tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/mass-violence-20963/articlesMass violence – The Conversation2022-08-31T12:29:18Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1895252022-08-31T12:29:18Z2022-08-31T12:29:18ZUnknown Holocaust photos – found in attics and archives – are helping researchers recover lost stories and providing a tool against denial<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481646/original/file-20220829-18-44snrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C2%2C797%2C541&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jewish deportees march through the German town of Würzburg to the railroad station on April 25, 1942.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa6232">US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The summer of 2022 marked the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/deportations-to-killing-centers">80th anniversary of the first Nazi deportation</a> of Jewish families from Germany to Auschwitz. </p>
<p>Although the Nazis deported hundreds of thousands of Jewish men and women, for many places where those tragic events happened, no images are known to document the crime. Surprisingly, there’s not even photographic evidence from <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/berlin">Berlin, the Nazi capital and home to Germany’s largest Jewish community</a>.</p>
<p>The lack of known images is important. Unlike in the past, historians now agree that photographs and film must be taken seriously as primary sources for their research. These sources can complement the analysis of administrative documents and survivor testimonies and thus enrich our understanding of Nazi persecution.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1020030">a historian originally from Germany and now teaching in the U.S.</a>, I have researched the Nazi persecution of the Jews for 30 years and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aug_8D0AAAAJ&hl=en">published 10 books on the Holocaust</a>.</p>
<p>I searched for unpublished images in all the archives I visited during my research. But I have to admit that I – along with many of my colleagues – did not take the gathered visual evidence seriously as a primary source and rather used it to illustrate my publications. </p>
<p>During the past decade, scholars have realized how pictures can contribute to our understanding of mass violence as well as the resistance to it. Some can provide the only evidence we have about an act of persecution – for example, a photograph of anti-Jewish graffiti. Others will reveal additional details, as in the image of a court proceeding against anti-Nazi resistors. </p>
<p>Photographs are now in some cases the sole objects of scholarly inquiry. They are used to identify perpetrators and victims in specific cases, when other sources would not reveal them.</p>
<p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip">Here’s one example: An image shows</a> uniformed Nazis standing in front of a passenger train filled with German Jews in Munich on Nov. 20, 1942. Who were those men? More importantly, what are the stories of the barely recognizable victims behind the windows in this image?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Soldiers watching a train filled with people as a person is pushed onto it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The deportation of Munich Jews to Kowno in Nazi-occupied Lithuania, Nov. 20, 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">City Archive Munich, DE-1992-FS-NS-00015</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Investigating photos of Nazi deportations</h2>
<p>Between 1938 and 1945, more than 200,000 people were <a href="https://www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch/chronology/view.xhtml?lang=en">deported</a> from Germany, mainly to ghettos and camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. </p>
<p>To make pictures of Nazi deportations accessible for research and education, a group of university, educational and archival institutions in Germany and the Dornsife <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cagr">Center for Advanced Genocide Research</a> at the University of Southern California launched the <a href="https://lastseen.arolsen-archives.org/en/">#LastSeen Project — Pictures of Nazi Deportations</a> in October 2021.</p>
<p>This effort aims to locate, collect and analyze images of Nazi mass deportations in Germany. The deportations started with the forced expulsion of around 17,000 Jews of Polish origin in October 1938, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht">right before the widespread antisemitic violence of Kristallnacht</a>, and culminated in the mass deportations to Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe between 1941 and 1945. </p>
<p>The mass deportation targeted not only Jews, but also people with disabilities as well as tens of thousands of Romani.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Hundreds of people being marched down a village street, while onlookers watch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Romani families, in total 490 people, from Germany’s southwest border region are deported to Nazi-occupied Poland, May 22, 1940.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Research Office for Racial Hygiene, Federal Archive Germany, Barch R 165, 244-42.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What can we learn from the pictures? Not only when, where and how these forced relocations took place, but who participated, who witnessed them and who was affected by the persecution acts.</p>
