Group violence requires erasing the victim’s concrete individual identity

Evidence

Unlike individual violence, “group violence is by definition abstract”; “real individual neighbors are not necessarily loved, but they are loved or hated for concrete, not abstract reasons… On the contrary, in order to apply group violence to the neighbor as belonging to a category, the concrete individual’s face has to be erased: the person must become an abstraction.” — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 383 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Collective violence nearly always activates a we-they boundary from among multiple available identities — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 769; Satisfying identity needs of victims and perpetrators facilitates reconciliation across groups. — Nurit Shnabel and Johannes Ullrich, Identity Needs in Intergroup Relations:…, 94; A dominated group must be both destroyed and preserved to anchor the dominator’s identity (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Group violence requires the victim to be abstracted into a category #corroborates (0.97) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 383