LP 1 - Genocide

1

LP 1 – Genocide: An Overview

Tolerance and Inhumanity Jeff McDonald

Witness On the turning away

From the pale and downtrodden And the words they say Which we won’t understand Don't accept that what's happening Is just a case of others suffering Or you'll find that you're joining in

The turning away

Genocide

 First used by Raphael Lemkin (1944), a Polish legal scholar to describe the systematic annihilation of groups of people by the Nazis during WWII.

 Commonly used to mean a conspiracy aimed at the total destruction of a group.

LP 1 - Genocide

2

Genocide

  On December 9, 1948, the United Nations defined genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:   Killing members of the group   Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the

group   Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life

calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

  Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

  Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Common elements in societies where genocide occurs

  Scarce Resources   Ethnic Majority   Religious Differences   Lack of Minority Power   Economic Depression   Totalitarian Government   Discernible Differences   Under Cover of War   Sanctioned by Local Governments

History of Genocide

Did genocide begin with the Holocaust? No – at least two examples predate the

Holocaust, including:   Indian Removal (1838) and the Trail of Tears   Armenian Genocide (1915)

LP 1 - Genocide

3

The Trail of Tears

  The Trail of Tears refers to the forced relocation in 1838 of the Cherokee from Tennessee 1200 miles to Oklahoma.

  In1838, about 17,000 Cherokees were removed at gunpoint from their homes and gathered together in camps, often with very few of their possessions.

The Trail of Tears

  In the summer of 1838, they were marched to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma, mostly traveling on foot a distance of around 1,200 miles along one of the three routes.

The Trail of Tears   The relocation resulted in the

deaths of an estimated 4,000 Cherokees.

  According to Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a "vast genocide . . . , the most sustained on record."

This is James Earl Fraser’s sculpture “The End of the Trail of Tears” at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma. It is over 18 feet tall and weighs over 4 tons.

LP 1 - Genocide

4

The Armenian Genocide (1915)

Armenians and Turks lived in relative harmony in the Ottoman Empire for centuries.   Ideology of Nationalism during World War I   The “Young Turks” seized power, seeking to

modernize Turkey   Emphasis on a common language and

culture   “Pan Turkism” rejects cultural pluralism

  The Armenians are a Christian minority in a Muslim society

The Armenian Genocide (1915)

  April 24th – Armenian political, religious, educational and intellectual leaders are deported and put to death.

The Armenian Genocide (1915)

  May 1915 – Armenians are deported to “relocation centers” (also known as the Syrian desert)

LP 1 - Genocide

5

The Armenian Genocide (1915)

 Estimates are that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred.

The Armenian Genocide (1915)

  The Turkish and American governments still deny the genocide ever occurred.

A memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide in Glendale, California.

How does a genocide develop?

 Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, an International group that works to end genocide, writes that genocides develop in eight stages:

• Classification

• Symbolization

• Dehumanization

• Organization

• Polarization

• Preparation

• Extermination

• Denial

http://www.genocide1915.info/research/view.asp?ID=28

LP 1 - Genocide

6

Application

 According to the UN definition of genocide, do these examples qualify? Why or why not?

 How do the eight stages of genocide relate to the genocide of the Armenians and the Native Americans?

The Continuum of Destruction

 Mass killing and genocide follow a progression of behavior Ervin Staub refers to as a “continuum of destruction.”   Legalized discrimination   Limited acts of harm doing   Violence increases   Victims are dehumanized   Extermination becomes idealized and

institutionalized   Submission to authority of the group

On Obedience

“Obedience, as a determinant of behavior, is of particular relevance to our time. It has been reliably established that from 1933 to 1945 millions of innocent persons were slaughtered on command. Gas chambers were built, death camps were guarded, daily quotas of corpses were produced with the same efficiency as the manufacture of appliances. These inhumane policies may have originated in the mind of a single person, but could only have been carried out on a massive scale if a very large number of people obeyed orders.”

Stanley Milgram, 1963

LP 1 - Genocide

7

Obedience and Authority

 A number of studies were done by social psychologists to try to explain the power of group conformity and obedience to authority.   Solomon Asch   Stanley Milgram   Philip Zimbardo

The Asch Studies

  Solomon Asch conducted an experiment that was seemed to test visual judgment, but in actuality tested subjects’ willingness to go along with the incorrect response of the group

  Which line on the right is most like the line on the left?

The Asch Studies

 Asch found that 74% of the subjects went along with the group’s wrong answer at least once.

 Asch commented that “the tendency to conform in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black. This is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct."

http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html

LP 1 - Genocide

8

The Milgram Experiments

 Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments at Yale University that dealt with people’s willingness to obey authority.

 Milgram wondered if the evil deeds of the Nazis and people like Adolf Eichmann could be committed by “ordinary people” who were just following orders.

The Milgram Experiments

  Participants were hired as “teachers,” who were supposed to help learners by administering electric shocks for each wrong answer.

  These shocks were to increase for each wrong answer.

  In fact, no real shocks were given to the learner (who was an actor).

The Milgram Experiments

  The teachers followed the orders of the experimenter (man in a lab coat who was the legitimate authority) 65% of the time and went all the way to 450 volts (lethal shock).

  Conclusion? We do as we’re told.

LP 1 - Genocide

9

The Stanford Prison Study   Stanford University

Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo conducted a famous experiment in 1971 that looked at the darker side of human nature.

  What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions posed in this simulation of prison life.

The Stanford Prison Study

  The study, which was intended to last for two weeks, had to be ended after only six days.

  Ordinary college students became sadistic guards, and those chosen at random to be prisoners showed severe signs of stress and depression.

The Stanford Prison Study

  Zimbardo’s study brought attention to the power of the situation in people’s behavior, both good and bad.

What does this say about what happened at Abu Ghraib?

http://www.prisonexp.org/

LP 1 - Genocide

10

The Holocaust

 What does the word holocaust mean?

 Why was this word chosen for the “systematic annihilation of groups of people by the Nazis during WWII?”

The Holocaust

 Why do you believe the Holocaust happened?

 Why is the Holocaust important to Jews?  Why is the Holocaust important to all people?  What interests you most about the

Holocaust?  Why should we study genocide?

Hitler on the Armenian Genocide

“I have issued the command — and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad — that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness — for the present only in the East — with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Adolf Hitler, August 22, 1939