Explaining Fascism and Ethnic Cleansing: The Three Dimensions of Charisma and the Four Dark Sides of Nationalism

Ideas and leaders matter. Fascism's syncretic ideology is crucial to understanding its rise and support. So too is the coterie charisma exerted by leaders like Hitler over an inner core even in the wilderness years; his centripetal charisma went on to help attract the masses to the 'Führer party' for very diverse reasons; and the cultic charisma leaders developed especially when in power further helps explain their appeal. The four dark sides of nationalism – namely, its ethnic , religious , scientific and economic dimensions – are also crucial to understanding genocide. So too is leadership: no Hitler, no Holocaust. Genocide also points to the importance of lower levels of leaders, who were sometimes influenced by the charisma of the 'great' leader, although in other cases, such as Milosevic's Serbia, the charismatisation of the national idea was more influential.     

The politics of genocide scholarship: the case of Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

The massive communal violence that occurred in East Pakistan in 1971 received worldwide attention at the time, but has been largely ignored since. Some scholars and other writers have denied that what took place in Bangladesh was a genocide. Journalists’ reports, expatriate testimony, refugee reports and an investigation by the International Commission of Jurists in 1972 all indicate, however, that the Pakistani army did commit genocide in Bangladesh in 1971. The political and ideological circumstances that led to the secession of East Pakistan were conducive to religious and ethnic genocide. Beachler examines the treatment by memoirists and scholars of the 1971 crisis in East Pakistan and seeks to explain the reasons why the genocide in Bangladesh has been largely ignored since the early 1970s. No ideological or partisan faction in the United States has stood to gain much from the study of the Bangladesh genocide. And the governments of Bangladesh and Pakistan have not been interested in promoting study of the mass murder and rapes that took place in 1971.     

The report of The International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur: The question of genocide

The crisis in Darfur (Sudan), which sparked in February 2003, only caught the United Nations’ attention in Spring 2004. Questions emerged as to whether the conflict between the rebels and the government was simply insurgency warfare or, in fact, concealed a genocide carried out by the Arab, Muslim-led government against the Animist and Christian-African population. The issue became so divisive that the Security Council requested the creation of an investigation team, the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, which amongst other tasks had to examine whether genocide had taken place. This article analyzes the facts as well as the legal reasoning that guided the International Commission of Inquiry in drawing the conclusion that a governmental policy to commit genocide had not been formed.     

Paradoxical bedfellows: Nihilism and human rights

This article identifies and considers the existence of a manifest, though often overlooked, paradox contained within the doctrine of human rights. The principal justifications for human rights are based upon the identification of variously conceived human characteristics, or attributes of human agency. Nevertheless, human rights have all too often been required to protect some human beings from being seriously harmed by other human beings. The justification for human rights envisages a single, universal community of human beings, whereas the actual application of human rights typically testifies to the existence of two, very distinct communities: victims and perpetrators. The single greatest impetus for the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the desire to prevent the re-occurrence of genocide. The modern human rights regime emerged out of mountains of human corpses. One would like to claim that the impetus for human rights became less urgent after the horrors of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, genocide has persisted and gross violations of human rights remain a feature of the geo-political landscape. Our need for protective human rights remains as urgent today as it did fifty years ago. This article accounts for this paradox and answers the question: Why is it that the ultimate justification and application of the doctrine of human rights is frustrated by members of the very species upon which the doctrine is based?     

Peace Operations and the Prevention of Genocide

This article discusses the potential and limitations of peace operations in the prevention of genocide. Peace operations encompass a wide range of military and police actions with nontraditional military goals, typically taken under multilateral auspices. These operations have grown in number and complexity in recent years, and current trends point to their playing an ever-growing role with respect to genocide prevention. Despite some progress, there are several significant obstacles to ensuring that peace operations reliably contribute to the prevention of mass atrocities. These include international political dissension, capacity constraints, limits of the military option, and demands of the post-conflict period. If properly designed and resourced, however, peace operations can be an important tool for genocide prevention.     

