Radicalization as cause and consequence of violence in genocides and mass killings

Abstract

Major theories of participation in genocides and mass killings offer seemingly opposing explanatory logics for how and why individuals come to commit violence. The long-standing consensus on “perpetrator ordinariness” contrasts with explanations that continue to highlight the prior, intensely held negative attitudes and beliefs about the victim group. I propose a theoretical reconciliation. Radicalization would be better theorized not only as an antecedent to the act of violence but also as a consequence of it. Killing transforms individuals. A well-established point in social psychology, not only do attitudes drive behaviors, but behaviors also shape attitudes. Some perpetrators dehumanize their victims, internalize exclusionary ideologies, and otherwise develop negative sentiments toward their victims following their participation in the violence. Attitudinal shift becomes a form of dissonance-reduction. Perpetrators come to espouse radical beliefs in order to justify their actions. This revised theorization has implications for our understanding of (1) perpetrator heterogeneity: individuals must vary in their vulnerability to radicalization, and (2) non-instrumental violence: why we often observe the infliction of gratuitous pain and suffering on victims. I re-interpret testimony of perpetrators from Rwanda, the Holocaust, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Cambodia to support the article’s central theoretical proposition.