In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

5 Accommodating Genocide The novelty of totalitarian crimes lies less in the fact that heads of state could conceive of such projects . . . than in the fact that these men were able to realize their projects, an accomplishment that required the collaboration of thousands and thousands of individuals acting on the state’s behalf and at its behest . . . . The key factor is the transformations that all these thousands of individuals underwent so that they could suspend their usual responses to fellow human beings. —Tzvetan Todorov1 Most of the harm in the world is done by those who are dogmatically certain that they are right. For being absolutely right means that those who disagree are absolutely wrong. Those who are absolutely wrong are of course dangerous to society and must be restrained or eliminated. That is the beginning of the road to the torture chamber and the gas oven. —Anthony Storr2 The massacre at the Nyarabuye church is a particularly powerful example of the type of killing that marked the Rwandan genocide.3 When the killing erupted throughout that country, several thousand Tutsis gathered at the church, many on the advice of the local bourgemestre, or mayor, Sylvestre Gacumbitsi. They were seeking shelter and protection from the roving bands of the Interahamwe militia as well as from many of their Hutu neighbors. Men, women, and children set up camp, prayed for help, scavenged for food, and tried to stay alive. After having successfully beaten off one half-hearted attack, they were surprised to ¤nd Gacumbitsi leading a troop of soldiers, police of¤cers, and militiamen in another attack several days later. After Gacumbitsi handed out machetes to his followers, the Hutus attacked and slaughtered the Tutsis. There were too many to kill in one day, so they ended by slitting the Achilles tendons of many survivors to prevent them from escaping. Then, hungry from their day’s labor, they went off to feast on roasted beef and banana beer.4 They returned the next morning and ¤nished their horri¤c task. Since that massacre, the site has been left as it was as a memorial to the genocide. Bodies, now desiccated, still lie as they fell: men and women who were hacked to death with arms raised to ward off the blows that killed them; young children decapitated or cut in half; bodies piled outside the door to the church where they sought shelter as they were cut down; mothers surrounded by the bodies of their children.5 Various accounts describe the shock and outrage felt by visitors to the site of the slaughter. As he wandered through the killing grounds, a journalist was asked if he could imagine what the victims had endured. He replied that he could not, because his “powers of visualization cannot possibly encompass the magnitude of the terror.”6 Like that reporter, most people recoil in shock from such abominations. Our sensibilities may refuse to accept such a pornography of violence. Even secondhand, these images produce extreme feelings of disbelief, revulsion, and outrage. Perhaps we may even feel shame: shame that fellow human beings could in®ict such pain and terror upon others of their kind. Our awareness of these atrocities also poses some very dif¤cult questions. What kind of people are able to hack women and children to death while ignoring their pleas and agony? Don’t the perpetrators of genocide feel the same things you and I feel? More disturbingly, might we ourselves be capable of such deeds? Thus far we have examined genocide at the level of the state and the organization . This chapter continues this multitiered analysis by focusing on the last level of genocide: the individual. As we have seen, it is the state that provides the resources and rationale for genocide. This impetus is ¤ltered through various organizations and institutions that provide the framework, the structure, and the means for its implementation. Ultimately, however, it is the individual who must actually carry out the policies and murder other humans. At its essence , genocide is about people killing other people. It is important to note that those who perpetrate genocide conduct themselves in conformity to established authority structures and legal codes, not in opposition to them. Genocide is protected and sanctioned by the state. Social scientists have long recognized the power of the state and of the group in fostering conformity, even if the group is composed of strangers and regardless of the individual’s personal feelings.7 Even when placed...

Share