-The 20th century demonstrated that genocide is not restricted to any particular period, ideology or part of the world. As such, it is rather a dark side of civilisation, and one that we have to build bulwarks against, over and over again, says Bernt Hagtvet, right, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oslo. Hagtvet, a board member of HRH F, has edited a huge, comparative study on genocide that was launched yesterday (11-MAR-08)

In part based on the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen’s interview with Hagtvet, published today, this article has been written by HRH F / Niels Jacob Harbitz.

-Behind every genocide is a longing for purity. It could be ethnic, political, racial or religious, or a rather more vague idea of ‘the purity of the past,’ for instance before the loss of land, explains Hagtvet. Regardless of kind, against the idea of purity stands always the notion of something or, in the case of genocide, someone, being impure. And while what is pure is considered safe and good and all things positive, what is impure is bad, dangerous and in every other sense negative. This is an old insight; perhaps most famously pointed out in the British anthropologist Mary Douglas modern classic ‘Purity and Danger’. But certain insights stand the test of time and have to be repeated, it seems, and Douglas’s is one that applies with spine-chilling relevance to any and all attempts to make sense of the anatomy of genocide. 

-No society, no system of government is immune to genocide. Among the most important conclusions to be drawn from a comparative study like this is that it can happen anywhere. However, for genocidal conditions to emerge, Hagtvet continues, for the atmosphere to develop within which genocide may happen, a limited set of cultural, historical, and political ingredients seem necessary. First, there has to be a humiliated group. The Germans after the First World War is an obvious case. Second, the political leadership of the humiliated group has to make political decisions to brand the chosen enemy as such, and define it as outcasts, unwanted elements of society, and guilty of all things not working or ‘wrong’ in society. This is exactly what the Germans did to the Jews. However, a third component also seems crucial; the individual. Hitler, Stalin and Mao all demonstrate the value of this observation.

Stalin, probably the single individual in the 20th century, quite possibly in the whole of history accountable for the largest amounts of lives, was an expert, with more strategies at hand than pure and simple brutality. On the issue of troublesome minorities, he advised Mao to ‘solve’ this problem with the help of encouraged or, if need be, enforced, internal migration. This is a strategy that the People´s Republic of China has continued to use ever since, and that is still in use today. In the occupied territories of Tibet and Xinjiang, members of the Han majority of the rest of the People´s Republic of China are moved in with promises of better pay, permission to have more than one child, and many other privileges not available to the native Tibetan and Uighur populations. Hagtvet is of the opinion that the evidence of what happens in Tibet strongly suggests that it is fairly to be considered and called a genocide.    

-Another insight to come out of Hagtvet’s highly ambitious volume is that religion does not seem to be as much of a driving force behind these crimes against humanity as some would suggest. Instead, religion has been used by various groups to explain why they try to eradicate other groups. However, as the real cause of genocide, political ideologies have a lot more to answer for. To counteract this, I hope that education in democracy will be given far greater priority around the world. Democracy is the system of governance least likely to humiliate. A key ambition of this project is exactly to strengthen the sense of responsibility in each and every one of us to acquire enough knowledge of and respect for each other to be able to prevent genocide from ever happening again. This, however, will also require a general, un-judgemental acceptance of difference, another key component of sustainable democracy.

The importance of the acceptance of difference is made clear perhaps most eloquently by the American political philosopher Richard Rorty, who considered it not only as a necessity for democracy to flourish, but as the prime measure of progress. His exact definition of progress reads “an increase in our ability to see more and more differences among people as morally irrelevant”. Hagtvet shares Rorty’s opinion. –The only thing we all have in common is that we are different. Without romanticising, we have to accept that. In educating future generations to fully recognise this, the focus has to be on the universality, not only of this insight, but also of what it is meant to counteract; the phenomenon of genocide. This is not about Nazism, communism or any other ideology. This is an attempt to extract the logic behind the genocidal impulse, the temptation to kill so systematically and in such large numbers. As a feature of civilisation, of humanity, even, this is also, and ultimately, about what it means to be human.

Hagtvet is also concerned about the hair-splitting that has followed the concept of genocide in recent years, causing delays in taking action to prevent more losses of lives only because one cannot agree if a particular situation qualifies for the genocide label or not. This has to do with the particular status that has been attached to genocide, morally, in international law, and in terms of anticipated and generally accepted political and even military action. Darfur is a case in point where the international community has been dilly-dallying for years behind a conceptual discussion – genocide, crime against humanity, humanitarian crisis – ultimately because nobody has seen enough of a reason to go in there to put an end to the suffering. In the meantime, several hundred thousand people have died. And the story continues.

Over 669 pages, Hagtvet’s book brings together 26 Norwegian and international authors to shed light on genocides from Armenia to Auschwitz, from Namibia, via Stalin’s GULAG to Cambodia, East Timor, Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. But the book contains reflections of a more general legal and political, medical and psychological, philosophical and historical interest, too. Following the ‘UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide’ and a broad introduction by Hagtvet to the unifying aspects and general dynamics of genocide, an article by Raphael Lemkin, summarising his first reflections on the concept, developed before and after the Second World War, is reprinted. The persistent persecution of the Roma of Europe throughout the 20th century and Indonesia’s attempt to rid itself of anyone suspected of being a communist in the mid-sixties are also not forgotten. Finally, the former UN Deputy Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland also covers the ongoing slow genocide in Darfur.