Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder

Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder | Daniel Chirot, Clark McCauley | A scary and depressing view of human behavior

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Why Not Kill Them ...

	Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder Daniel Chirot, Clark McCauley Princeton University Press, 2006 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Genocide, mass murder, massacres. The words themselves are chilling, evoking images of the slaughter of countless innocents. What dark impulses lurk in our minds that even today can justify the eradication of thousands and even millions of unarmed human beings caught in the crossfire of political, cultural, or ethnic hostilities? This question lies at the heart of Why Not Kill Them All? Cowritten by historical sociologist Daniel Chirot and psychologist Clark McCauley, the book goes beyond exploring the motives that have provided the psychological underpinnings for genocidal killings. It offers a historical and comparative context that adds up to a causal taxonomy of genocidal events.

Rather than suggesting that such horrors are the product of abnormal or criminal minds, the authors emphasize the normality of these horrors: killing by category has occurred on every continent and in every century. But genocide is much less common than the imbalance of power that makes it possible. Throughout history human societies have developed techniques aimed at limiting intergroup violence. Incorporating ethnographic, historical, and current political evidence, this book examines the mechanisms of constraint that human societies have employed to temper partisan passions and reduce carnage.

Might an understanding of these mechanisms lead the world of the twenty-first century away from mass murder? Why Not Kill Them All? makes clear that there are no simple solutions, but that progress is most likely to be made through a combination of international pressures, new institutions and laws, and education. If genocide is to become a grisly relic of the past, we must fully comprehend the complex history of violent conflict and the struggle between hatred and tolerance that is waged in the human heart.

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I fear my own species

I only had to so much as glance on the title of this book, Why Not Kill Them All?, to decide that I had to read it, no matter what. The art of warfare and mankind's quite unbelievable skill and capacity to stubbornly refuse killing and slaughtering his fellow man has fascinated, as well as frightened me, as far back as I can remember. And even though I've tried, in so many different ways and for such a very long time, I still fail miserably trying to get a real sense of understanding of these people, how and what these men (and women and children) who are more than happy to go to war and kill whoever has been designated as the "enemy" actually think about their own actions.

I've never killed anyone, let alone been in a fight, but yeah, of course I've wondered what it's like to take someone else's life. Just do the actual deed. Experience how it feels.

And how you rationalize it. Because if you look at it in an extremely cynical and simplified way, this act - this deliberate eradication of the life of a dissident - is nothing but an act of supreme childishness and needlessness. To even begin to think how someone in a split second can be both willing and eager to take someone else's life as easy as snapping one's fingers truly boggles my mind again and again.

How can this be? Is it too much to simply classify someone as mentally insane if he or she believes an act of murder (warfare included, which is really just legalized mass murder) can ever be justified and/necessary? After all, there is no method of problem-solving as definitive as killing. And shouldn't Homo sapiens, the only animal with an awareness of the notion of how everything in the end must finally die, at this day and age be able to solve any problem whatsoever without resorting to killing?

Well, apparently no. We're still dumb animals killing each other left and right, just like we've always done. It's just that these days the technology at hand makes it even easier to murder an even larger numbers of people even more effectively. And that's not a very encouraging thought, considering how we still refuse to learn from our mistakes.

However, no matter how strongly I feel that modern man really "should" know better, professors Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley demonstrates that no, I'm the one who should do some rethinking, because mankind's relationship to such things as life and death is an incredibly complicated issue. We react a lot stronger to violence and death happening to people we can relate to (neighbors, fellow citizens, et cetera), compared to when it happens to equally innocent people on the other side of the world. Even the most devoted and cold-blooded of killers are often able to show enormous amounts of love and compassion towards people he or she finds acceptable, and the feelings we all have regarding other individuals on this planet can, Chirot and McCauley explains, be close to impossible to change: "Once we strongly identify with a group, to the point of loving or hating it, changing our minds for instrumental reason is rare." (pg.77)

The authors demonstrate, quite convincingly, how anyone might be capable of murdering and participating in ethnic cleansings and similar exterminations. That is, as long as the circumstances are right, and throughout Why Not Kill Them All?, these circumstances are investigated very thoroughly. Many factors must come together for a group of people to decide to wipe out another group, but it has happened again and again throughout history and we all know it's not going to come to an end. And no matter how horrible and unfair these crimes appear to the outsider; to the perpetrators they appear just as natural and understandable. That's why it rarely matters how furiously the rest of the world reacts:

"There is no evidence that international discussion and exposure of abuses on ethnic, religious, or political grounds has much effect on governments that engage in such behavior. The most brutal regimes, in fact, are the ones least likely to be swayed by moral arguments." (pg.172)

The descriptions and explanations of various political mass murder clearly is what the majority of the book is about, but the reader also finds lots of war history throughout the text. Fortunately, because if you're interested in political mass murder you're quite likely to be interested in war and warfare, too. But in case you're not, then it's still fortunate that these sections have been included, since an increased awareness of warfare throughout history most definitely will result in an increased understanding of the human animal and her creepy tendencies to use extreme violence to solve her conflicts.

Why Not Kill Them All? is a book that really does manage to make something unpleasant and despicable appear most natural. Not surprisingly perhaps, because what the authors deal with are actions that, despite their creepiness, comes quite natural to the human race. At the end of the book several ideas and solutions as to how political mass murder might be stopped or at least fought are presented, and for the sake of our species we all better keep our fingers crossed and hope these ideas and solutions actually work if they're ever put to the test.

If they don't, well, then there's no need to worry about a huge asteroid slamming into Earth sometime in the future and brutally eradicating the entire human species.

Because we're quite capable of doing that ourselves.

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A scary and depressing view of human behavior

This book tells us plenty about mass murder.

Of course, as the authors say, there are plenty of reasons not to "kill them all." Namely, they are like us. And, I might add that what goes around can come around.

But there are instances of mass murder as well as smaller incidents that have the same sorts of causes. We see how fear and other elements can lead to a desire to murder. We see that many soldiers in wartime can express a desire to kill enemy civilians as a matter of policy. We see how people can overcome their rather natural antipathy towards working as slaughterers. We see that many people can show a willingness to kill someone who merely makes them angry (as long as they only need to push a button or turn a knob to do it and feel that they have the authority to do so). We see the sort of propaganda that can be used to demean and dehumanize those who are intended victims.

It is clear that all sorts of people can support mass murder, out of some sort of rather basic instincts, even if they do not think of themselves as having any special overall loyalties or prejudices. One can use one's ability to reason to find excuses for one's behavior rather than to take some other course of action. And it is very common for people to refuse to even consider changing their stances on the basis of facts or logic.

Well, how does one oppose such behavior?

Chirot and McCauley have some comments on this, but they are not wildly hopeful. And I tend to agree, even though mass murder is counterproductive and unnecessary. Any group that has the ability to commit mass murder can almost always do something less extreme that has lesser long-term negative consequences for both sides. But will intelligent people agree to take facts and logic seriously? The authors imply that many won't do so and that they'll have to be restrained by outsiders. My reaction is that outsiders may be unreasonable as well: we've seen mass murders in the last couple of decades in spite of the purported attempts of "outsiders" to stop them.

I think this book is interesting, and I recommend it.

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