Scapegoating ideology, not repressed psychic conflict, directly causes extreme group violence.
Evidence
Classic scapegoat theory, which was heavily influenced by Freudian constructs, assumes that extreme behavior, such as the Nazi genocide, must be driven by irrational, unconscious processes (e.g., repressed psychodynamic conflict). Events as horrific and destructive as the Holocaust seem to demand this kind of explanation. How perpetrators understand, justify, or explain their behavior (e.g., Nazi ideology) is, in this view, merely a set of rationalizations, a smoke screen that masks the true causes of behavior (from the perpetrators themselves, as well as from less astute observers). In contrast, the proposed model (though it does not reject all Freudian concepts) views ideology as the proximal cause of behavior. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 731
Categorization
- XREF: Directly reframes the Freudian/Adorno authoritarian-personality account of genocide; bridges to the reader’s inclusion-need and small-exclusive-subgroup mechanism literature by relocating causation in ideology rather than pathology. — connects to: Scapegoat stereotypes are rationalizations caused by aggression, not its cause — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 742; Ideological commitment, not displacement, mediates scapegoating.
- DEEPTHINKING: Overturns the intuition that atrocity requires irrational minds, arguing ordinary adaptive cognition plus ideological commitment suffices — sits with you for days.
Broader Connections
- Scapegoat stereotypes are rationalizations caused by aggression, not its cause
#contradicts(0.95) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 742 - Ideological commitment, not displacement, mediates scapegoating.
#corroborates(0.95)