Perpetrators of Mass Atrocities: Terribly and Terrifyingly Normal?
... The negative aspects of political leadership still remain underrepresented in scientific literature (Aasland et al., 2008;Kellerman, 2004), despite their potentially serious consequences (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018;Benson & Hogan, 2008). Encouragingly, research interest in aversive personality traits Prusik Journal of Research in Personality xxx (xxxx) 104568 among political leaders has recently intensified (Nai & Maier, 2024;Smeulers, 2023). ...
Locating itself within narrative criminological scholarship and the criminology of war literature, this article critically examines how the themes of death and survival are understood and represented in the memoirs of former Irish Republican Army (IRA) members. Building on the recent ‘autobiographical turn’ in the criminology of war, it identifies how death is storied from perspectives that reflect the nature of armed conflict, capture human loss, and criticize the leadership. Similarly, it shows how survival is storied as having outlived the conflict, living a meaningful post-conflict life, and addressing the legacy of conflict. It is concluded that these memoirs are a valuable dataset that amplify counter-discourses based on the lived experience of former combatants from non-state armed groups.
The paper excavates ‘implicit criminologies’ concerning victims, perpetrators and bystanders from four films by Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić: Grbavica (2006); On the path (2010); For those who can tell no tales (2013) and Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020). I argue that in criminological terms, Žbanić’s work is strongest, and has greatest transformative potential, as an example of cinematic victimology. This is produced through characters who simultaneously encapsulate particular (ethnicized) and universal elements in micro-level stories of the individual in a larger social, political and historical context. Focussing on this form of universalism, I question an ethical standard of inclusivity in atrocity cinema which calls for a single film or director to directly represent victims of all ethnic groups.
The Nazis coerced and enlisted detainees into the administration of the labour and death camps. These detainees were called Kapos. The Kapos constitute a particularly contested, and at times tabooified, element of Holocaust remembrance. Some Kapos deployed their situational authority to ease the conditions of other prisoners, while others acted cruelly and committed abuse. This project explores treatment of the Kapo on film. This paper considers two films: Kapò (1959, directed by Pontecorvo, Italy) and Kapo (2000, directed by Setton, Israel). These two films vary in genre: Kapò (1959) is a feature fiction movie, whereas Kapo (2000) is a documentary. Both films nonetheless vivify themes of agency, blame, survival, shame, sacrifice, and recrimination. This paper interrogates how these creative works speak of victims who victimise others and the pain that results; how these works contribute to history, memory, and recollection; and didactically how they explain ‘what happened,’ ‘why,’ and ‘what to do now’. This paper additionally contrasts cinematographic accounts and criminal law’s accounts, in particular, those in Israel’s Kapo trials. In the 1950’s, the Knesset passed legislation — the Nazi and Nazi Collaboration Punishment Act — to criminally charge suspected Jewish Kapos who had immigrated to the state of Israel following the Holocaust. Authorities conducted approximately forty prosecutions. The trials were awkward, the language of judgment gnarly, the absolutes of conviction or acquittal crudely reductionist, and the judges ‘trembled’ at having to sentence. This paper contends that cinematographic depictions of victim-victimisers can sooth the criminal law’s anxieties by filling spaces it poorly serves.
This article reports on trends in organized violence, building on new data by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). The falling trend in fatalities stemming from organized violence in the world, observed for five consecutive years, broke upwards in 2020 and deaths in organized violence seem to have settled on a high plateau. UCDP registered more than 80,100 deaths in organized violence in 2020, compared to 76,300 in 2019. The decrease in violence in Afghanistan and Syria was countered by escalating conflicts in, for example, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), Azerbaijan and Tigray, Ethiopia. Moreover, the call for a global ceasefire following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic failed to produce any results. In fact, the number of active state-based and non-state conflicts, as well as the number of actors carrying out one-sided violence against civilians, increased when compared to 2019. UCDP noted a record-high number of 56 state-based conflicts in 2020, including eight wars. Most of the conflicts occurred in Africa, as the region registered 30 state-based conflicts, including nine new or restarted ones.
