Perpetrators performed mass killing with zealous enthusiasm, as if it were their vocation

Evidence

Significantly, the observer noted that the killers worked “with such zealous intent that one could have supposed this activity to have been their lifework” (quoted in Herzstein, 1980, p. 142). — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 635

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The vocation framing undercuts the bureaucratic-obedience model: zeal this deep implies identification and investment, not coerced compliance.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘The Perpetrator’s Enthusiasm’ — why atrocity scholarship keeps reaching for obedience theory when the eyewitness vocabulary is one of eagerness.
• XREF: connects to: Mass murder does not require extreme, demonic emotions in its perpetrators; Perpetrators of political violence vindicate their acts through heroic self-conception rather than denial — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2145

Broader Connections

• Mass murder does not require extreme, demonic emotions in its perpetrators #contradicts (0.85)
• Perpetrators of political violence vindicate their acts through heroic self-conception rather than denial #corroborates (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2145