Accounting for Evil: Excusing and Justifying Genocide & Political Violence

While the Holocaust remains the most devastating illustration of evil-doing in this century, the past decade has provided new and horrific examples of the seemingly inexhaustible supply of evil upon which humans can draw in their rages against one another. In Rwanda, in the course of 100 days in the spring and early summer of 1994, over 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were exterminated in the most unambiguous case of state-sponsored genocide since the Nazi Holocaust (Gourevitch, 1998). In the former Yugoslavia, the Serbs systematically slaughtered entire villages of people while the international community looked on. And in South Africa, the blanket of apartheid has finally been lifted to reveal in detail the devastating effects of state-sponsored racism and oppression.
Efforts to comprehend the evil of the Holocaust and its aftermath have occupied psychologists, social psychologists, sociologists for the past sixty years. The horrified world reaction to the knowledge that millions of Jews and other “undesirables” had been slaughtered by the Nazis in Germany, Poland and other countries spawned immediate efforts to explain what within our natures had permitted this to occur. Despite the duplicitous engagement of many nations in this mass destruction, the scope and range of the killings left most people, and most governments, bewildered and astonished, committed to preventing such a massive outrage against humanity anywhere in the world again.
Some of the most influential work on intergroup process and individual perceptions and behavior has emerged from the work of scholars studying genocides and politically-justified exterminations, seeking to answer the basic, yet overwhelming, questions, of “Who?” “Why?” and “How?” These recurring, horrific acts of mass and face-to-face destruction are committed by individuals operating not in isolation but in ideologically fueled groups, as members of organizations, or within socially and bureaucratically organized structures. Such “killing machines” are closely akin to the Nazi death machines described by Robert J. Lifton (1986) and others and the behaviors can only be understood within a social and cultural context. As Thomas Pettigrew (1998:670) concludes: “Once we include culture and social structure in an analysis, holding individuals solely responsible becomes untenable.”
At the same time that we cannot attribute responsibility for mass killings simply to individual derangement or psychological disturbance, neither can we rely on a “mass mind” explanation for the annihilation of entire villages, or for targeted efforts to erase whole populations. Discussions of genocide and mass political violence require a careful teasing apart of the fabric within which they occur.
What we learned from the Holocaust, and what we are learning from the atrocities in Rwanda and South Africa, can help us understand and differentiate the critical factors operating in situations of mass destruction. The genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and the human rights violations in South Africa illustrate the banality of evil of which Hannah Arendt writes. It is this ordinary evil, this commonplace destruction that demands our attention.

It has become clear through the work of Lifton (1986), Staub (1989), Kelman and Hamilton (1989) and other researchers that genocidal acts are social products in which “a complex series of social forces interact to cause individuals to commit multiple acts of stunning evil” (Darley, 1992: 204). In that process, both the individuals and the groups change as they progress along a continuum of destruction that ends in genocide (Staub, 1989:13). Lifton views atrocity-producing situations as structured in such a way that the average participant is able to commit evil by developing a parallel internal environment (doubling). The self “divides” into two functioning parts, allowing, for example, Nazi doctors at Auschwitz to adapt to killing without feeling themselves to be murderers. Staub suggests that through such processes as
“de-individuation of the other,” and ideological indoctrination, ordinary individuals can bring themselves to commit evil. The horrors perpetrated by one human being on another can be understood using culturally available explanations and values, which perpetrators draw upon to create stories about their behavior.
These narratives provide an accounting for evil, making it “sensible” within the parameters of the situation or the context. An individual can draw upon definitions of a situation that are generally available, and that can be specifically applied to provide a sensible (that is “understandable”) explanation of atrocities from the perspective of the perpetrator. Thus, the perpetrator need not be “divided” or “doubled” as Lifton suggests, or “other,” or “dissociated.” The perpetrator need not be “erased” as an individual by group pressure, swept away by what LeBon called a “madding crowd.”
It may well be that such explanations vary by circumstance. In the case of the genocide in Rwanda, many acts of violence and murder were conducted by groups (the interahamwe) who stormed into villages and killed hundreds of people in one day. We believe that this group identity factor, as well as the issue of diffusion of responsibility, will be evident in the accounts given by those accused of committing such acts. We assume that the case of the perpetrators in Rwanda will be in contrast to many of those accused of violent acts in South Africa, who acted less often in groups and more often as individuals, often working “alone.”
Drawing on transcripts from tribunals and reconciliation hearings, we can look at the way people accused of committing atrocities justify and excuse their behavior, relying on cultural values that allow them to frame their behavior as understandable both to themselves and to their judges. Their accounts are formed as narratives, or stories that reveal culturally acceptable ways of explaining potentially condemned behavior, thereby allowing the person who commits the atrocities to maintain a sense of moral and ethical normalcy while being engaged in heinous acts of dehumanizing destruction. Narratives are a resource, a linguistic explanatory device providing an interpretation of the questionable events that make it understandable both to the self and to others. Narratives are resources that permit an individual to distinguish “legitimate” from “illegitimate” violence. Narratives can help neutralize the deviance of a person’s behavior by drawing upon characteristics of the social context, thus making the behavior sensible both to the person and to others who may call for an explanation.