Article 33 of the International Criminal Court Statute allows low-ranking perpetrators to — in exceptional cases — rely on the defence of superior orders. By doing so, Article 33 might be seen as an acknowledgement that within a specific context orders to commit international crimes might not always be manifest unlawful. Article 33(2), however, restricts the possibility to rely on this defence to perpetrators of war crimes and denies perpetrators of crimes against humanity and genocide a similar defence, since according to Article 33(2), such orders are considered always to be manifestly unlawful. This contribution questions whether such a distinction should be made. Many low-ranking perpetrators involved in such crimes by following superior orders seem to genuinely believe that they were doing the ‘right thing’. This article seeks to explain how these perpetrators might have come to such a belief, and the challenge this might represent to the core principles which underpin the concept of individual criminal responsibility.
This paper analyses the role of remorse and apology in international criminal trials by juxtaposing two prominent cases of convicted war criminals Biljana Plavšić and Esad Landžo. Plavšić was the first and only Bosnian Serb political leader to plead guilty before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Her acknowledgement of guilt and purported remorse expressed during her ICTY proceedings was celebrated as a milestone for both the ICTY and the Balkans. However, she later retracted her remorse while serving her prison sentence. Landžo was a guard at the notorious Čelebići detention camp and did not acknowledge his guilt publicly during his ICTY trial. Seven years after his release from prison, Landžo personally confronted survivors and apologised to them. Through comparison of these two widely different cases, we illustrate varying roles criminal trials can play in offender’s reflection on his/her crimes (instrumental remorse versus catalytic role) and how relevance and resonance of war criminal’s remorse in and outside of the courtroom depend on how remorse is expressed and to whom (in abstracto during criminal proceedings versus personally face to face).
Milgram’s obedience to authority experiments were conducted more than 50 years ago and can undoubtfully be considered one of the most important but also most controversial studies ever conducted. In the last few years (2011-2015), a book on Milgram was published, a film made and 4 international peer-reviewed journals dedicated a special issue to Milgram’s experiments. All this triggered by the opening of the Yale archives which gave access to Milgram’s personal notes. This review essay has three aims: to analyse to what extent this new information sheds new light on the Milgram experiments; to assess what we can actually learn from Milgram’s experiments and to discuss whether his findings can help us understand mass atrocities such as the Holocaust.
This volume comprises a selection of papers prepared for the Second Colloquium
on Cross-Border Crime, held in Budapest, Hungary, at the National Institute
of Criminology (OKRI) in September 2000.
We test whether leaders' power shapes their reasoning about moral issues and whether such moral reasoning subsequently influences leaders' display of self-interested behavior. We use an incentivized experiment to manipulate two components of leader power: power over more versus fewer followers and power to enforce one's will by having discretion over more versus fewer payout options to allocate between oneself and one's followers. We find that having power over more followers decreased leaders' principled moral reasoning, whereas having higher power to enforce one's will enabled leaders to engage in self-interested behavior. We also find suggestive evidence that power over increases self-interested behavior by decreasing principled moral reasoning; the effect of power to was not mediated by moral reasoning. These results illustrate that power activates self-interest within and outside the context in which power is held. They also show that moral reasoning is not a stable cognitive process, but that it might represent an additional path via which power affects self-interested behavior.
Background: Elevated prevalences of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depression (MD) have been reported in populations exposed to war. However, no global estimates of war survivors suffering from PTSD and/or MD in absolute numbers have been reported.
Objective: We made the first attempt to estimate in absolute numbers how many adult war survivors globally may suffer PTSD and/or MD, which should inform local and global mental health programmes.