Limitations in attributing state responsibility under the Genocide Convention

Protection from genocide has been a common denominator in state rhetoric since 1948 when the Genocide Convention was adopted. However, state accountability for this archetypical crime of the state is virtually nonexistent. This article addresses a two-pronged puzzle: namely, (1) why, no government involved in the commission of genocide has to date been held responsible for it; and (2) how legal processes of the sole court that addresses states' disputes regarding genocide, the International Court of Justice, condition and even limit the quality of decisions taken by the court with particular reference to state liability for this crime. The analysis contributes to an emerging debate on the application of state responsibility with reference to the protection from genocide by highlighting existing shortcomings pertaining to the interpretation and implementation of the Genocide Convention that, in turn, warrants a holistic revision of this treaty.     

Rape as Genocide: The Group/Individual Schism

This paper discusses, within the context of analytical theory, some of the implications when rape is subsumed within the international crime of genocide and concludes that this type of enquiry is essential for creating a clearer framework to address and understand this violation. From the analysis undertaken, two critical questions become apparent: a) Does compatibility exist when rape is subsumed within the category of a group violation (genocide), if rape is constructed as a violation of an individual’s sexual autonomy? ⁱ b) Is the link between rape and genocide necessarily problematic within this notion of autonomy for the individual victim of rape? The process unfolds within an analytical theoretical approach that touches upon the current concept of human rights with its focus on the individual. Although the key element is the individual, the concept of human rights also creates a space, albeit limited and at times controversial, for the group. As such, this paper identifies some of the theoretical implications that emerge once rape is subsumed within the international crime of genocide, which is defined as a violation committed against particular groups.     

The curious case of Ali Cenani Bey: the story of a génocidaire during and after the 1915 Armenian genocide

While there exists an extensive body of literature addressing the Armenian genocide, certain gaps persist. The processes and events of the genocide have been unearthed and examined, but genocide is not a phenomenon set in motion by a force of nature. On the contrary, the systematic destruction of Ottoman Armenians was designed and executed by a cadre of individuals, most of whom are little known today. Kurt’s aim here is to recover the story of one such actor from a particular town, Aintab, modern-day Gaziantep—situated on the boundaries of Cilicia (today the southern part of Anatolia) and Syria, near both the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Alexandretta—thereby revealing the perpetrators and their active involvement in the destruction of Armenians at the local/provincial level. Kurt’s article seeks to shed light on such a perpetrator by analysing the objective features of his background and career. Highlighting the human dimension of the genocide allows for an examination of the actors—their motives and their acts—that ultimately bore responsibility for the catastrophic loss of life. Kurt focuses on the life story of Ali Cenani (1872–1934): his background and involvement in the 1915 Armenian deportation and genocide as well as his career in post-genocide Turkey.     

灭绝种族罪犯罪对象的特征及其分类

灭绝种族罪的行为，必须指向特定的群体，这个群体需要具备生命性、文化性、固定性和发展可能性的特征，只有符合这个特征的群体才能够认定为属于本罪所保护的群体的范围。灭绝种族罪的对象应分为种族、民族、族裔和宗教团体四种类型，政治团体并不是该罪的犯罪对象，仅消灭或者摧毁某个团体的全部领导层的行为也不能构成该罪。     

Educating a New Generation: The Model of the “Genocide and Human Rights University Program”

This paper examines the design and teaching of "Genocide and Human Rights," an innovative, higher education course introduced in 2002 to provide training for a new generation of scholars and teachers. The course was developed and funded by a small non-profit organization, the Zoryan Institute, in Toronto, Canada. One purpose of the course is to teach about the Armenian genocide within a comparative genocide and human rights framework. Another goal is to fill a gap in the curriculum in response to increased student interest and research in genocide and human rights. The course serves as a valuable pedagogical model including its comparative framework, teaching by invited specialists, adjusting the curriculum to reflect student interest and new scholarship, and setting up and maintaining formal and informal scholarly networks. Features of critical pedagogy include classroom dialogue and critique and respect for differences in background and opinion. For example, interactions between students of Turkish and Armenian background provide an opportunity to explore issues of stereotypes, memory, denial and reconciliation. The course provides training for a new generation in research, publications, teaching and advocacy in fields related to genocide and human rights.     

