Perpetrator and rescuer roles overlap rather than divide into pure good and evil.
Evidence
There is an intrigu ing bifurcation in how one can consider in the same breath the perpetrators and resisters of persecutory violence. The temptation is to take a Manichean viewpoint: Perpetrators are evil and resisters are virtuous. Let us temporarily ignore the fact that—as noted previously—perpetrators were sometimes also rescuers (and vice versa), skip over the existence of ambivalent figures such as Oskar Schindler, and dismiss the highly dubious characterizations of the evildoer as merely a banal bureaucrat, abused child, frustrated artist, or sin cere although misguided idealist. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 473
Categorization
- XREF: Directly complicates the ‘banal bureaucrat’ line (Arendt/Adolf Eichmann) that the reader may have flagged earlier in this book on authoritarianism. — connects to: Nazi-era rescuers and persecutors frequently occupied both roles at once — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 465; Moral agent and moral patient categories are mutually exclusive yet overlapping. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 160; Victim groups seek agentic power while perpetrator groups seek moral reacceptance — Nurit Shnabel and Johannes Ullrich, Identity Needs in Intergroup Relations:…, 65
- APHORISMS: A warning against Manichean moral sorting of people into evil and virtuous camps, useful well beyond Holocaust studies.
Broader Connections
- Victim groups seek agentic power while perpetrator groups seek moral reacceptance
#expands(0.78) — Nurit Shnabel and Johannes Ullrich, Identity Needs in Intergroup Relations, 65 - Moral agent and moral patient categories are mutually exclusive yet overlapping.
#qualifies(0.75) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 160