<p>I work with the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research to manage the outreach for the #LastSeen Project in the English-speaking world. The project has three main goals: first, gathering all existing pictures. These images will then be analyzed to identify the victims and perpetrators and recover the stories behind the pictures. Finally, a digital platform will provide access to all the images and unearthed information, both enabling a new level of study of this visual evidence and establishing a powerful tool against Holocaust denial.</p>
<p>When the project began, the partners were skeptical of whether we would find a significant number of never-before-seen images of mass deportations. </p>
<p>But after addressing the German public and querying 1,750 German archives, within the first six months of the project we received dozens of unknown images, more then doubling the number of German towns, from 27 to over 60, where we now have photographs documenting Nazi deportations. </p>
<p>Many of these photos had collected dust on shelves in local archives in Germany, and some were found in private homes. In the future, the project hopes for discoveries in archives, museums and family possession in the U.S. and the U.K., but also in Canada, South Africa and Australia. We know that liberators took photographs with them from Germany at the end of the war, and survivors received them later via various channels. </p>
<h2>Tracing unknown images beyond Germany</h2>
<p>The project has already located photos in the United States. In two cases, survivors had donated them to archives, which project staff learned during research visits. <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn671780">Simon Strauss gave an image</a> to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum depicting the deportation in his German hometown of Hanau. He wrote on it, “Uncle Ludwig transported.” The second photo was at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, which had received the hitherto <a href="https://digipres.cjh.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE9435726">only known picture</a> from the Nazi deportation of the Jews in Bad Homburg. </p>
<p>To locate more photos, the project counts on the help of ordinary citizens, researchers, archivists, museum curators and survivors’ families. </p>
<p>After joining the project, I searched the <a href="https://vhaonline.usc.edu/login">USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive</a>, which holds over 53,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Many of the Jews who gave testimony talked about Nazi deportations. All interviewees shared photographs. While many of these more than 700,000 images are artifacts of personal value, such as family and wedding photos, some images depict Nazi persecution.</p>
<p>Within minutes of my search using the term “deportation stills” I was staring at photographs showing a Nazi deportation in a small town in central Germany. At the end of his 1996 interview, Lothar Lou Beverstein, born in 1921, shared two photographs from his hometown of Halberstadt that he had received from friends after the war. Beverstein identified his father, Hugo, and his mother, Paula, <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip">in an image showing Nazis lining up deportees</a> in front of the city’s famous 13th-century Gothic cathedral.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large group of people assembled on the street in front of a timbered building and a large church, with people watching them on the other side of the street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jewish families from Halberstadt, Germany, assembled for deportation from the city, April 12, 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/vha17046">USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Lou Beverstein interview.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both of Lou Beverstein’s parents were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto on April 12, 1942. In his interview, Beverstein declared that to his knowledge nobody survived from that transport, which according to a list consisted of 24 men, 59 women and 23 children. Now the project needs to locate Lou Beverstein’s family in the United States or connect to other descendants from Halberstadt to find out more about the origins of the images and the identities of the deportees depicted in them. </p>
<h2>Naming and recognizing victims</h2>
<p>The identities of deportees and perpetrators in the existing images are often unknown. Most photographs show groups of victims whom project staff aim to identify so they and their stories can be acknowledged. This is very difficult, since there are seldom close-up shots.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two young girls in winter coats and hats, both wearing Jewish stars on their coats." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1769%2C1254&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two Jewish girls awaiting deportation in Munich on Nov. 11, 1942. Their identities are not known.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">City Archive Munich DE-1992-FS-NS-00013</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even in a <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1">photograph clearly showing two Jewish girls</a>, we do not know anything other than that the Gestapo deported them to Kowno with the same transport <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip">depicted in the image showing Munich Jews being deported</a> referenced at the beginning of this article. The nearly 1,000 deportees from Munich were shot soon after they arrived at their destination in Nazi-occupied Lithuania.</p>