Method: Drawing on the Uppsala Conflict Database, we reviewed all countries that suffered at least one war within their own territory between 1989 and 2015 (time span chosen on availability of geo-referenced data and population estimates). We then conducted a meta-analysis of current randomized epidemiological surveys on prevalence of PTSD and/or MD among war survivors. Finally, we extrapolated our results from the meta-analysis on the global population of adult war survivors by means of using general population data from the United Nations.
Results: We estimate that about 1.45 billion individuals worldwide have experienced war between 1989 and 2015 and were still alive in 2015, including one billion adults. On the basis of our meta-analysis, we estimate that about 354 million adult war survivors suffer from PTSD and/or MD. Of these, about 117 million suffer from comorbid PTSD and MD.
Conclusions: Based on the slim available evidence base, the global number of adult war survivors suffering PTSD and/or MD is vast. Most war survivors live in low-to-middle income countries with limited means to handle the enormous mental health burden. Since representative high quality data is lacking from most of these countries, our results contain a large margin of uncertainty and should be interpreted with caution.
After the fall of Srebrenica in summer of 1995, the Scorpions unit, dispatched to support the Bosnian Serb Army as it took over the enclave, shot six men in Trnovo. The men, three of whom were underage, were some of thousands of Bosnian Muslims that fell into the hands of Bosnian Serb troops, and that were executed in the days and weeks following July 11th. A member of the unit filmed the execution. Fragments of the video were first shown during the Slobodan Milosevic trial, and multiple times in the years after, in the courtrooms in The Hague and Belgrade. The video provides unique insights into the nature of the crime, as well as the behavior of the perpetrators, and this article will discuss them in detail, contributing to what we know about Srebrenica, and how individuals are held accountable for mass atrocity crimes.
Why did the Rwandan genocide take place? How could parents feed their own children drinks laced with poison in Jonestown? As we see many parts of the world being engulfed in fratricidal frenzy, we wonder if it can happen in this country. Gupta examines contemporary cases of genocide and mass murder and seeks to explain why certain societies are more prone to these actions and others are relatively immune.
Gupta sees a dialectical tension between our two identities: the self and the collective. The end of the medieval period was marked by the emergence of individualism in Europe. With time, the march of individualism engulfed the entire Western world and permeated every aspect of its culture, tradition, and academic paradigm. Neoclassical economics is the embodiment of this single-minded pursuit of the rationality of individualism. However, our psychobiological evolution has also imbued us with the irrepressible desire to form groups and to act upon its welfare. The reason for this eternal conflict lies in our own struggle with our two identities. When the pendulum swings to the extreme end of collectivism, genocide and other forms of social abnormalities--collective madness--occur. When we move too far into individualism, people tend to seek something greater beyond selfish pursuits. Through his panoramic view, Gupta provides an explanation for both social order and political pathology that will be of interest to students, scholars, and other researchers involved with ethnic conflict, collective behavior, and conflict resolution.
In the past twenty years, international criminal law has become one of the main areas of international legal scholarship and practice. Most textbooks in the field describe the evolution of international criminal tribunals, the elements of the core international crimes, the applicable modes of liability and defences, and the role of states in prosecuting international crimes. This book, however, takes a theoretically informed and refreshingly critical look at the most controversial issues in international criminal law, challenging prevailing practices, orthodoxies, and received wisdoms. The book should fundamentally alter how international criminal law is understood.
The first comprehensive, comparative study of the 'Jewish Councils' in the Netherlands, Belgium and France during Nazi rule. In the postwar period, there was extensive focus on these organisations' controversial role as facilitators of the Holocaust. They were seen as instruments of Nazi oppression, aiding the process of isolating and deporting the Jews they were ostensibly representing. As a result, they have chiefly been remembered as forms of collaboration. Using a wide range of sources including personal testimonies, diaries, administrative documents and trial records, Laurien Vastenhout demonstrates that the nature of the Nazi regime, and its outlook on these bodies, was far more complex. She sets the conduct of the Councils' leaders in their prewar and wartime social and situational contexts and provides a thorough understanding of their personal contacts with the Germans and clandestine organisations. Between Community and Collaboration reveals what German intentions with these organisations were during the course of the occupation, and allows for a deeper understanding of the different ways in which the Holocaust unfolded in each of these countries.
