Transcript FYSi.Tyrants - High Point University

WHAT ROLE DOES
POLITICAL LEADERSHIP
PLAY IN MASS-VIOLENCE
THE BIG QUESTIONS:
• What kind of situations appear to be most
conducive to the emergence of tyranny?
• How do leaders become mass-murders? Who
are these people?
• Why do their people sometimes support and
aid them in genocide or other types of mass
violence?
WHAT FACTORS DON’T SEEM TO BE CORE
CAUSES FOR A MASS MURDER TO COME TO
POWER?
• Economic development & education: Life in Germany and
Russia had been getting better prior to the crises that
triggered their darkest periods
• Ethnic division isn’t always present when genocide occurs:
Rwanda (a case of backlash against a longstanding
“middle man” group) vs. Germany (where the targets
were created)
• Does the brutal leader thrive only under a certain culture
and religion? No:
Middle-East (Hussein), Europe (Hitler), Latin America
(Trujillo), Asia (Mao), Africa (Idi Amin)
WHAT FACTORS DON’T SEEM TO BE CORE CAUSES FOR
A MASS MURDER TO COME TO POWER?
• Does the type of development matter? Both agrarian and
industrial societies have experienced brutality
• Are all mass-murders totalitarians? No. Russia’s Stalin vs.
Iraq under Hussein
• Is having balanced power a way to ensure that a massmurderer won’t ever seize power? Does a large welfare
state risk tyranny? (Fascism vs. democratic socialism vs.
communism)
• While new states are more susceptible to the emergence
of brutal leaders, old states sometimes have dark periods
as well
• Mass murderers don’t all come to power via coups and
violence: Germany
WHAT STATES ARE MOST SUSCEPITBLE?
WHEN AND HOW DO LEADERS BECOME
MASS-MURDERS?
• Daniel Chirot’s propositions are based on his
comparative study of 13 tyrannical regimes in the
20th C: Pol Pot (Cambodia) , Mao (China), Stalin
(Russia), Hitler (Germany), Kim (N. Korea),
Ceausescu (Romania), Ne Win (Burma / Miramar),
Argentina’s Junta, Trujillo (Dominican Republic),
Duvalier (Haiti), Bokassa (Central African
Republic), and Idi Amin (Uganda)
WHEN AND HOW DO LEADERS BECOME
MASS-MURDERS? THREE BIG FACTORS
• The relative deprivation thesis: The more chaotic
(relative to expectations and experience) the
economic system, the more likely a self-proclaimed
savior will emerge and be supported both by elites
and masses
• Weak states, especially ones that represent a bygone
era with respect to ideology and structure: Political
and esp. bureaucratic chaos (esp. divided elites)
prevents states from crushing rising tyrants and allows
the tyrants to consolidate power.
• An intl. system that allows or even encourages
despotism
WHEN AND HOW DO LEADERS BECOME
MASS-MURDERS?
• Cultural susceptibility to “tyrannical nationalism”: “For any
national, new or old, we can judge the extent to which its
political and intellectual elite’s identify is based on jealous and
vengeful resentment and memories of past wrongs, whether
real or imagined.”
– Communal ideologies of conflict, virtue, and heredity
Germany, Russia, and Japan
Manifest destiny vs. “melting pots” and “cosmic races: The
US and Latin American treatment of indigenous and African
descendent peoples
– Some societies have an ideology that emphasizes the
inevitability of conflict with other groups (US attitudes
towards indigenous populations and our manifest destiny;
Islamic fascism, evil empires, and the like)
WHEN AND HOW DO LEADERS BECOME
MASS-MURDERS?
• Societies that emphasize communal identity over human rights
are particularly susceptible to mass violence
– Were Japan’s atrocities in WW2 in part due to a culture that
emphasized both communalism and the problems noted
above
– Democracies sometimes use mass violence during war time:
Japanese internment and nuclear weapons use; Guantanamo
• Societies that are isolated (by choice or as a consequence of
their actions) from the outside world are more likely to be
detached from changing universal norms on human rights
– Are we pursuing the best policies for human rights in our
dealings with Miramar, Iran, and N. Korea? What can our
changing relationship with China over time tell us about the
upside of engaging closed societies?
COMPARING TYRANTS: STALIN AND
HITLER
Why might Stalin have been even worse than Hitler ?
• Who were Stalin’s 30 -40 million victims? The Bolsheviks and
Trotskyites (1930s, 10 million or so in round after round of purges
that included even his closest associates), “Kulak” peasants (1920S
and 30s), 2 million ex-Soviet POWs (1940s), and he died as a purge
against Jews was starting.
• Who were Hitler’s 7-10 million victims? Mostly Jews, but also 2-3
million non-Jewish Poles and Slavs, as well as Gypsies,
homosexuals, handicapped, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the spouses
of these groups.
• Why does Stalin get treated differently than Hitler in some circles?
Communism like various types of nationalism has apologists who
downplay atrocities because they are attracted to the larger
cause… A side note about Cuba.
COMPARING TYRANTS:
STALIN AND HITLER
Why was Stalin able to start murdering right away, while
Hitler (and Hussein) had to bide their time?
• Stalin came to power via a civil war and a powerful
ideology; he had complete control of civil society and of
force.
• Hitler did most of his murdering in the last five years,
targeting Jews who made up less than 1% of the German
population when Hitler came to power.
• The totalitarian homogenization of culture took longer
under Hitler: He initially “prepared” the population with
massive amounts of very effective propaganda and by
causing them to cross ethical lines with anti-miscegenation
and other discriminatory laws.