In looking at the vocabulary of motives drawn upon by killers in South Africa, Rwanda, and Bosnia we can perhaps understand how they made sense of their evil behavior, how they justified or excused it so as not to view themselves as despicable. The transcripts of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) as well as those of the reconciliation hearings in South Africa, reveal interesting patterns of excuses and justifications offered by perpetrators of horrendous acts of violence. People who participated in genocide relied on several accounts situated within a narrative of non-culpability, drawing from a culturally available “vocabulary of motives” that allows for the maintenance of a positive self image even as they engage in such horrendous acts (Scully and Marolla, 1984). The explanations they offer help us understand how people can not condemn themselves as evil and wretched even as they commit unspeakable atrocities.
A review of transcripts 1 reveals a number of categories of accounts used by those accused of genocidal or politically motivated crimes. In our development of the categories used by perpetrators of mass violence we draw upon Scott and Lyman’s (1968) distinction between excuses and justifications relied on by individuals to remove and explain culpability for an untoward act after it has been committed, and also upon Sykes and Matza’s (1957) and Scully and Marolla’s (1984) work on the techniques that neutralize the deviance and potential condemnation associated with negative judgements. While the notion of “accounts” was developed to explain individual acts of wrongdoing rather than mass exterminations, whether one acts alone or in a group or institution, one is acting as a social self. We all draw upon cultural and social imagery and narratives to make sense of our behavior, either prospectively or retroactively. So, while it is true that group pressure, or the characteristics of an institution act as powerful constraints and permissions, it is equally true that we draw upon values, norms, and narratives available within our “universe of discourse” to make sense of our behavior even when we act as an individual or within a loose affiliation of others. In an effort to avoid shame, to avoid being despised by ourselves or others, we draw upon on the definitions of the situation available in the organizations, groups, or culture in which we are participating. Individuals engaging in despicable acts, in the company of others or simply drawing upon the strength of others, can be expected to justify or excuse their behavior according to culturally available narrative accounts or vocabularies of motive.
Of the accounts revealed in the transcripts we studied, four were categorized as excuses (admitting the act was wrong but denying full responsibility) and three fit the description of justifications (accepting responsibility for the act but denying it was wrong). The following examples of justifications and excuses provided during trials and hearings of those accused of atrocities reveal language that is designed to situate the behavior within a context of forgiveness or removal of responsibility. The language used to explain the behavior to a judge or hearing tribunal provides us with information that might serve as a warning in future war crime situations. It might also encourage earlier and more effective intervention.