<p>This is but one example of how scholars desperately need the public’s help to recover the stories of countless unidentified victims of the Nazis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wolf Gruner directs the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, which is a partner institution in the LastSeen project. </span></em></p>Holocaust scholars long relied on documents and survivor testimonies to help reconstruct the history of that tragic event. Now, they’re turning to wordless witnesses to learn more: pictures.Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History; Founding Director, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1628072021-07-06T12:10:32Z2021-07-06T12:10:32ZWhy reparations are always about more than money<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408012/original/file-20210623-27-16s0rs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C13%2C1005%2C663&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Consulting with the communities that have suffered the most harm from past acts of mass violence is a key part of a successful reparations process. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RacialInjusticeReparationsColleges/c9fd2db8c55f4af6a080806e6cfc78db">Steven Senne/AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Between 1904 and 1908, German soldiers and settler colonists killed about half of all Nama people and over 80% of the Herero ethnic group. On May 28, 2021, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/africa/germany-recognizes-colonial-genocide-namibia-intl/index.html">acknowledged that Germany committed genocide in what is today Namibia</a>. Maas’ statement was Germany’s first official description of these events as “genocide.” Maas also announced that Germany would pay Namibia roughly US$1.3 billion to answer for these crimes. Many refer to this gesture as reparations.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409531/original/file-20210702-25-1fkfwzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A photo from 1904/5 showing Herero captives in chains." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409531/original/file-20210702-25-1fkfwzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409531/original/file-20210702-25-1fkfwzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409531/original/file-20210702-25-1fkfwzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409531/original/file-20210702-25-1fkfwzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409531/original/file-20210702-25-1fkfwzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409531/original/file-20210702-25-1fkfwzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409531/original/file-20210702-25-1fkfwzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Germany recently acknowledged that it committed genocide in what is today Namibia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/german-south-west-africa-herero-rebellion-captives-in-news-photo/545722415?adppopup=true">ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, in the United States, <a href="https://theconversation.com/revisiting-reparations-is-it-time-for-the-us-to-pay-its-debt-for-the-legacy-of-slavery-151972">reparations to Black Americans</a> for slavery are gaining traction. A growing number of universities, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/us/georgetown-slavery-reparations.html">including Georgetown</a> and <a href="https://vts.edu/mission/multicultural-ministries/reparations/">Virginia Theological Seminary</a>, along with a few cities such as <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article244688107.html">Asheville, North Carolina</a>, have started reparations programs. In April, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/us/house-reparations-bill.html">U.S. House of Representatives voted</a> to <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/40">advance a bill</a> exploring reparations at the national level.</p>
<p>As a scholar who <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/i-gmap/index.html">researches</a> how societies deal with histories of mass atrocities and also <a href="http://www.auschwitzinstitute.org/">works with governments</a> on policies to protect those at risk, I argue that past atrocities do not end when the physical violence comes to an end. The violence <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/resonant-violence/9781978825550">continues to affect</a> the social, cultural and economic lives of those targeted far into the future – making societies sometimes turn to reparations.</p>
<h2>What are reparations?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ictj.org/our-work/transitional-justice-issues/reparations">Reparations are</a> part of a set of tools that societies use to respond to past mass violence. Often called <a href="https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice">transitional justice</a>, these tools also include things like <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Unspeakable-Truths-Transitional-Justice-and-the-Challenge-of-Truth-Commissions/Hayner/p/book/9780415806350">truth commissions</a>, <a href="https://www.ictj.org/our-work/transitional-justice-issues/criminal-justice">criminal trials</a> and <a href="https://www.ssrc.org/publications/view/57EFEC93-284A-DE11-AFAC-001CC477EC70/">institutional reform</a>. </p>
<p>Transitional justice has emerged from international human rights laws requiring United Nations member states to <a href="https://www.kairoscanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/UN-Joinet-Orentlicher-Principles.pdf">bring perpetrators of mass atrocities to justice and redress survivors</a>. But many victims never receive reparations, while initiatives that do occur often fall short. </p>