Terrorism is an extreme form of radicalization. In this ground-breaking and important book, Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko identify and outline twelve mechanisms of political radicalization that can move individuals, groups, and the masses to increased sympathy and support for political violence.
Co-authored by two psychologists both acknowledged in their field as experts in radicalization and consultants to the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies, Friction draws on wide-ranging case histories to show striking parallels between 1800s anti-czarist terrorism, 1970s anti-war terrorism, and 21st century jihadist terrorism. Altogether, the twelve mechanisms of political radicalization demonstrate how unexceptional people are moved to exceptional violence in the conflict between states and non-state challengers.
In this revised and expanded edition, McCauley and Moskalenko use the twelve mechanisms to analyze recent cases of lone-wolf terrorists and illustrate how individuals can become radicalized to jihadist violence with group influence or organizational support. Additionally, in the context of the Islamic State's worldwide efforts to radicalize moderate Muslims for jihad, they advance a model that differentiates radicalization in opinion from radicalization in action, and suggest different strategies for countering these diverse forms of radicalization. As a result, the authors conclude that the same mechanisms are at work in radicalizing both terrorists and states targeted by terrorists, implying that these conclusions are as relevant for policy-makers and security officers as they are for citizens facing the threat of terror today.
Ilse Koch’s trials for her role in atrocities at the Nazi Buchenwald concentration camp served as visual spectacles and primed her portrayal in media and public spaces. Koch’s conduct was credibly rumored to be one of frequent affairs, simultaneous lovers, and the sexual humiliation of prisoners. The gendered construction of her sexual identity played a distortive role in her intersections with law and with post-conflict Germany. Koch’s trials revealed two different dynamics. Koch’s actions were refracted through a patriarchal lens which spectacularized female violence and served as an optical space to (re)establish appropriate feminine mores. Feminist critiques of Koch’s trials furthermore also spun problematic narratives of womanly innocence and victimized powerlessness, or at times ignored her as a perpetrator. In the end Koch’s actual story—‘her’ story—becomes lost amid prurience, politics, and burlesque.
The Schutzstaffel coerced and enlisted detainees into the administration of the labor and death camps. These detainees were called Kapos. The Kapos constitute a particularly contested element of Holocaust remembrance. Some Kapos deployed their situational authority to ease the conditions of other prisoners, while others acted cruelly and committed abuses. This chapter explores one treatment of the Kapo, this being on stage: Kapo Be’Yerushalaim (Kapo in Jerusalem) (play, 2014 Motti Lerner; Hebrew, translated into English by Roy Isacowitz, derivative of a film of the same title). This chapter considers how this play speaks of victims who victimize others and narrates the pain that results. Recounting the story that this play tells—a very powerful one, forcefully voiced, of law, judgment, suicide, shame, and the deployment of violence to supposedly protect others—serves as a collected ‘picture book’ of the potential and limits of international law.
Since the Syrian conflict broke out, a significant number of Western citizens travelled to the warzone to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). By common definitions, some of the persons travelled as ‘children’. However, since the defeat of ISIS, Western countries are facing a conundrum on how to treat these young former fighters. The status of these children has been contentious. Among the Western countries, there does not seem to be a clear position or consistent approach on how such children should be treated. It would appear that the approaches towards the dilemma on these young persons have, predominantly, been dictated by the political whims of individual states. Generally, the children have been regarded as young ‘terrorists’ likely to pose danger to Western societies if repatriated back. However, the perceptions and actions towards these minors seem to depart from the normative approaches to children associated with armed conflict. The widely reported case of British teenager Shamima Begum shone the spotlight on the predicaments of children formerly associated with ISIS. This article makes a case for the treatment of ISIS-associated children to be considered as child soldiers. When analysed closely, these children deserve protections accorded to all children recruited for purposes of warfare. Recent case law seems to imply that such protection does not cease even after the age of 18 years. All considered, the denial of repatriation appears inimical to normative standards on children associated with armed conflict. Furthermore, the approaches of some of the Western countries could be vulnerable to criticism for violation of the rule of law. The arbitrary revocation of citizenship and barring of returns appear starkly in conflict with norms of natural justice. With this in mind, this article asserts that a consistent approach would require the Western approaches to treat ISIS-associated children as victims first and accord them protections recognised in international law.
