For this assignment, I read three
articles from The New York Times website
about Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the war.
Captured in 2008, the defense portion of his trial began last month in The
Hague. He faces charges of genocide for the killings Croats and Muslims
throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.
What’s
particularly bizarre about Karadzic is that he has been living in the capital
of Serbia, Belgrade, for an unspecified (perhaps unknown) number of years.
While other war criminals go to great lengths to avoid detection, such as the
Nazis that fled across the globe to South America, Karadzic simply grew a large
beard, changed his name to Dragan Dabic, and set up a business as a new-age
healer. According to the articles, he even made a number of public appearances
under his new persona.
While
it is easy to dismiss Karadzic’s disguise as the desperate bumbling of an evil
man, I think it points to an important phenomenon regarding perpetrators of
genocide. The defense possesses a huge body of evidence against Karadzic—in his
article, Mort Rosenblum claims that Karadzic told him that he was going to kill
non-Serbs in Bosnia. It seems to me, then, that this “Dragan Dabic” persona
serves two functions: not only did it allow Karadzic to hide in plain sight, it
allowed him to compartmentalize his role in this genocide. According to
psychologist Carolin Showers, “compartmentalization is the tendency to organize
positive and negative knowledge about the self into separate, uniformly valenced
categories (self-aspects).” While I clearly lack enough information to actually
diagnosis Karadzic (though I must say that I don’t want it), I think it’s
possible that the Dabic persona constitutes a form of compartmentalization for
him, allowing him to deny to himself that he is the person that committed these
crimes. Indeed, he recently said as part of his defense that, “there is no
indication that anyone was killed by us at Srebrenica” (Simons).
While
I’ve perhaps read too much into Karadzic’s disguise, the issue of mental health
of genocides’ perpetrators presents a problem for bringing them to justice. As
we read in Ordinary Men, they frequently
break down; Major Trapp occasionally fell into hysterics, and Captain Hoffman’s
body actually failed him, as Browning presents it, due to the mental strain of
committing mass murder. As the acts that comprise genocide are so appalling
that they find distort the perceptions of those that commit them, it seems to
me that trying someone for genocide constitutes an issue of reconciling two
different realities, more so than in other types of crimes. Moreover, it seems
to me that bringing a bringing a perpetrator of genocide to justice in a
psychological sense is more important than bringing them to justice in a legal
sense. Even if The Hague finds him guilty, Karadzic won’t necessarily
acknowledge what he did. While the condemnation of his actions by the
international community certainly serves as a huge symbol, it seems to me that,
until he becomes aware of what he has done, both he and his victims lack
justice.
Works Cited:
Showers, Carolin. "Compartmentalization of positive and negative self-knowledge: keeping bad apples out of the bunch." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol 62 No. 6, June 1992. 1036-49. Via PubMed.org.
While James brings up the intriguing point that justice for the perpetrators of genocide could be compromised by the perpetrators' mental health, I don't accept that this presents a major problem. Undoubtedly many perpetrators are traumatized by their acts of genocide; however, these mass murderers are likely capable of understanding their crimes. Additionally, while their mental state is a problem for justice under a retributive model in which the goal of punishment is to make the perpetrator pay for the crime, it is not an issue for a utilitarian model of justice.
ReplyDeleteIt may be impossible to know Karadzic's mental state and whether he understands what he did. However, there's little reason to believe that the perpetrators of genocide tend to be mentally ill. For instance, as Waller describes, systematic Rorschach inkblot studies of the Nazis at Nuremberg revealed no evidence of psychopathic conditions; they were perfectly rational people, capable of understanding their crimes. Furthermore, while many perpetrators of genocide may have distanced themselves from the killing, they still accepted what they had done. For instance, Lifton argues that Nazi doctors coped through a process of doubling(similar to compartmentalization). Nevertheless, Lifton believes chief Auschwitz physician Dr. Eduard Wirth killed himself in great part because of his guilt. Thus, even if perpetrators of genocide routinely double/compartmentalize, they can still comprehend the reality of their crimes.
Even if the mental state of mass murderers means they will never truly pay for their crimes, this does not undermine justice under a utilitarian model. I believe conducting trials for retributive aims makes little sense. As Browning explains, Nazis committed genocide because of the circumstances they found themselves in, not because they were intrinsically evil. Many, if not most, of us might have acted in the same way under similar circumstances. Why then do the perpetrators of genocide deserve to suffer? If they do, does humanity as a whole deserve to suffer? I believe it makes little sense to punish anyone with the sole aim of causing suffering in retribution. That only adds more suffering to the world. However, this does not mean genocide should not be punished. After all Hitler took solace in the fact that no one remembered the Armenian genocide. If punishing the perpetrators of genocide can reduce the rate of genocide, then I believe such punishment is just whether or not the perpetrators acknowledge their guilt.
Mr. Helmsworth and Mr. Sadowsky point to psychological adaptations as survival mechanisms for the perpetrators of genocide. I argue that mental adaptations not only act as retroactive coping mechanisms, but in fact allow the perpetrators – both explicit and complicit – to conceive of and commit genocide.
ReplyDeleteIn his book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and specialist on the psychology of killing Dave Grossman asserts that humans have a natural phobia of killing. The military, as well as propaganda, media, and even now video games, condition us to accept killing as necessary and ultimately to kill. Grossman explains three types of distance that, in combination with the demands of authority and group absolution, contribute to the process of genocidal killing. Grossman describes these phenomena as:
“• Cultural distance, such as racial and ethnic differences, which permit the killer to dehumanize the victim
• Moral distance, which takes into consideration the kind of intense belief in moral superiority and vengeful/vigilante actions associated with many civil wars
• Social distance, which considers the impact of a lifetime of practice in thinking of a particular class as less than human in a socially stratified environment"
While Mr. Helmsworth and Mr. Sadowsky focused their arguments on the masterminds of genocide, Grossman’s writing applies best to the rest of a genocidal society: those who run trains or stamp papers or simply refuse to challenge the status quo. Historians of genocide – not to mention the rest of the population – love to speculate about the mental lives of Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot. But much of genocide studies misses a crucial point: the socio-psychological state of the general population may have more to do with genocide than that of the leader. If anything, I hope that our study of genocide leads each of us to examine our own mental states, and the distances we as a culture or as individuals have created – and failed to address – in our lives.