<p>The first major reparations program began in 1952, when 23 Jewish organizations formed the <a href="https://www.claimscon.org/">Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany</a> to seek redress for Holocaust victims and their families. The Claims Conference has gone on to distribute over $80 billion dollars in reparations.</p>
<p>In the 1980s and 1990s, governments themselves began implementing reparations programs. Such Latin American countries as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/ipp0000041">Argentina</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/0199291926.001.0001">Chile</a> offered reparations to victims of the right-wing military dictatorships that engulfed the region during the Cold War. During this period, hundreds of thousands of people in the region suffered disappearance, torture and death because they were deemed to be political subversives. In the 1990s, Central and Eastern European countries like <a href="https://doi.org/10.5840/symposion20163212">Romania</a> and <a href="https://ruj.uj.edu.pl/xmlui/handle/item/238519">Poland</a> began reparations programs to restore property to those who lost it during the Communist era. </p>
<h2>How do reparations work?</h2>
<p>In the United States, when people hear the term “reparations,” they often think of direct payments of money. But there are many forms that reparations can take. “Compensation” is the direct payment of money. “Restitution” is the return of rights and property. “Rehabilitation” includes things like giving victims mental and physical health care. </p>
<p>There are also “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijaa001">symbolic reparations</a>,” such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19962126.2008.11864943">official apologies</a>, <a href="http://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.11.2.1447">public memorials</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137265173_6">holidays or commemorations</a>. </p>
<p>Purely symbolic initiatives may feel empty to victims. Material reparations without public and visible symbolic gestures may feel insufficient. So typically, a successful reparations program includes both. </p>
<p>But so far the Germany-Namibia program, as well as many U.S. efforts, seem to be focusing on material compensation alone. In doing so, they ignore two other important principles of transitional justice: “complementarity,” or the idea that transitional justice works best when multiple tools are used at once, and “consultation.”</p>
<h2>Money is just one part of reparations</h2>
<p>Mass atrocities arise from complex social and political processes that target certain identity groups. So addressing all of their legacies successfully requires many different policy initiatives working hand in hand, or complementarity.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.desaparecidos.org/nuncamas/web/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_282.htm">Argentina</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2019.1668360">Peru</a>, for instance, national truth commissions investigated and brought to light the abuses that victims suffered. The commissions then recommended several forms of material and symbolic reparations to respond to those harms, including payments to victims, official acknowledgments and public memorials. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004377196_020">Cambodia</a>, on the other hand, reparations were ordered by the justices in the <a href="https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/node/39457">Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia</a>. This is a special court set up to try members of the Khmer Rouge regime, which controlled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and was the responsible for the murder of as many at 1.5 million people.</p>
<p>In Germany’s case, the offer of reparations to Namibia is not being complemented by other measures to deal with the past. In fact, the government <a href="https://globalvoices.org/2021/06/10/germany-recognizes-colonial-era-genocide-in-namibia-but-survivors-say-its-not-enough/">refuses to call the payments “reparations” at all</a> and prefers to call it “development aid.” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/germany-agrees-to-pay-namibia-11bn-over-historical-herero-nama-genocide">According to an article in The Guardian</a>, calling the payment “reparations” could open the door for further civil claims against Germany.</p>
<p>When reparations measures aren’t met with initiatives responding to the structural causes of violence, <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2997871">they can be perceived as “blood money,</a>” as victims believe accepting the payment means giving up their right to justice. It may also <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/ipp0000041">cause victims to question their own right to redress</a>. But when accompanied by efforts to seek justice and reform the institutions that violated victims’ rights, I argue, reparations can be a starting point for rebuilding trust and community.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A poster for the exhibition 'German Colonialism' with a historic German spiked helmet displayed outside the German Historic Museum in Berlin, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408016/original/file-20210623-13-1h0y53x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408016/original/file-20210623-13-1h0y53x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408016/original/file-20210623-13-1h0y53x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408016/original/file-20210623-13-1h0y53x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408016/original/file-20210623-13-1h0y53x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408016/original/file-20210623-13-1h0y53x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408016/original/file-20210623-13-1h0y53x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The German and Namibian governments have yet to include many Herero and Nama leaders in the reparations process for Germany’s genocide of the two tribes’ ancestors in the early 20th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GermanyNamibia/e2bc33945ee94c238c7001ea8601eca8">Markus Schreiber/AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Putting survivors at the center</h2>
