Causes of Genocide

Genocide is an action that is not unique to any one set of specific circumstances. It knows no bounds of time or location. From thousands or years ago to present day and on every civilized continent, the eradication of entire groups of people has occurred. The current definition of genocide was established by the United Nations in 1948: “(a) Killing members of [a] group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” But how can crimes of this magnitude occur? Attempting to eradicate an entire group of people, successfully or otherwise, is a tremendous feat. There must be some equally tremendous influences at work, such as justification through denial and mitigation, established racism and discrimination, group polarization and the psychological effect of schadenfreude. These influences can be observed in Art Spiegelman’s comic book, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, which portrays the experiences of Art’s father, Vladek, through the prototypical example of genocide, the Holocaust.

The history of genocides, and especially complete genocides, carries an inherent subjectivity due to the lack of victims to provide their point of view and the position of power over history the perpetrators assume. This power allows for benefits that can be used to erase the genocide from history or, if complete erasure is impossible, mitigate the degree of crimes and shift blame to t...

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...Colin Wayne Leach. “Why Neighbors Don’t Stop the Killing: The Role of Group-Based Schadenfreude.” Explaining the Breakdown of Ethnic Relations: Why Neighbors Kill. Ed. Victoria E. Esses and Richard A. Vernon. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Print.

5. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Print.

6. Staub, E. “The Psychology of Bystanders, Perpetrators, and Heroic Helpers.” The Psychology of Good and Evil: Why children, adults, and groups help and harm others. New York: Cambridge, 2003. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.

7. Sunstein, Cass R. “The Law of Group Polarization.” University of Chicago Law School, John M. Olin Law & Economics Working Paper No. 91 (1999): Web. 28 Feb. 2014.

8. United Nations General Assembly. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Paris, 9 Dec. 1948. The History Place. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.