Killing organizations reproduce themselves by producing socialized killers as output

Evidence

Implicit in our previous analysis is an account of how such organizations reproduce themselves and grow. Organizations such as those involved in the Nazi death camps have not one but two outputs. They produce not only death, but individuals who become autonomously capable of and committed to producing other deaths. They produce evil individuals who become available for the reproduction of the evil organization. Concretely, SS officers and soldiers who first murdered civilians on the eastern front could then be used to staff the concentration camps and initiate and socialize other individuals into the new organizations. Older soldiers in the U.S. Army in Vietnam made clear to the new inductees how the war was really to be fought. By using a single evil organization “intelligently,” it can be made to produce a surplus of individuals who can be used to replicate the organization in other settings. Given that the individuals who have been “processed” by the evil organization have been brought to a point where they use their intelligence in the service of their evil actions, the replicated organizations can be counted on to transcend whatever local obstacles stand in the way of reproducing the results of the original organization. The staff of various concentration camps made numerous grisly procedural refinements that increased the efficiency of their activities. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4028

Organizations such as those involved in the Nazi death camps have not one but two outputs. They produce not only death, but individuals who become autonomously capable of and committed to producing other deaths. They produce evil individuals who become available for the reproduction of the evil organization. Concretely, SS officers and soldiers who first murdered civilians on the eastern front could then be used to staff the concentration camps and initiate and socialize other individuals into the new organizations. Older soldiers in the U.S. Army in Vietnam made clear to the new inductees how the war was really to be fought. By using a single evil organization “intelligently,” it can be made to produce a surplus of individuals who can be used to replicate the organization in other settings. Given that the individuals who have been “processed” by the evil organization have been brought to a point where they use their intelligence in the service of their evil actions, the replicated organizations can be counted on to transcend whatever local obstacles stand in the way of reproducing the results of the original organization. The staff of various concentration camps made numerous grisly procedural refinements that increased the efficiency of their activities. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4028

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that death camps have two outputs — death AND trained killers — reframes organizational reproduction as a self-replicating system whose processed individuals transplant into new settings; dense and paradigm-shifting.
• STORYSTEM: The idea that experienced SS officers functioned as ‘seed stock’ carried to new camps to ramp up other organizations gives a chilling template for a fictional bureaucracy that reproduces itself through its own trained personnel.
• XREF: Connects to organizational learning literature and to the socialization processes described in the Liar’s Poker case earlier in this chapter — the same mechanism operating in finance and genocide alike.
• ADDENDUM: Parallels the ‘stabilizer’ logic of my sacrifice piece — organizational self-reproduction through trained personnel mirrors how atrocity roles get routinized within institutions.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4028; John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4028