<p>If a reparations package is determined by political elites behind closed doors, it may fail to restore the trust that has been decimated by past wrongs. So, as argued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/NationalConsultationsTJ_EN.pdf">consultation with the communities that have suffered the most harm</a> must be at the center of determining what reparations look like.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/0199291926.001.0001">In Chile</a>, tens of thousands of victims were tortured during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship for being “political subversives.” Additionally, thousands were disappeared. When victims and their families sought reparations after the dictatorship ended, the government began a thorough consultation process that led to creative solutions. </p>
<p>Based on these consultations, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/NationalConsultationsTJ_EN.pdf">reparations were paid in the form of monthly pensions</a> instead of lump sums. Additionally, reparations included <a href="https://static.pmg.org.za/docs/110331ictj.pdf">funding for the higher education of the children of victims</a>. These solutions may not have been discovered without consulting with victims.</p>
<p>The German package, by contrast, has been primarily negotiated with the Namibian government, which contains few <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/germany-colonial-era-genocide-reparations-offer-not-enough-namibia-vice-2021-06-04/">members of the Herero and Nama ethnic groups</a>. Herero and Nama leaders have responded by calling the German proposal a “<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/germany-officially-recognizes-colonial-era-namibia-genocide/a-57671070">PR stunt</a>.” </p>
<p>In the U.S., Georgetown and the Jesuit priests who run it have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/us/jesuits-georgetown-reparations-slavery.html">pledged $100 million</a> as reparations to the descendants of the enslaved people sold to finance the university. But some descendants have criticized Georgetown’s consultation process. One descendant told the news outlet Quartz that <a href="https://qz.com/2010943/georgetown-and-the-jesuits-slavery-reparations-plan-falls-short/">only around 50 of the thousands of descendants</a> were actually involved in the consultation process.</p>
<p>The modern history of reparations is only a few decades old, but it already demonstrates that reparations are always about more than the money. If the process includes compensation, but ignores complementarity and consultation, the effort may fail to truly answer for the past.</p>
<p>But when all three principles are central, reparations can mean far more than money in someone’s pocket. They can contribute to repairing the social fabric that has been torn apart by mass violence. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerry Whigham is affiliated with the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities. </span></em></p>From Germany to Georgetown, the Global North has a lot to learn about reckoning successfully with past human rights wrongs.Kerry Whigham, Assistant Professor of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1215392019-08-08T21:04:16Z2019-08-08T21:04:16ZWhy do we keep having debates about video-game violence?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287385/original/file-20190808-144851-1ohc3tl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=74%2C141%2C4899%2C3080&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Donald Trump visits the El Paso Regional Communications Center after meeting with people affected by the El Paso mass shooting, Aug. 7, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After the series of tragic mass shootings in El Paso, Tex., and Dayton, Ohio, and shocking murders <a href="https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/07/29/markham-quadruple-murder-suspect-posted-messages-in-online-game-after-deaths/">in Ontario</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/bodies-found-manhunt-fugitives-1.5239053">British Columbia</a>, all on the heels of the horrific events in Christchurch, New Zealand, we once again are having debates about the effects of video-game violence on society. We need to stop.</p>
<p>For police investigators, the presence of video games in the online habits of perpetrators may be one relevant piece of information. But for the rest of us, it’s another example of our <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/sports/trump-violent-video-games-studies.html">emotional reaction trumping</a> (and I don’t use that word lightly) evidence-based research. </p>
<p>I study emerging technologies and digital culture. In our field it’s well-established: <a href="https://www.grandtheftchildhood.com/GTC/Research_Papers_files/OJP%20final%20report%202006.pdf">major studies</a> show <a href="https://div46amplifier.com/2017/06/12/news-media-public-education-and-public-policy-committee/">no link</a> between violent criminal action and violent video games. </p>
