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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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495 |
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| Genocide |
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saw nothing of their victims, tended to speak exclusively
of professional skill and performance; those on fighter-bomber missions had
glimpses of people below and tended to have at least a slight inclination to
explain or rationalize what they did; those who flew helicopter gunships saw
everything and could experience the fear, horror, questioning, and guilt that
was felt by groundpersonnel.125
This
psychological benefit for perpetrators is what makes the high technology of
destruction compatible with genocide. The progress is terrifying in connection
with present nuclear-weapons stockpiles. Alternating ideological antagonisms
between the United States and the Soviet Union are accompanied by embrace of
nuclear weapons, even worship of them, by both powers as ultimate sources of
“security” and of life-sustaining “power.” This pattern of
"nuclearism"126 combines morally blind
technicism with awed genuflection before all-powerful objects that can do what
in the past only God could do: destroy the world.
No wonder, then, that
Americans now take to playing little war games with rifles or individual
automatic weapons; or join “survivalists” groups who buy land in
isolated places, take regular target practice, and stock up on canned goods in
order to ready themselves for the nuclear holocaust. Operating here is deep and
violent nostalgia for the days when a man need only master the simplest
technology, to protect himself and his family, as opposed to the technological
genocide that shadows us all.127
One
reason perpetrators of genocide can enlist many people for their project is
that “belief in the decisive role of technique has … passed from the
philosophers into the culture at large."128
In connection with evolving Nazi ideas, Theweleit has spoken of “the
fascination of the machine” in suggesting how one could “live …
without having any feelings” and make one’s body into a “steel
form.” That “steel form” enables one to kill promiscuously and
without pain.129 |
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| Genocidal
Bureaucracy |
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Bureaucracy makes possible the entire genocidal sequence:
organization, continued function, and distancing, numbing, and doubling of
perpetrators.
Bureaucracy helps render genocide unreal. It further
diffuses the impact of murderous events that, to begin with, are difficult to
believe. In this sense we may say that the bureaucracy deamplifies genocide:
diminishes the emotional and intellectual tones associated with the killing,
primarily for perpetrator but also for bystanders* and victims. Central to the
process is the dampening of language, the use not only of euphemisms
(“resettlement” or “deportation” for killing) but also of
certain code terms (“special treatment,” for instance) that are
specific enough in designating murderous acts to maintain bureaucratic
efficiency, even to |
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THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of
Genocide
Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
©
1986 |
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Page 495 |
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