The anatomy of mass atrocity: Law, necessity, and the moral fracturing of the population

“ Crimes against humanity are there defined as—
“Atrocities and offenses, including but not limited to murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape, or other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds whether or not in violation of the domestic laws of the country where perpetrated.” [Emphasis supplied.]
The words “any civilian population” cannot possibly be construed to exclude German civilians. ”

“ Plunder and devastation of the property of noncombatants, destruction of private dwellings, and even of edifices devoted to the worship of God; expeditions organized for the sole purpose of sacking cities, consigning them to the flames, killing the unarmed inhabitants, and inflicting horrible outrages on women and children, are some of the constantly recurring atrocities of the invader. ”

“ But the men who directly or indirectly caused or countenanced the starvation, the torture, the poisoned and rotten food, the abandonment to loathsome disease, the crowding of thousands of Union prisoners into stockades, opening only 127heavenward, and all the other unparalleled atrocities of the Southern prisons, atrocities that violated every rule of warfare; atrocities, to find the equals of which the history of barbarous and savage nations, without the light of religion, or the smile of civilization, will be ransacked in vain, shall be handed down to an eternity of infamy. ”

“ Women were outraged, murdered and mutilated in unspeakable fashion; poor little children were murdered, bayoneted or maimed; the aged, crippled and infirm were treated with a brutality that was appalling; wounded soldiers and prisoners were tortured and afterwards murdered; innocent civilians, women and children of tender age, were placed before the German troops to act as living screens for the inhuman monsters, while there was looting, burning and destruction of property everywhere. Read, I say, that official report for yourselves! ”

“ Encouraging news in the evening was usually contradicted in the morning, while reports of the most terrible atrocities; of men murdered in cold blood; of open and gross lawlessness and evil conduct, terrorized the peaceful population in the unprotected towns and villages. ”

“ The figures just quoted refer only to fighting men. They take no account of the civilian population. But the civilian losses were simply incalculable, especially in eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire. It is [Pg 178] estimated that for every soldier killed, five civilians perished by hunger, exposure, disease, massacre, or heightened infant mortality. The civilian deaths in Poland and Russia are placed at many millions, while other millions died in Turkey and Serbia through massacre and starvation. One item alone will give some idea of the wastage of human life during the war. ”

“ When we read of guns that will carry a shell weighing a ton for over twenty-five miles which will, when it explodes, destroy everything within an eighth of a mile, and of guns less destructive that will carry over seventy-five miles, almost wholly destroying a church and killing sixty-five men, women, and children; when we read of bombs dropped from the sky, killing innocent women and children, hundreds of miles from the field of battle ”

“ Of the waste and wreckage of war; of desolated homes and shattered villages; of the ruthless, relentless, punitive exactness with which the Germans punished not only those civilians they accused of firing on them but those they suspected of giving harbor or aid to the offenders; of widows and orphans; of families of innocent sufferers, without a roof to shelter them or a bite to stay them; of fair lands plowed by cannon balls, and harrowed with rifle bullets, and sown with dead men's bones; of men horribly maimed and mangled by lead and steel ”

“ Who Shall Be Punished Nazi group leaders must be the first to be punished. Proof of their guilt is abundant. The armistice terms should simply declare them guilty. It would be farcical to try Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Streicher, Ley or other mass murderers. They have written the evidence of their guilt in blood on every pavement in Europe. The dossiers of the United Nations are bulging with data of their unsurpassed brutality. A trial tribunal should permit them to be heard on the questions of proper identification and the extent of the punishment, but no more. ”

“ In essaying to give in one article even an outline sketch of the crimes of Germany, one is perplexed by the many different kinds of atrocities, and the great mass of instances and proofs bearing upon them. Out of it all there thrusts up the ugly fact, like a spear from a pile of corpses, that many of these crimes were committed intentionally, with malice aforethought, and often were deliberately ordered by German officers, both high and low. ”

“ After all we know today, it is an irrefutable fact that Hitler and his accomplices terrorized the German Nation and the whole world in a criminal way and with criminal means, that from the beginning they were an immediate peril to peace and all civilization and that finally the worst apprehensions turned to ghastly reality. Therefore the first prerequisite for the defense of “necessity” is beyond all doubt a present illegal attack on the highest goods of mankind. ”

