Hatred-as-cause explanations of violence extended widely beyond Allport

Evidence

Allport’s position that intergroup violence was caused by eruptions of intense hostility was also widely shared. For example, feminist scholars linked violence against women (such as spousal assault, rape, and the persecution of women as witches in early modern Europe) with pervasive misogyny (e.g., Barstow, 1995; French, 1992; see also Rudman, ch. 7 this volume), and Goldhagen (1996) alleged in his bestselling book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, that the Germans’ participation in the mass extermination of Jews during the Second World War could only be explained by their deep-seated anti-Semitism. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 648

Categorization

• XREF: Goldhagen’s mass-eliminationist-antisemitism thesis is a strong example of the individual-hatred theory this chapter goes on to complicate; connects to ongoing historiography debates about whether Holocaust perpetrators acted on ideology or situational factors.