Eight Steps of Genocide
Genocide * Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part * Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group:
Why?
* There has been considerable research on why a perpetrator should want to destroy a group or, if not destroy the group as such, murder people because of their group membership. Motives are often complex and intertwined, but one can usually pull out among the mix a major motive.
Some motives are:
To destroy group that is perceived as a threat to the ruling power * Such was also the case with the strong resistance of the Ukrainian farmer to Stalin’s program of collectivization in 1931-32 coupled with the threat of Ukrainian nationalism to communist control. Thus, when what would have been a mild famine hit the region in 1932, Stalin magnified the famine many fold by seizing food and its sources (livestock, pets, seed grain, shooting birds in the trees, etc.) and boycotting the import of food taken away from them before they entered the Soviet Republic. About 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death.
To destroy people who are hated, despised, or conversely are envied or resented * The genocide of Jews throughout history and in particular the Holocaust was fundamentally an act of religious and ethnic hatred mixed with envy and resentment over their disproportionate economic and professional achievements. Similarly, with the genocide of the Armenians in Turkey, 1915-18, where Armenians enjoyed wealth and professional status far beyond their numbers, but also were hated as Christians in a Muslim society.
To pursue an ideological transformation of society * Such have been the genocides carried out by communist societies, for example, where those resisting or perceived to be enemies of the ideology are murdered, such as landlords, nationalists, “right-wingers”, and “counterrevolutionaries.”
To purify, or attempt to eliminate from
Why?
* There has been considerable research on why a perpetrator should want to destroy a group or, if not destroy the group as such, murder people because of their group membership. Motives are often complex and intertwined, but one can usually pull out among the mix a major motive.
Some motives are:
To destroy group that is perceived as a threat to the ruling power * Such was also the case with the strong resistance of the Ukrainian farmer to Stalin’s program of collectivization in 1931-32 coupled with the threat of Ukrainian nationalism to communist control. Thus, when what would have been a mild famine hit the region in 1932, Stalin magnified the famine many fold by seizing food and its sources (livestock, pets, seed grain, shooting birds in the trees, etc.) and boycotting the import of food taken away from them before they entered the Soviet Republic. About 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death.
To destroy people who are hated, despised, or conversely are envied or resented * The genocide of Jews throughout history and in particular the Holocaust was fundamentally an act of religious and ethnic hatred mixed with envy and resentment over their disproportionate economic and professional achievements. Similarly, with the genocide of the Armenians in Turkey, 1915-18, where Armenians enjoyed wealth and professional status far beyond their numbers, but also were hated as Christians in a Muslim society.
To pursue an ideological transformation of society * Such have been the genocides carried out by communist societies, for example, where those resisting or perceived to be enemies of the ideology are murdered, such as landlords, nationalists, “right-wingers”, and “counterrevolutionaries.”
To purify, or attempt to eliminate from