Perpetrator-group members can benefit from crimes without committing them

Evidence

This passivity of belonging to a nation creates a predicament about assigning responsibility and guilt to members of the group. This is particularly acute in cases of atrocities and war crimes in which those individuals were not personally involved. Being a member of an identity group does not in itself constitute a crime, and the law abhors collective responsibility or punishment. Nor is it clear that the rewards of a crime benefit in every case all members of the group, although in many cases it does. The genocides committed by Serbs and Hutus in the 1990s for example, led mostly to misery and suffering by most Serbs and Hutus. Obviously the Bosnians and the Tutsis suffered inordinately worse, yet the perpetrators cannot be said to have benefited in general from the crime. … One example that received ample public attention in the late 1990s was the way Switzerland was enriched as a result of serving Nazi Germany both as a banker and a conduit to world trade. While its banks (and their stockholders) enjoyed the benefits of the wealth deposited by individuals who died in the Holocaust, its citizens largely did not actively participate in any of the crimes (the exceptions are well documented by now). Yet, most Swiss benefited economically from the war and from the Holocaust. Switzerland’s prosperity after World War II depended on having been a Nazi accomplice and keeping the enrichment after the war. Its citizens enjoyed the fruit of this cooperation, even though most were not part of it. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 2066

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the moral economy work in ch5 and the Swiss banking reparations lawsuits that followed into the 2000s. — connects to: Mere membership in a perpetrating society can cause shameful identity without personal guilt — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 2078; Groups are not blamed for crimes of members who share their identity — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 47; Perpetrator and victim groups favor accepting versus assigning guilt — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 152 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Groups are not blamed for crimes of members who share their identity #complicates (0.85) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 47
• Group-level moral disengagement is an emergent property, not a sum of individual exonerations #responds-to (0.80)
• Perpetrator and victim groups favor accepting versus assigning guilt #complicates (0.75) — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 152
• Group membership psychologically supports members against betraying secrets #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 8578
• Loyalty to wrongdoers can persist without condoning their actions #expands (0.75) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 682