<p>There is <a href="https://div46amplifier.com/2017/06/12/news-media-public-education-and-public-policy-committee/">some evidence</a> for a possible increase in aggressive tendencies after playing games for a period of time. Surveys of children find <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673605179525">similar short-term aggressive play</a> when kids watch any violent media (like a Marvel action film) — yet all of this falls radically short of criminal behaviour and violence. </p>
<p>I don’t want to be an apologist for popular-culture media. We can and should make space to talk about the representations of gender-based violence and the representation of people of colour in video games (and in movies and on television). We should have a conversation about the online misogyny of <a href="https://time.com/3512896/gamergate-misogyny-men-anita-sarkeesian/">Gamergate</a>, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/02/26/racism-misogyny-death-threats-why-cant-booming-video-game-industry-curb-toxicity/">game voice-chats</a>, as experienced by anyone who spends time in those online spaces. </p>
<p>But our conversations and our actions should be based on the <a href="https://med104exp.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/2-4-jenkins.pdf">real needs</a> of society for representation and inclusion. They should be based on actual evidence, rather then a scapegoat used to score quick political points.</p>
<h2>Trying to make sense of a violent world</h2>
<p>When we hear about mass shootings in public spaces, we want something tangible to blame, so that we can feel that the world isn’t unpredictable and unsafe. We want to feel like there’s something we can do (as long as that “something” doesn’t seem complicated). </p>
<p>We don’t want to blame systems or cultures of violence, or talk about public health. Those seem unimaginably complicated, intractable and therefore won’t make us feel better. </p>
<p>In the United States, it’s hard to get funding to say anything real. Congress <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-02/quietly-congress-extends-ban-cdc-research-gun-violence">bans the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting research into gun violence</a>. This type of control leaves scholars worried that researching the wrong topic may destroy their careers.</p>
<p>And so journalists, politicians and pundits are left with a demonization of sub-cultures — <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/8/4/20753725/el-paso-dayton-shootings-video-games-gop-mccarthy">in this case video-gaming</a> — instead of talking about systemic issues.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287386/original/file-20190808-144838-1sbjl7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287386/original/file-20190808-144838-1sbjl7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287386/original/file-20190808-144838-1sbjl7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287386/original/file-20190808-144838-1sbjl7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287386/original/file-20190808-144838-1sbjl7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287386/original/file-20190808-144838-1sbjl7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287386/original/file-20190808-144838-1sbjl7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Call of Duty, a long-running video game military shooter series.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Activision</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I collect stories about media panics. In the 1800s, <a href="https://archive.org/details/viewofnervoustem1807trot/page/88">some demonized the novel,</a> fearing it would drive women to ruin. And, going way back, Plato critiqued the <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.1b.txt">invention of writing itself</a>, fearing it would injure our memory. The earliest crusade against video-game violence I know of dates from the ‘70s, for the game Death Race. If your stomach is strong, <a href="https://www.museumofplay.org/blog-wp-images/chegheads-uploads/2012/05/Death-Race-Screenshot-from-ign.com_-300x225.jpg">go online to see the game</a> as archived at the Museum of Play.</p>
<p>But now video games are mainstream. <a href="https://www.theesa.com/esa-research/2019-essential-facts-about-the-computer-and-video-game-industry/">Three-quarters of U.S. households</a> have at least one gamer resident. This is no longer a fringe activity. Pay attention, politicians: those kids who played Death Race? They grew up to be parents and voters. And many still play games.</p>
<p>So if we can’t blame video games, what’s next? </p>
<h2>Looking for solutions</h2>
<p>We have to look deeper and with more focus. Rather than <a href="https://theconversation.com/allowing-mentally-ill-people-to-access-firearms-is-not-fueling-mass-shootings-89336">stigmatizing the mentally ill</a>, researchers at <a href="https://www.theviolenceproject.org/">The Violence Project</a> are studying <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-08-04/el-paso-dayton-gilroy-mass-shooters-data">what we do know</a> about mass shooters, looking at actual data from people and events. They identified four commonalities on the part of the shooters: previous trauma (abuse, neglect, bullying), a recent crisis (loss of a job or a relationship), social contagion (studying the actions of other shooters) and access to weaponry.</p>