“ Military Necessity does not admit of cruelty—that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge;—nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions ”

“ Military Necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of the armed enemies, and of those whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor ”

“ When I speak of necessity, I mean that overruling compulsion which cannot be disobeyed. In the present case it is compounded of moral duty and the instinct of self-preservation. The moral duty to perform these promises is plain as the Decalogue. The instinct of self-preservation, impelling us to save the Republic, is in harmony with the requirement of moral duty. In denying justice now, you are not only guilty of grievous wrong, but you expose your country to incalculable calamity. ”

“ The truth is that the necessity contrary to morality, which must be avoided and which would render punishment unjust, is an insuperable necessity, which would render all opposition unavailing, even though one should wish with all one's heart to avoid the necessary action, and though one should make all possible efforts to that end. ”

“ Do we now say, “Well, never mind, let’s just sit on our hands and ignore the atrocities taking place”? This is not just any ordinary convention; it is a convention on genocide and the abuse of basic morality. Some say, “What’s the difference between being killed by an artillery shell or by sarin gas?” With everything in life there is a red line—a straw that breaks the camel’s back—and, to me, this is it. In my judgment, faced with the mass murder of innocent civilians, doing nothing is not an option. ”

“ It is true that the moral consciousness of the world must recognize the importance of removing injustices and well-founded grievances; but at the same time it must be aroused to the cardinal necessity of honoring sanctity of treaties, of respecting the rights and liberties of others and of putting an end to acts of international aggression. ”

“ What is evident is that a morality which desired to introduce into war the maxims of peace would be a morality for lambs fit for the slaughter, not for men who wish to repel injustice and to maintain their rights. 'And if men were all good, this precept would not be good, etc., etc.' says Machiavelli himself. (Principe, ch. xviii) . Villari is also troubled by the old formula concerning the 'end which justifies the means' and the 'moral end' and the 'immoral means'. ”

“ They apologised for past occurrences, first showing they had been compelled by necessity, then blaming the malignity of others, or the rage of the populace, and their just indignation, and enlarging on the unfortunate condition of those who are compelled either to fight or die; saying that, since every extremity is endured in order to avoid death, they had suffered war, interdicts, and other inconveniences brought upon them by recent events, that their republic might escape slavery, which is the death of free cities. ”

“ What is the mass? Most people think of the mass in terms of numbers-like a crowded street or a football stadium. But it is actually structure which determines its character. The mass is an aggregate of couples who are separate, detached and anonymous. They live in cities, physically close yet socially apart. Their lives are privatized and depraved. Coca-Cola and loneliness. The social existence of the mass-its rules and regulations, the structuring of its status roles and leadership-are organized through consumption (the mass market) . ”

“ Upon whatever system we proceed, I fear it must be conceded as a fact, that there is a singular propensity in the mass of mankind to consider their own pains and pleasures before those of other men; and that this propensity must interfere with the cool course of moral calculation which the system of utility must consider as indispensable. ”

“ One of them is a thing Tiglath-Pileser sometimes says—that it is stupid to talk about the aggregate of human woe, since all the pain as well as all the pleasure of the world is summed up in the individual and limited by him. A battle is really no more than the killing of a soldier, a famine is comprised in a death by starvation. The [65] unit of experience refuses to merge in the mass; you cannot multiply beyond one. I do not think much of this emollient, but such as it is I will apply it if another coolie comes in with charcoal. ”

“ We are all living in a mass society. We didn’t get that way by accident. The mass is a specific form of social organization. The reason is clear. Consumption is organized by the corporations. Their products define the mass. The mass is not a cliche-the “masses”-but a routine which dominates your daily life. Understanding the structure of the mass market is the first step toward understanding what happened to the class struggle. ”

“ Our conclusion is that the same unlawful acts of violence which constituted war crimes under count one of the indictment also constitute crimes against humanity as alleged in count three of the indictment. Having determined the defendant to be guilty of war crimes under count one, it follows, of necessity, that he is also guilty of the separate offense of crime against humanity, as alleged in count three, and this Tribunal so determines. ”

