that required a higher and higher intelligence to strategize against other humans for sexual and resource dominance.

Warfare and/or violence of course are no longer very effective means for most people to obtain dominance over others. At an individual level, we all size up our options, and try to choose the best course of action. If a person is talented or intelligent, it is much more advantageous to use these personal attributes to enrich oneself as much as possible. But collectively—societies, nations, religions, races or ideologies—can set up events that place them at odds with each other that leads to bloodshed.

Waller notes that “Social psychologists Clark McCauley and Mary Segal analyzed terrorist organizations around the world and found that terrorism arises among people whose shared grievances bring them together. As they interact in isolation from moderating influences, they become progressively more extreme—both as a group and as individuals. The result is violent acts of extraordinary evil that the individuals, apart from the group, likely would never have committed—at least not to the same degree. In this way, a group does become infinitely more dangerous than the sum of its individual parts. It bears repeating, however, that group interaction is a social amplifier that strengthens the preexisting signals of the individuals in the group—whether evil or good.”

In the West, we have embraced an ideology of tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism. Now, we are starting to see the fissures forming that could drag Europe into another world war. For decades, Islam has been seething under Western dominance, and they blame us rather than themselves for their failures. At the same time, we have promoted open borders, barred any speech that might question the motives of Muslims, while attacking ourselves for having White Privilege at the expense of other races. That is, we have embraced universal tolerance without ever questioning whether that tolerance would be reciprocated—it will not.

Islam is a religion based on intolerance of other religions. To be a true Muslim means when called upon by Allah, it is your duty to destroy the infidels or convert them. No other alternative is available. Of course, there is some wiggle-room for when you must strike out against the infidels. Out-breeding non-Muslims, working in the West and sending money back to Muslim terrorists, or just laying in wait until you are called—these are all valid means of spreading Islam. For any true Muslim, according to the Koran, there is no such thing as political or religious tolerance. Islam is a universal and total religion. It requires complete subservience as well as bloodshed when needed to bring about a unified Islamic world. Our tolerance in the West has replaced our war against Communism with a new war against Islam. And this one might actually go nuclear in the hands of those unafraid to use nuclear weapons like Pakistan and India. (See Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India by Meera Nanda, 2003.)

I have no doubt that the West could win a conventional war between states that are clearly defined—but now we have set in place a fissuring of our own identity. It is no longer a matter of a war between the West and Islam, but the battle lines are drawn within all Western states because we are no longer nations. We have no common people, culture or world perspective. Islam can easily disrupt the state from without and from within. Collectively, all people of color now stand against Whites and are prepared to use every opportunity to promote their positions when cultural or violent conflict breaks out.

We are seeing some of that occurring now in Europe as pockets of Islamic terrorists are beginning to lash out, and some Europeans are fighting back. However, just as many Europeans and Americans are mobilizing for an increase in peace, harmony and reconciliation in a hope that one day we will all be able to just get along. However, all of the research shows that states that do not have a common culture and people are destined for internal conflict—depending on how different the groups are in terms of culture, intelligence, and behavioral styles (like Finnish introversion and African extroversion).

Waller warns that “It can even be said that in forming bonds we deepen fissures. In other words, defining what the in-group is also requires defining what it is not. As psychologists Henri Tajfel and J. P. Forgas put it, ‘We are what we are because they are not what we are.’” Again, the West is increasingly fissuring into ideological camps on the left and the right, while Islam stays focused against the West. For the third time, Europe may go to war against itself needlessly because of our lack of understanding of human nature.

In the United States, our government has been exceedingly naïve in its understanding of Islam, continuing to believe that if they can just round up all the terrorists, the rest of Islam will be thankful. Slowly however, more and more people are realizing now that increasingly, terrorists are being created by our very actions. Our soldiers and their families are tiring of the slaughter, and the terrorists are being energized by it. This is asymmetrical warfare—formulated by the Chinese military—that we were warned about but ignored nonetheless.

Waller notes that “There are three specific cultural belief systems that are most relevant to understanding how ordinary people commit extraordinary evil: cultural belief systems about (1) external, controlling influences on one’s life; (2) one’s orientation to authority; and (3) ideological commitment.”

In comparison to Muslims, the average White is far more likely to attribute their own problems to themselves than to external forces—we tend towards individualism. Likewise then we also do not accept authority but question it, and we have very low ideological commitments, preferring to live the good life and pay little notice to other’s beliefs. That is, the West is not emotionally equipped to deal with the Islamic mind that sees the West as being responsible for their condition, a mind that relies on the authority of the Koran, and ideologically committed to the doctrine of absolutism in defense of Islam. In short, we’re screwed unless we wake up to these differences—which are a mixture of genes, culture and intelligence.

And there is more bad news from Becoming Evil: “In other words, enduring religious belief systems emphasizing divine influence and authority may be particularly relevant in shaping our responses to worldly influence and authority. This finding is congruent with a wealth of social psychological research suggesting that religious belief systems influence individuals’ proneness to prejudice. While the teachings of most religious belief systems are replete with affirmations of the dignity of human life and the responsibilities of human beings to respect and preserve that dignity, a basic and quite consistent finding is that church members tend to be more prejudiced than nonmembers, irrespective of the target of prejudice (though frequent church attenders are less prejudiced than occasional attenders).”

However, Islam is NOT a religion that preaches dignity of human life, or respect for other faiths. That young Islamic men are increasingly forming Islamic groups under authoritarian directives and based on the absolute truth of Islam and its bidding to genocidal jihad, does not bode well for peace between Islam and the West under any other scenario aside from expulsion.

Becoming Evil goes into great detail on multiple conditions that lead to war and brutality that I do not have time to cover. I picked only those areas that seem relevant under the current situation. One interesting aspect that any of us can watch unfold is how usually, both sides in conflicts rely on the very same tactics. Waller writes that “The cultural belief systems, in part, lay the foundation for a moral disengagement from the perpetration of extraordinary evil. How does this moral disengagement come about? Following Bandura, there are three disengagement practices necessary for perpetrators to make their reprehensible conduct acceptable and to distance them from the moral implications of their actions: (1) moral justification, (2) euphemistic labeling of evil actions, and (3) exonerating comparisons.”

I of course read more news generated by the Western media than I do by the Muslim media. However, it was easy to see how President Bush used all three methods to promote the war in Iraq. The moral justification kept changing, but that means little to most people. What is even more interesting is the way each side[s] uses euphemisms like “liberating the Iraqi people” for “destroying their potential for retaliation.” We never kill people—there is collateral damage, terrorists killed, never civilians, etc. Of course, all sides in conflicts change the language to suit the purposes of propaganda.

And of course the exonerating comparisons are also used by both sides. Since atrocities and genocides have been taking place for as long as there has been recorded history, it is only a matter of going back further and further to find just cause for attacking one’s enemy. What might be more helpful is to better understand that it is not a matter of who is at fault, but how one wins in the end. After all, acting inhuman would be not acting in the interest of self and kin against the other. The question then is merely how the competition is to take place—in the marketplace or on the battlefield.

Posted by Matt Nuenke on Sunday, November 28, 2004 at 04:43 PM in Books
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