<p>To fight the problem, The Violence Project suggests we should:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>End</strong> the practice of media-attention/notoriety (discourage press coverage; don’t share or view videos or manifestos from the scene of a violent act).</li>
<li><strong>Prevent</strong> the normalization of this behaviour (perhaps rethinking <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/business/bulletproof-backpack.html">bulletproof backpacks</a>).</li>
<li><strong>Reduce</strong> access to the type of guns used in these tragedies. </li>
</ul>
<p>Finally, the team found that most mass public shooters telegraphed their intentions in some way — perhaps on a message board, probably via social media. This seems like an area we can actively work to improve. If someone discloses violent action, people online might be uncertain about how dangerous the disclosure is. They may treat it as a joke or worry about damaging their social standing if they speak out. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287389/original/file-20190808-144873-19tz3jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287389/original/file-20190808-144873-19tz3jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287389/original/file-20190808-144873-19tz3jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287389/original/file-20190808-144873-19tz3jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287389/original/file-20190808-144873-19tz3jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287389/original/file-20190808-144873-19tz3jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287389/original/file-20190808-144873-19tz3jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman leans over to write a message on a cross at a makeshift memorial at the scene of a mass shooting at a shopping complex, Aug. 6, 2019, in El Paso, Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/John Locher)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We need more ways to refer people to help without punishment. Users could flag an online post for follow-up by moderators without thinking it will immediately result in a SWAT team being called. A paid trained expert, able to approach people without criminalizing them until deemed necessary could make that determination.</p>
<p>If we start with a community-based public-health approach to people in need, as expensive as that may be, we can perhaps help a wealth of issues at the same time.</p>
<h2>Invest in mental health supports</h2>
<p>While not easy, these are findings we can act on. We can change the way we cover mass-shootings stories in the press. We can name and combat racist, gender-based and anti-immigrant rhetoric where we find it. We can critique, not ban, a culture that supports violence, with our kids, friends and co-workers. </p>
<p>And finally, we can provide long-term interventions across a variety of contexts (in-person, online, international) to connect people with the mental and social resources they need. </p>
<p>Ultimately, a path ahead doesn’t exist solely in the realm of criminalization (<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/05/politics/red-flag-gun-law-explainer-donald-trump/index.html">red flag laws</a>) and restriction (video-game bans), but rather, includes pro-social actions like public health policies and affordable, accessible, community-based mental health supports. </p>
<p>I’m one of the wrong set of experts to call when investigators discover that a mass-shooter played video-games. Bring in those studying mass violence or public health, and let’s put this red herring to rest.</p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=expertise">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121539/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Lachman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stop blaming video games for violent acts, a digital culture expert says. Instead, look to the link with public health to help us deal with a complicated culture of violence.Richard Lachman, Director, Zone Learning & Associate Professor, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1214712019-08-07T13:37:06Z2019-08-07T13:37:06ZMass shootings aren’t growing more common – and evidence contradicts common stereotypes about the killers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287111/original/file-20190806-84210-n7l4h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=474%2C7%2C4266%2C3233&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Just like the memorials after a shooting, some myths are bound to appear.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Texas-Mall-Shooting/14b0fdfd31a74d3bb9cf403b4af69cf9/1/0">AP Photo/John Locher</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When 22 people were killed in El Paso, Texas, and nine more were killed in Dayton, Ohio, roughly 12 hours later, responses to the tragedy included many of the same myths and stereotypes Americans have grown used to hearing in the wake of a mass shooting.</p>
<p>As part of my work as a psychology researcher, I study mass homicides, as well as society’s reaction to them. A lot of bad information can follow in the wake of such emotional events; clear, data-based discussions of mass homicides can get lost among political narratives.</p>
<p>I’d like to clear up four common misconceptions about mass homicides and who commits them, based on the current state of research.</p>
<h2>Violent video games cause mass homicides?</h2>
<p>By Monday morning after these latest shootings, <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?463254-1/president-trump-calls-nation-condemn-racism-bigotry-white-supremacy-mass-shootings">President Donald Trump</a> along with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/sports/trump-violent-video-games-studies.html">other Republican politicians</a> had linked violent video games to mass shootings.</p>