Perpetrators’ voices have been traditionally ignored in the transitional justice field and beyond. Esad Landžo was only 19 when he committed the crimes of willful killing, torturing, and causing serious injury to the detainees of notorious Čelebići camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2001, Landžo was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for the crimes he committed in 1992. After serving two thirds of his sentence in 2006 and settling in Finland, Landžo and the Danish filmmaker, Lars Feldballe Petersen, embarked on the project of making a documentary movie about Landžo’s traumatic memories, remorse, and regret. Landžo had a strong urge to extend his apology to each victim individually and in 2015 went to Čelebići to meet his former detainees. This article will build on a scarce conversation in scholarly, and legal discourse, as to why psychological trauma is considered to be an experience that belongs to victims. It will analyze difficult and untold perpetrators’ experiences of criminal acts and explore whether in these experiences there is potential for inner and group understanding. This article draws on the author’s interviews with Landžo, the main protagonist in the movie The Unforgiven: A War’s Criminal Remorse, a film that documents the extraordinary story of Landžo: from his denial to redemption.
Jewish Sonderkommando's handwritten notes – found among the earth and ashes – are key documents of Holocaust history. But their degree of preservation is poor. Digital technology comes to the rescue to restore the legibility of these documents potentially lost to history. This article provides some examples of the successful application of image processing, which considerably increases the sharpness of the text. Special filters and approaches managed to increase by fourfold the number of pages from Marcel Nadjari's notes that could be read before. The deciphered fragments of Nadjari's notes not only allow us to better understand the meaning of the entire document, but also make a connection to another Nadjari text, thus yielding a new, much deeper, understanding of both the author himself, the particular fate of Greek Jews in the Holocaust, and also their role in the life and death of the Jewish Sonderkommando in Auschwitz–Birkenau.
A woman did that? The general reaction to women's political violence is still one of shock and incomprehension. Mothers, Monsters, Whores provides an empirical study of women's violence in global politics. The book looks at military women who engage in torture; the Chechen 'Black Widows'; Middle Eastern suicide bombers; and the women who directed and participated in genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda. Sjoberg & Gentry analyse the biological, psychological and sexualized stereotypes through which these women are conventionally depicted, arguing that these are rooted in assumptions about what is 'appropriate' female behaviour. What these stereotypes have in common is that they all perceive women as having no agency in any sphere of life, from everyday choices to global political events. This book is a major feminist re-evaluation of women's motivations and actions as perpetrators of political violence.
Women’s religious radicalization and the specific factors at play in this process remain largely understudied. Psychopathic, narcissistic, Machiavellian, and sadistic traits constitute the Dark Tetrad of personality, which has been shown to be associated with several antisocial tendencies. Concretely, it has been found that the Dark Tetrad traits predict radicalized cognitions and behaviors in women. The aim of this study was (a) to extract homogeneous groups of participants using cluster analysis based on Dark tetrad traits and (b) to examine whether clusters based on Dark tetrad traits differed in both predictors (perceived discrimination and religious involvement) and consequences (radicalized cognitions and behaviors) of radicalization. Sample included 643 French college women who completed self-report questionnaires. Psychopathic, narcissistic, Machiavellian, and sadistic traits were moderately correlated. The cluster analysis resulted in four groups: a Low Traits group, a Moderate Machiavellian group, a Narcissistic group, and a group high on sadistic, psychopathic and Machiavellian traits (17% of the sample), which was characterized by the highest levels of radicalized cognitions and behaviors. This study suggests that a significant minority of non-clinical college women is characterized by the presence of high levels of Dark Tetrad traits and is at risk of religious radicalization.