“ Atrocities or offenses against persons or property constituting violations of the laws or customs of war, including but not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose, of civilian population from occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity. ”

“ I read the passage which deals with the forced labor of civilians and prisoners of war, which is found on Page 6 of the German original, Page 7 of the French translation:
“Use of prisoners of war and civilians for war work, (construction of roads, digging trenches, making munitions, employment in transport, et cetera) .” ”

“ Military necessity requires that all targets are proper military targets, i.e., they possess a military attribute, the destruction of which provides a military advantage. Proportionality refers to whether any expected collateral damage is excessive in comparison to the overall military value of the target. Discrimination requires Soldiers to employ force in a manner that properly distinguishes between lawful targets and unlawful targets. ”

“ Cela paraitrait evident pour une intelligence qui sera en etat de saisir et d'apprecier toutes las actions at reactions des esprits at des corps de ceux qui contribuent a cette revolution.'—"Systeme de la Nature", volume 1, page 44.
6. 198:—
Necessity! thou mother of the world!
He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity means that, contemplating the events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or act in any other place than it does act. ”

“ Man is a little exaggerated animal that—fortunately—has had its day; life on the earth is only a moment, an episode, an exception without consequence, something that has almost no significance for the total character of the earth; the earth itself, like every star, is a hiatus between two nothings, an event without plan, reason, will, self-consciousness, the worst kind of necessity, stupid necessity. ”

“ We are not to call the vivifying and superintending principle of creation by the name of God, because impostors have belied his character, and villains have abused his attributes; but we are to get rid of all difficulty and doubt, by hailing "Necessity" as the "Mother of the world!" Will it be thought too indecorous by the partizans of Mr. Shelley, if we proceed to make a little enquiry as to the origin of this prolific necessity? A necessity is generally defined to be an effect, arising out of a cause! What cause gave birth to this Necessity? What made Necessity the mother of the world? ”

“ Free-will, coupled with the universal rule of Chance; or Fatalism and Necessity, coupled with Omniscience and fixed and unalterable Law,—these are the alternatives, between which the human mind has eternally vacillated. The Supernaturalists, contemplating a Being acting through impulse, though with superhuman wisdom, and considering the best courtier to be the most favored subject, combines contradictory expedients, inconsistently mixing the assertion of free action with the enervating service of petition ”

“ If, in foreign invasion or civil war, the courts are actually closed, and it is impossible to administer criminal justice according to law, then, on the theatre of active military operations, where war really prevails, there is a necessity to furnish a substitute for the civil authority, thus overthrown, to preserve the safety of the army and society; and as no power is left but the military, it is allowed to govern by martial rule until the laws can have their free course. ”

“ But I am well aware of the excuse which men, ever ingenious in devising mischief to themselves as well as others, offer in extenuation of their conduct in going to war. They allege, that they are compelled to it; that they are dragged against their will to war. I answer them, deal fairly; pull off the mask; throw away all false colours; consult your own heart, and you will find that anger, ambition, and folly are the compulsory force that has dragged you to war, and not any necessity; unless indeed you call the insatiable cravings of a covetous mind, necessity. ”

“ It is generally the case that what we most ardently desire is as ardently withheld from us by those who wish to obtain it, or from whom we attempt to snatch it. Thus, the greater number of a man's errors come before him disguised under the specious form of necessity ”

“ And so, in politics, it is the sure law that every excess shall generate its opposite; nor does he deserve the name of a statesman who strikes a great blow without fully calculating the effect of the rebound. But such calculation was infinitely beyond the reach of the authors of the Reign of Terror. Violence, and more violence, blood, and more blood, made up their whole policy. ”

“ To exist a single instant, they are and always will be by fatality reduced to improvise a despotism without other reason of existence than necessity, and which, consequently, is violent and blind as Necessity. We escape from the harmonious monarchy of Reason, only to fall under the irregular dictatorship of Folly. ”