Excuses

Excuses of powerlessness (“I was merely obeying orders”), of hysteria (“I did it in the heat of the moment”), or of an unfortunate confluence of circumstances were often mentioned in testimonies before the TRC by perpetrators as an explanation for the violent acts they had committed. Some even found redeeming qualities in their actions. The excuse of powerlessness was of two types: individuals whose violence was a result of being under duress claimed a sense of personal powerlessness; others felt that had been left with no choice other than to obey orders, their powerlessness being institutionally derived—for example, from their membership in the Interahamwe. While such claims are quite similar, we suspect that the distinction between them will be clarified by further study of transcripts and will center on the locus of control expressed. Some perpetrators may express a sense of personal powerlessness whereas others may insist that the organizational or situational characteristics operating at the time forced them to act as they did. The account offered by Mr. Erdemovic, who pleaded guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the ICTY and was sentenced to five years in prison, illustrates both aspects of this powerlessness:

Your Honor, I had to do this. If I had refused I would have been killed together with the victims. I could not refuse because they would have killed me.

Or, as Mr. Erdemovic’s attorney stated:

[He] Is not the creator here, or the ideologue, or somebody who issued orders Y nor is he a sadistic soldier, but rather a victim which begets further victims: a simple instrument for killing, which had to kill lest it be killed (…) all this was part of a quite huge operation and it would be out of the question for him to rage against it.

In the case of the genocide in Rwanda and transcripts from the ICTR, the attorney for a powerful Hutu civic leader, Mr. Akaysesu, defends his client with the following words:

The accused was helpless to prevent [the massacre], being outnumbered and overpowered by one Silas Kubwimana and the Interahamwe (…) Once the massacre had become widespread, the Accused was denuded of all authority and lacked the means to stop the killing.

This language of powerlessness places emphasis both on the lack of control of the accused over the situation, his helplessness, and alludes to his obedience to the authority structure, thereby merging two excuses to reinforce the lack of individual culpability.
Another excuse was that of “hysteria” or “heat of the moment,” an excuse that indicated the transformative impact of the crowd on the individual, minimizing his or her responsibility. The individual situates the abhorrent behavior within the context of immersion in an entity with a life of its own, an uncontrollable, emotionally charged force reminiscent of the “madding crowd.” During the South African Truth and Reconciliation hearings for examples two young men who admitted to killing Amy Biehl, an American student working in the anti-apartheid movement, offered the following excuses for targeting her because she was white:

Mr. Peni: The reason why I said that it would not have made a difference if I had known she was a comrade is because of the high spirits of the students at the time.

Mr. Nofemela concurs: During the apartheid era it’s because what we were doing or what we were involved in, it’s because we were in high spirits and violent.

The excuse reflects reliance on the crowd, being “swept away,” and being overcome by the moment.
What Scully and Marolla (1984) termed “redeeming qualities” which were offered by the rapists they studied were also offered by the rapists in an effort to mitigate their brutal killings. The rapists offered the excuse that, while they may have done something horrible, they were in actuality not horrible people. One rapist they interviewed who offered the “nice guy” image claimed that:

Physically they enjoyed the sex (rape). Once they got involved, it would be difficult to resist. I was always gentle and kind until I started to kill them, and the killing was always sudden, so they wouldn’t know it was coming. (1984:176)

This excuse of redeeming qualities was used by some of those accused of genocide, including Mr. Erdemovic’s attorney, who gave the following account of his client’s crimes:

He did everything he could to avoid the winds of war and to leave the country and go abroad with his family (…) he tried to save the life of one person, but he failed to do so.

In explaining why Erdemovic refused to participate in further killings, his lawyer praised Erdemovic for refusing finally to kill any more:

He spent five hours on this killing field, killing all the people who were arriving on the spot; and having fulfilled this part of the assignment, they (sic) felt secure enough to oppose the authority of the lieutenant colonel.

What we may call “a confluence of circumstances” was also offered as an excuse for the commission of certain acts of violence, suggesting that there were many factors operating at once that led to the evil-doing and made it almost unavoidable. In their interviews with rapists, Scully and Marolla (1984) note that the rapists were likely to give the excuse that alcohol/drugs and/or emotional problems had either caused or significantly influenced their behavior and that under such circumstances they were not truly responsible. This excuse paints individuals as passive participants trapped in a river of events propelling them toward an inevitable and unfortunate conclusion.
One of the accused in the Amy Biehl case relied on the “confluences of circumstances” excuse by explaining why he killed her on that particular day, saying, “It’s because she came to Guguletu during a very wrong moment.” In another case, this time from the ICTY Mr. Erdemovic specifically cites “the confluence of many circumstances and the unavailability of other choice” in his apology. His attorney claims “The accused Erdemovic found himself caught up in the vortex of war, which was caused by the conflict of three ethnic communities, without his own will.”