In the summer of 1961, a group of ordinary men and women volunteered for a memory experiment to be conducted by young, dynamic psychologist Stanley Milgram. None could have imagined that, once seated in the lab, they would be placed in front of a box known as a shock machine and asked to give electric shocks to a man they'd just met. And no one could have foreseen how the repercussions of their actions, made under pressure and duress, would reverberate through their lives. For what the volunteers did not know was that the man was an actor, the shocks were fake, and what was really being tested was just how far they would go.
When Milgram's results were released, they created a worldwide sensation. He reported that people had repeatedly shocked a man they believed to be in pain, even dying, because they had been told to - linking the finding to Nazi behaviour during the Holocaust. But some questioned Milgram's unethical methods in fooling people. Milgram became both hero and villain, and his work seized the public imagination for more than half a century, inspiring books, plays, films, and art.
For Gina Perry, the story of the experiments never felt finished. Listening to participants' accounts and reading Milgram's files and notebooks, she pieced together an intriguing, sensational story- Milgram's plans had gone further than anyone imagined. This is the compelling tale of one man's ambition and of the experiment that defined a generation.
This article provides a definitive, in-depth case-study, using primarily Russian sources, of Russia’s use of the informal “Wagner Group” private military company (PMC) and its antecedents (from 2012 to 2018) in Nigeria, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, and the Central African Republic. It explores why Russia has used this group without legalizing its existence or role. While Wagner is sometimes used in the same ways that other rational states use PMCs, corrupt informal networks tied to the Russian regime have also used it in ways that are not typical of other strong states and that potentially undermine Russian security interests. Understanding the Wagner Group is interesting for comparative academic studies of PMCs, because Wagner doesn’t fit well any existing PMC category or template in the literature. It is also crucial for US and allied policy analysts attempting to attribute “Russian” actions in foreign theaters.
This article discusses the place of the psychiatric field in the ongoing phenomenon of religious radicalization. First, the article provides an overview of the existing literature on lone‐actor terrorists and the link with mental illness. Current research is focusing increasingly on lone‐actor terrorists. This is the most recent and rising development on the global terrorism scene. The literature is currently developing a more precise and informed definition of lone‐actor terrorism. The article then describes and discusses the case study of a mentally ill patient arrested following his assault on a military serviceman on the grounds of religious radicalization. The patient, diagnosed with schizophrenia, is taken as an example of the specific case of religious radicalization in patients with schizophrenia. Finally, the article discusses the curative and preventive roles that can be played by psychiatrists and other professionals who are in contact with these types of patients.
Cambridge Core - Humanitarian Law - Investigating War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia War 1992–1994 - by M. Cherif Bassiouni
Cambridge Core - Criminal Law - The Rationality of Dictators - by Maartje Weerdesteijn
In this paper, I present and criticize Ted Kaczynski’s (“The Unabomber”) theory that industrialization has been terrible for humanity, and that we should use any means necessary, including violent means, to induce a return to pre‐industrial ways of living. Although Kaczynski’s manifesto, Industrial society and its future, has become widely known, his ideas have never before been subject to careful philosophical criticism. In this paper I show how Kaczynski’s arguments rely on a number of highly implausible philosophical premises. I further make the case that, although his theory as a whole should be rejected, Kaczynski raises a number of worries about technological development that ought to receive serious attention. Some of these worries have recently come to be shared by prominent defenders of human enhancement, including Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu. In the last section I indicate why I believe it is important that academic philosophers scrutinize ideas that motivate acts of violence.