“ Patriotism and military honour were indissolubly connected in the Roman mind. They were the two sources of national enthusiasm, the chief ingredients of the national conception of greatness. They determined irresistibly the moral theory which was to prove supreme.
Now war, which brings with it so many demoralising influences, has, at least, always been the great school of heroism. It teaches men how to die. It familiarises the mind with the idea of noble actions performed under the influence, not of personal interest, but of honour and of enthusiasm. ”

“ But the moral harm of war is no less conspicuous than the physical. It fosters cruelty, callousness, contempt of life; it kills sympathy and the gentler virtues; it coarsens and leads almost inevitably to sensuality. After a war there is always a marked increase in crime and sexual vice; ex-soldiers are restless, and find it hard to settle down to a normal life. ”

“ And since war is slaughter, it might be apropos to remark on the morality of such killing as is done on the field of battle and of war in general.
In every war there is a right side and a wrong side; sometimes, perhaps, more frequently, there is right and wrong on both sides, due to bungling diplomacy and the blindness of prejudice. But in every case justice demands the triumph of one cause and the defeat of the other. To determine in any particular case the side of right and justice is a very difficult matter. ”

“ It is curious to see one and the same mind justify the killing of thousands of men in battle because it is done according to the laws of war, and yet condemning that same law when, out of regard for justice, and with the hope of saving life, it orders a military trial before the enemy are killed. The love of law, of justice, and the wish to save life and suffering should impel all good men in time of war to uphold and sustain the existence and actions of such tribunals. ”

“ The conclusion is that when an action is characterised by an extraordinary absence of compassion, it bears the certain stamp of the deepest depravity and loath- someness. Hence Compassion is the true moral incentive. ”

“ Cruelty, which means the maximum deficiency in Compassion, is the mark of the deepest moral depravity. Therefore the real moral incentive must "be Compassion.
(3) Compassion is the only thoroughly effective spring of moral conduct.
(4) Limitless Compassion for all living things is the surest and most certain token of a really good man. ”

“ Who will refuse to admit that it is constantly preventing much wrong, and calling into existence many a good action, often quite unexpectedly, and where there is no hope of reward ? Is there any one who will gainsay the fact that, where it and it alone has been operative, we all with deep respect and emotion unreservedly recognise the presence of genuine moral worth ?
(4) Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. ”

“ Moral systems must be compelled first of all to bow before the GRADATIONS OF RANK; their presumption must be driven home to their conscience--until they thoroughly understand at last that it is IMMORAL to say that 'what is right for one is proper for another.'"--So said my moralistic pedant and bonhomme. ”

“ There is MASTER-MORALITY and SLAVE-MORALITY,--I would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilizations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities, but one finds still oftener the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close juxtaposition--even in the same man, within one soul. The distinctions of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly conscious of being different from the ruled--or among the ruled class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts. ”

“ Action supposes a 'motive,' a 'volition,' and an 'external act' or muscular contraction. So far there is nothing moral. But then an act has consequences, good or bad, to human beings, which constitute its utility. To make it moral, the agent must anticipate 'beneficial consequences,' and must have no reason to anticipate a balance of evil consequences. Intention means the calculation of consequences, and without that calculation there can be no morality. ”

“ That which corrupts and debases the community, politically, must also corrupt and debase it morally. The same cause, which, in governments of the numerial majority, gives to party attachments and antipathies such force, as to place party triumph and ascendency above the safety and prosperity of the community, will just as certainly give them sufficient force to overpower all regard for truth, justice, sincerity, and moral obligations of every descripion. ”

“ But it is quite distinct from the great principle of conscience, which directs us to a certain line of conduct on the pure and high principle of moral duty, apart from all considerations of a personal nature,—which leads a man to act upon nobler motives than those which result from the most refined self-love, and calls for the mortification of all personal feelings, when these interfere, in the smallest degree, with the requirements of duty. ”

“ We are witnessing the break-up and transformation of an institution integral to modern society-the mass market. The mass market is a corporate structure which few people arc sufficiently aware of to realize how it affects our political life. We really do depend on our “leaders," whether they be the Chicago 7 or 7 Lip. Our understanding of the collective form of organization is based on a critique of the mass and the dictatorship of the product. ”