Justifications

Along with the four categories of excuses used, those accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity also relied on justifications for their actions. These included condemnation of the condemners, an appeal to higher loyalties, two concepts introduced by Sykes and Matza (1957) and what we identify as a sense of rightful retaliation. Those persons who claimed justification, admitted the behavior of which they were accused but denied wrongdoing, claiming that what they did was justifiable given the circumstances or characteristics of the situation.
One justification, condemnation of the condemners, was offered by some. This technique of neutralization allows the accused to challenge the legitimacy of others to judge, sometimes by condemning them for similar or worse behavior. At the ICTR Mr. Akayesu challenges those who accuse him, claiming that, “the accounts are simply not credible but rather the product of fantasy, of interest to psychiatrists, but not for justice.” He further claims that those who accuse him have ulterior motives: “(…) there were cases of calumny which existed and which enabled people to denounce others regarding their participation in genocide in order to be able to take over their property.” His attorney adds: “So, what do we do Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, when witnesses come to tell lies before the Chamber, what do we do?”
The notion of an appeal to higher loyalties was used by others to justify their acts. A despicable act can be neutralized by justifying the sacrifice of the smaller group or individual for the benefit of the larger society or “for the greater good.” In the Amy Biehl case the accused, Mr. Peni, said: “Our killing Amy Biehl had everything to do with politics.” He then continues, “(…) if we were not sent out to act we would not have done it.” In another TRC case Mr. Erasmus, a white police officer, explained, “I took this decision in order to protect the National Party government of the day and to keep the government in power.” These justifications are almost parallel with those of Nazi doctors who often claimed that their killings, first of mental patients and later of Jews in Auschwitz, were medical procedures necessary to maintain the health of the body whole, while requiring sacrifice of individuals who were damaging to that body (Lifton, 1986).
Finally, a sense of “rightful retaliation” was offered by some as a justification for what they did. Mr. Manquina, one of the men accused of murdering Amy Biehl claimed: “I stabbed Amy Biehl because I saw her as a target, a Settler,” indicating that she represented the enemy that deserved death. Another defendant in the Amy Biehl case, Mr. Nofemela, said: “(…) as we were throwing stones at the truck on Vanguard Road, we were shot there by the policemen, white policemen.”
In summary, it is important to look at the narrative accounts upon which people draw to neutralize the deviance of their acts, whether they commit atrocities individually, as in the case of rapists, or are participating as individuals within a group. The accounts provide us with a fluid “definition of the situation” that the perpetrator brings to the act, a definition that powerfully shapes the person’s behavior and provides an explanation for that behavior. Group influence comes not only in the form of pressure to conform or obey, nor is the structure in which heinous acts occur powerful only as a result of its legitimation of authority. Rather, these structures, situated within a larger cultural context, produce and accommodate accounts that are linked to a person’s socialization and the culture on which he or she draws to make sense of everyday life, even in its most disrupted form. The accounts provided by individuals who have engaged in acts of violence against others, acts that are almost unbelievable in scope or the depth of their depravity, do not excuse or in any way justify the evil perpetrated on others. Instead, they provide us with a sense of the readily available, widespread and ordinary cultural definitions and values which can be perverted to provide a justification or excuse for extraordinary acts of evil.

Mary Stewart is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Social Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno; Cath Byrne is a Third- year graduate student in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Social Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno

Bibliographic References

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Gourevitch, P. (1998). We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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Scott, M., & Lyman, S. (1968). “Accounts.” American Sociological Review, 33(1), 46-62.
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Staub, E. (1989). The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sykes, G.M., & Matza, D. (1957). “Techniques of Neutralization.” American Sociological Review, Vol. 22, Nr. 6, 664-670.

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