Institutional cruelty feels normal to its perpetrators, not deviant

Evidence

That most of the perpetrators of the genocide were normal people, who will freely flow through any known psychiatric sieve, however dense, is morally disturbing. It is also theoretically puzzling, particularly when seen conjointly with the ‘normality’ of those organizational structures that co-ordinated the actions of such normal individuals into an enterprise of the genocide. We know already that the institutions responsible for the Holocaust, even if found criminal, were in no legitimate sociological sense pathological or abnormal. Now we see that the people whose actions they institutionalized did not deviate either from established standards of normality. There is little choice left, therefore, but to look again, with eyes sharpened by our new knowledge, at the allegedly fully understood, normal patterns of modern rational action. It is in these patterns that we can hope to uncover the possibility so dramatically revealed in the times of the Holocaust. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 89 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

When questioned about why a priest who forced an altar boy to have oral and anal sex was not removed from the parish ministry, Lynn displayed striking indifference to the abused child (Warner, 2012a). He provided the odd justification that the abusing priest was also having sex with a woman, so he was “not a pure pedophile” (Warner, 2012b). The willful disregard for victimized minors in this tragedy is further shown in priests’ justifications for not reporting the sexual crimes to law-enforcement officials. Church lawyers told them they did not have to because they were not legally obligated to do so or because the statute of limitations had expired (Rogers, 2012). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 498 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Mass murder does not require extreme, demonic emotions in its perpetrators; The form of violence reflects institutional structure, not underlying hostility. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 655; Holocaust perpetrators were normal and their institutions socially non-pathological — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 89 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Holocaust perpetrators were normal and their institutions socially non-pathological #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 89
• Euphemistic reframing of abuse as atypical can enable institutional inaction. #complicates (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 498