“ They are all products of a specific social organization. Ours.
Of course, no one sees themselves as part of the mass. It’s always others who are the masses. The trouble is that it is not only the corporations which organize us into the mass. The “movement” itself behaves as a mass and its organizers reproduce the hierarchy of the mass.
Really, how do you fight fire? With water, of course. The same goes for revolution. We don’t fight the mass (market) with a mass (movement) . We fight mass with class. Our aim should not be to create a mass movement but a class force. ”

“ The collective is the organizational nucleus of a classless society. As a formal organization it negates all forms of hierarchy. The answer to alienation is to make yourself the subject, not the object, of history.
One of the crucial obstacles to the formation of collectives is the transitional period-when the collective must survive side by side with a disintegrating movement and a mass society. The disintegration of the movement is not an isolated phenomenon but reflects the weakening of the major institutions in American society responsible for our alienation. ”

“ Rarely, do people prepare themselves for a meeting, nor do they feel the need to. Often this situation does not become evident precisely because the few people who do work (those who run the meeting) create the illusion of group achievement.
Because people see themselves essentially as objects and not as subjects, political activity is defined as an event outside them and in the future. No one secs themselves making the revolution and. therefore, they don’t understand how it will be accomplished.
The short span of attention is one tell tale symptom of instant politics. ”

“ Slowly you realize that you have become a spectator, an object. Your politics take place on a stage and your social relations consist of sitting in an audience or marching in a crowd. The fragmentation of your everyday experience contrasts with the spectacular unity of the mass.
By contrast, the priority of local action is an attempt to unify everyday life and fragment the mass. This level of consciousness is a result of rejecting the laws of mass behavior based on Leninism and TV ideology. It makes possible an enema of the brain which everyone so desparately needs. ”

“ These considerations ought to teach us that justice to others and to ourselves is the same; that we cannot define our duties by mathematical lines ruled by the square, but must fill with them the great circle traced by the compasses; that the circle of humanity is the limit, and we are but the point in its centre, the drops in the great Atlantic, the atom or particle, bound by a mysterious law of attraction which we term sympathy to every other atom in the mass; that the physical and moral welfare of others cannot be indifferent to us ”

“ The dominant issue will be how collectives can become part of history -how they can become a social force. There is no guarantee and we should promise no easy victories. The uniqueness of developing collectives is their definitive break with all hierarchic forms of organization and the jeconstructing of a classless society. ”

“ The small group can be a stage in the development of the collective, if it developes a critique of the frustrations stemming from its external orientation. The formation of a collective begins when people not only have the same politics but agree on the method of struggle.
Why should the collective be the primary form of organization? The collective is an alternative to the existing structure of society. Changing social relations is a process rather than a product of revolution. In other words, you make the revolution by actually changing social relations. ”

“ Assuming a group has decided what it wants to do, the first step is for everyone to investigate. This means taking the time to actually look into the matter, sort out the relevant materials and be able to make them accessible to everyone in the collective. The motive underlying all preparation should be the construction of a coherent analysis. ”

“ The basic idea is to reproduce the collective, not expand it. The strength of a collective lies in its social organization, not its numbers. Once you think in terms- of recruiting, you might as well join the Army. The difference between expansion and reproduction is the difference between adding and multiplying. The first bases its strength on numbers and the second on relationships between people.
Why should there be a limit to size? Because we are neither supermen nor slaves. Beyond a certain point, the group becomes a meeting and before you know it you have to raise your hand to speak. ”

“ By all means, the collective also communicates with other people, but it never views them as a mass-as a constituency or audience. The collective communicates with individuals in order to encourage self-organization. It assumes that people are capable of self-organization and given that alternative they will choose it over mass participation. The collective knows that it takes time to create new forms of organization. It simply seeks to hasten the crumbling of the mass. ”

“ The thinking of radical organizers is frozen in the concept of a mass movement. This form of struggle, no matter how radical its demands, never threatens the basic structure-the mass itself.
Under these circumstances it takes great effort to imagine new forms of existence. Space must be created before we can think of these things and be able to establish the legitimacy of acting upon them.
The form of a collective is its practice. The collective is opposed to the mass. It contradicts the structure of the mass. The collective is anti-mass. ”