Toleration and permissiveness

Professor Horowitz argues that it is important for political sociology to try to understand and analyse genocide as a distinct social phenomenon. For this purpose it must be clearly distinguished from other forms of human destruction, such as natural disasters, random killing, warfare and symbolic or cultural assaults. The collective nature of genocide sets it apart from other social evils, as it contradicts traditional Western approaches to law and morals which emphasize individual responsibility for actions.     

Innocent denials of known genocides: A further contribution to a psychology of denial of genocide

Conclusion The problem of revisionism, or efforts to deny and censor the incontrovertible history of known genocides, is a growing one. It is now clear that denial is inevitably a phase of the genocidal process, extending far beyond the immediate politically expedient denials of governments who are currently engaging in genocidal massacre or have just recently done so—i.e., the Chinese government's abject denials of the killings of some 5,000 in Tiananmen Square, or the Sri Lanka government's denials of the state-organized massacre of 5,000 Tamil. Denials of genocide continue long after the event by a variety of groups and people, including successor governments or successor enemies of the victim people, such as anti-Semites against Jews, Turks against Armenians, and bigots and celebrants of violence and murder of all sorts. But such denials also occur—and this is the most perplexing fact—among a variety of not obviously malevolent people, including intellectuals who, in the process of calling for a better world, effectively exonerate, support, encourage, and participate in denials of a known genocide, implicitly condoning and even celebrating its occurrence, meanings, and portents for the future. This article is an effort to study and analyze this latter phenomenon, which has been little recognized. Together with previous essays on the psychology of more explicit malevolent denials of genocide, the intention is to generate a broader psychological theory of denials of genocide and revisionism by proposing that there are also a variety of “innocent denials” of the factual reality or significance of known cases of genocide, and a variety of “innocent disavowals of violence” which in truth celebrate the violence. These “innocent denials” join with the well-known explicit bigots in creating a vast panorama of dangerous denials of genocides and implicit calls to new genocides in our world. The basic thesis of this article has been under development since its first presentation in a plenary address at the Soviet Academy of sciences in Yerevan, Armenia in 1990 on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.     

The Dual Use of an Historical Event: ‘Rwanda 1994’, the Justification and Critique of Liberal Interventionism

This essay places the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in the context of the academic and political rise of liberal interventionism since 1990. It argues that this historical event is important for the debate about ‘humanitarian interventions’ in two different ways: on the one hand, as a signifier, ‘Rwanda 1994’ has been used (or, for that matter, misused) in order to justify an almost unlimited international agenda of liberal interventionism and social engineering; on the other, the genocide that could arguably have been prevented represents the exceptional case where military intervention can indeed be justified—but precisely because it is not in need of a specifically liberal justification. What would have made a military-based prevention of genocide justifiable in this particular case is precisely the aim to prevent something that is universally agreed to be unacceptable (genocide). The liberal twist in the justification narrative, in contrast, tends to emphasize the difference between the (liberal) ‘us’ and the non-liberal ‘them’, consequently claiming the legitimate right for the ‘us’ to decide about the use of force exclusively, that is, without the ‘them’. The continuation of the narrative into answering the post-intervention question ‘what now?’ then leads consequently into the necessity of imposing one's own system of rule as a general norm without due attention to the specifics of the situation ‘on the ground’. The exceptional features of ‘Rwanda 1994’ (the empirical event) thus point in a critical way to all those cases where ‘Rwanda 1994’ (the signifier) has been used to make the case for an ever-expanding agenda of liberal (‘just’) war.     

Is the Sun Setting on Cosmopolitan Justice?

Reports on the UN criminal tribunals and the related hybrid courts raise grave concerns about their sustainability in terms of costs and their legal standards in respect of evidence. The effectiveness of the current courts is compared to the domestic prosecution of offenders from the Auschwitz concentration camp. Although the Auschwitz court failed to capture the enormity of the crime of genocide, there are nonetheless good reasons to re-visit the use of domestic courts and other remedies for such crimes today, particularly after adoption of the genocide law by nation states. Ideals of cosmopolitan justice behind the UN courts are being exported to societies that are ill-equipped to apply or afford them; and domestic legal development suffers as a consequence.     

