Brutal genocide perpetrators need not hold longstanding eliminationist attitudes toward victims
Evidence
Goldhagen’s emphasis on a peculiarly German eliminationist anti-Semitism as the necessary and sufficient explanation for the behavior of German Holo caust perpetrators has been questioned on a number of grounds other than the ones emphasized in this chapter. Some have challenged the assertion that anti-Semitism in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century was any more virulent than it was in other European countries (Wehler, 1998). Others have pointed out that much of the persecution, killing, and other violent activity involving face-to-face contact with Holocaust victims was actually delegated to non-Germans (Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, etc.). Although these accomplices of the Nazis were not burdened by a legacy of German eliminationist anti-Semitism, they were by all accounts not distinguished by a lack of brutality in the execution of their duties (Aschheim, 1996; Finkelstein & Birn, 1998). Still another set of critics have cited other episodes of geno cide in which behaviors that were arguably as brutal as those engaged in by German Holocaust perpetrators were carried out by people who clearly did not have long-standing or deeply ingrained negative (let alone eliminationist) attitudes toward their victims (Aschheim, 1996; Browning, 1998; see also Smith, 1998). — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 332
Categorization
- XREF: Links to the functionalism-vs-intentionalism debate and Browning’s Ordinary Men, which also showed non-ideological perpetrators. — connects to: Extermination stage killing requires that killers see victims as less than fully human — Gregory H. Stanton, Ten Stages of Genocide, 8; Holocaust killers volunteered eagerly rather than obeying reluctantly — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 320; Genocide requires victims to be dehumanized into an abstract category first (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- People without prejudice can still participate zealously in genocide
#corroborates(0.95) - Prejudice is neither necessary nor sufficient for genocide
#expands(0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 702 - Traditional antisemitism negatively correlates with willingness to perpetrate genocide
#corroborates(0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 521 - Genocide is creative weeding, not destructive hatred
#expands(0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 268 - Genocide requires victims to be dehumanized into an abstract category first
#qualifies(0.75) - Genocide requires victims to be reduced to an abstract category before killing.
#qualifies(0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 422 - Violent hatred need not spring from the victim’s power and abuse
#corroborates(0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 66