Why is it so easy for a group of people to kill another group of people? (The dehumanizing factor common in most if not all Genocides)
Websites:
http://www.genocidewatch.org/8stages.htm
This website is very useful because it generalizes what occurs in genocides. This site gives us the eight stages of genocide and under the third stage is dehumanization. This can help us understand what I call the two main reasons dehumanization is necessary when there is genocide. Those reasons are, 1. to (before the actual killings occur) make it easier to mistreat the victims and convince others that they are not morally wrong for watching these crimes occur, and 2. to (during the time of the killings) humiliate the victims.
http://www.intractableconflict.org/m/dehumanization.jsp
This is another good site that deals with dehumanization as a psychological phenomenon. This also talks about the purpose that dehumanization serves. This site goes more into detail about how dehumanizing allows the distance needed in order to take away moral responsibility. For example, as human beings, we feel as though our own kind is morally protectable; however, animals (sentient nonpersons) are not given the same rights as human beings (sentient persons). This is partly do to the closeness we feel with other humans. Since they look and think and feel the same way we do, we could imagine ourselves being in a bad position and therefore, we may decided not to put others in that position. So, if we think of victims of genocides as animals, it is easier to give them a lesser moral worth than other people.
Articles
Sommers, Fred. "The Holocaust and Moral Philosophy" Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life: Introductory Readings in Ethics. Ed. Christina and Fred Sommers. Canada: Wadsworth,2004.150-155.
This article is a great source to understand how a person could torture and kill other people. The answer is, they didn't, at least not in their opinion. Sommers points out that through religious justification, racial differences, there is a morality by the Germans that did not consider Jews as persons. Sommers uses the term "Moral Patient" to describe those who can be wronged. He says, "Nonrational beings cannot be wronged; they are not "ends" to whom we owe respect." Since the Germans did not consider the Jews to be rational beings, the Jews were nonpersons. The point of the article is to show that by dehumanizing a group of people, it is easy to do immoral things. We could look at it as if the Jews were considered a tree. Sommers writes, "You can do wrong by damaging a tree, but you do not thereby wrong the tree." You can take this to mean two things. Either the Jews did not feel pain or pleasure and therefore you are not wronging them, or that the Germans were wrong in their actions because maybe the Jews have some kind of intrinsic worth, but they were not doing wrong to the Jews. This is one way of interpreting their thought process. Although this article uses the Holocaust as an example, it addresses an even bigger issue of what philosophers would call a "bad morality". The online sources also touch on issues of dehumanizing the victims. The Armenians, as with the Jews, were dehumanized by being made to take off all of their clothes. Although this along with other cruel acts was used to humiliate the victims, we could say that we are less inclined to think of the humiliation of animals and plants. We may not feel as though they can be humilated since they are "nonrational" beings. This is how the Armenians and those in Rwanda and Sudan were treated.
Books:
Hart, William. "The Monster Within." EVIL A Primer: A History of a Bad Idea From Beelzebub to Bin Laden.New York: St. Martins Press, 2004. 90-98.
This book in general is a great source for learning about what we consider evil and may be useful for this topic. However, I will focus on one chapter entitled :The Monster Within". This book also helps to understand how people can do such horrible things to other people. There is a very simple answer to this. "Give me the dagger and I'll stab you in the back". What I mean by this is, if you give someone the tools to do soemthing wrong, you don't have to necessarily hold a gun to their head to make them do it. When I mention tools, I don't necessarily mean weapons. When I say tools, I also mean the thing that is needed for me to do harm to a person. That could be a job, a raise, money, or something that is beneficial to me. This chapter talks about how you do not need to be an evil person to do evil things. You can commit horrific crimes and kill others, and not even have extreme hatred towards them. You could seem as ordinary as anyone else. This is also a pattern seen in most genocides. The people who participate in these horrifying crimes against humanity have families, friendly relationships,and some may go as far as to say that they have a rational thought process. This chapter shows us that anyone could have a monster within.