The chameleon of mens rea and the shifting guises of culture-specific genocidal intent in international criminal proceedings

This article examines the significance of the mens rea-related evidence present in the specific language and discourse identified in the records of the International Military Tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The author argues that international proceedings have seen the emergence of a new type of evidence: a cognitive, linguistic, culturally determined plural of genocidal mens rea. As a result, the mental element of genocidal intent can neither be interpreted nor understood without an advanced forensic approach to the language used by the network of génocidaires. Based on a combination of cognitive and social science research with the humanities, the article applies a hybrid method of analysis to some of the genocide cases in international criminal justice and demonstrates how and why this approach ought to be introduced into the process of identification of the guilty minds of the architects of genocide.     

The United Nations and genocide: Prevention,intervention, and prosecution

Conclusion The UN has to date not been effective in preventing genocide, and has had only a slightly better record in stopping it. There have been occasions when its interventions has occurred only after a genocide has taken place, and even then its major focus has been on facilitating the provision of aid by non-governmental agencies rather than on the task of tracking down the perpetrators and bringing them to justice. The exceptions of the ICTY and the ICTR are so stark, in this regard, that they only serve to throw light on the many other genocidal events where the UN has not initiated measures against those responsible for carrying them out. In short, as a body the UN has no—until very recently—even approached the fulfillment of its mandate as articulated in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and only rarely invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter in order to intervene physically for the purpose of countering threats to peace or stopping conflict. Its strengths, so far as there have been any, have focused on balancing great power interests with demands to intervene more forcefully. While in the years up to 1989 this could be seen as a way of maintaining the peace (albeit over the broken bodies of victims of genocide in places such as Biafra, Cambodia, and East Timor), since then the UN has been required to act with greater resolve and purpose. The failures of Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo must thus be seen as having been brought on by a transition from one international regime to another; from a Cold War regime in which the UN—s main role was one of preventing a third (and possibly nuclear) World War from breaking out, to a post-Cold War regime which appears increasingly to be characterized by the UN searching for a new role in which humanitarian issues are to assume a higher priority than they once did. Whether or not this will continue, of course, will depend on an extremely wide variety of circumstances—and at this time it is likely that only a few of these can accurately be anticipated.     

GENOCIDE

Genocidal tendencies that exist today are due to the embrace of realpolitik and the glorification of the state. Unrestrained nationalism can only lead to mass killing with conviction and pure heart. Genocide is the commission of specific acts with intent to destroy, wholly o r in part, a national ethnic, racial o r religious group. There are many cases of genocide today which the U.S. ignores because it makes anti-Sovietism the centerpiece of I t s foreign policy. International law is not enough to prevent genocide. Natural law and the judgements at Nuremberg as well are not sufficient. The problem is one of individuals who must reduce their loyalty to the state as the dominant imperative of political life. Only then will realpolitik be controlled.     

Negotiating Reconciliation in Rwanda: Popular Challenges to the Official Discourse of Post-Genocide National Unity

Reconciliation is among the most contested terms in current peacebuilding and transitional justice debates. Critics often view reconciliation as romantic—expecting immediate harmony after enormous harm—or imposed on victims by religious groups or governments that prefer the language of ‘moving on’ to addressing systemic causes of conflict. This essay reconsiders the concept of ‘reconciliation’ by drawing on community-level experiences in post-genocide Rwanda. This context highlights nuanced interpretations of reconciliation that, in key respects, respond to critics' concerns and call for reappraisal of reconciliation as a central objective after mass violence. In particular, many Rwandans' participation in the gacaca community courts—which, between 2002 and 2012, prosecuted 400,000 genocide suspects in around 1 million cases in 11,000 jurisdictions overseen by locally elected lay judges—represents a form of negotiated reconciliation. This version emphasizes long-term formal and informal negotiations between antagonistic parties during gacaca hearings but crucially long after trials have ended. In contrast, the transactional reconciliation advocated by the Rwandan government through its discourse of ‘national unity’ views reconciliation as immediate and elite-imposed—a perspective that rightly raises the ire of critics but to which negotiated reconciliation offers an important riposte. This essay is based on more than 650 interviews between 2003 and 2014 with Rwandan genocide suspects, convicted perpetrators, survivors, gacaca judges and policymakers as well as observations of 105 gacaca hearings in 13 communities across Rwanda.