<p>I’ll admit my surprise, since only last year the Trump administration convened a School Safety Commission which studied this issue, among many others. I myself testified, and the commission <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/documents/school-safety/school-safety-report.pdf">ultimately did not conclude</a> there was sufficient evidence to link games and media to criminal violence.</p>
<p>Long-term studies of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01069-0">youth</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0646-z">consistently</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000035">find</a> that violent games are not a risk factor for youth violence anywhere from one to eight years later. And no less than the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1448.ZS.html">U.S. Supreme Court</a> declared in 2011 that scientific studies had failed to link violent games to serious aggression in kids.</p>
<p>A 2017 public policy statement by the American Psychological Association’s <a href="https://div46amplifier.com/2017/06/12/news-media-public-education-and-public-policy-committee/">media psychology and technology division</a> specifically recommended politicians should stop linking violent games to mass shootings. It’s time to lay this myth to rest.</p>
<h2>Mass shooters are male white supremacists?</h2>
<p>Early reports suggest that the El Paso shooter was a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/04/whats-inside-hate-filled-manifesto-linked-el-paso-shooter/">white racist concerned about Latino immigration</a>. Other shooters, such as the perpetrator of the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/03/15/new-zealand-christchurch-mosque-shootings-who-brenton-tarrant/3172550002/">Christchurch, New Zealand</a> attack, have also been white supremacists.</p>
<p>Overall, though, the ethnic composition of the group of all mass shooters in the U.S. is <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-race/">roughly equivalent</a> to the American population.</p>
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<p>Hateful people tend to be attracted to hateful ideologies. Some shootings, such as the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dallas-police-ambush/protests-spawn-cities-across-u-s-over-police-shootings-black-n605686">2016 shooting</a> of police officers in Dallas, were reportedly motivated by anti-white hatred. Other shooters, such as the 2015 <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wife-calif-shooting-victim-believes-husband-targeted-article-1.2458790">San Bernardino</a> husband and wife perpetrator team, have espoused other hateful ideas such as radical Islam.</p>
<p>Most mass homicide perpetrators <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/14/what-do-most-mass-shooters-have-in-common-hint-it-isnt-politics-video-games-or-religion/">don’t proclaim</a> any allegiance to a <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Murder-United-States-Ronald-Holmes/dp/0139343083/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=Mass+Murder+in+the+United+States&qid=1565110526&s=gateway&sr=8-4">particular ideology</a> at all. </p>
<p>Of course, mass homicides in other nations – such as several <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/25/tokyo-knife-attack-stabbing-sagamihara">deadly</a> <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/what-we-know-about-the-knife-attack-in-kawasaki-japan.html">knife</a> attacks in Japan – don’t involve U.S. race issues.</p>
<p>As far as gender, it’s true that most mass homicide perpetrators are male. A minority of shooters <a href="https://www.crimetraveller.org/2017/04/amy-bishop-university-professor-mass-murder/">are female</a>, and they may <a href="https://time.com/4375398/andrea-yates-15-years-drown-children/">target their own families</a>. </p>
<h2>Mental illness definitely is or is not to blame?</h2>
<p>Whether mental illness is or is not related to mass shootings – or criminal violence more broadly – is a nuanced question. Frankly, proponents on both sides often get this wrong by portraying the issue as clear-cut.</p>
<p>As far back as 2002, a <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/preventingattacksreport.pdf">U.S. Secret Service report</a> based on case studies and interviews with surviving shooters identified mental illness – typically either psychosis or suicidal depression – as very common among mass homicide perpetrators.</p>
<p>As for violence more broadly, mental illness, such as <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0016311">psychosis</a> as well as a <a href="http://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-010-9610-x">mixture of depression with antisocial traits</a>, is a risk factor for violent behavior. </p>
<p>Some people suggest mental illness is completely unrelated to crime, but that claim tends to rely on mangled statistics. For instance, I’ve <a href="https://www.amhca.org/blogs/joel-miller/2017/10/03/gun-violence-and-mental-illnessmyths-and-evidence-based-facts">seen the suggestion</a> that individuals with mental illness account for just 5% of violent crimes. However, that assertion is based on research like one <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1557975/">Swedish study that limited mental illness to psychosis only</a>, which is experienced by about <a href="https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/schizophrenia.shtml">1% or less</a> of the population. If 1% of people commit 5% of crimes, that suggests psychosis elevates risk of crime. </p>
<p>It’s also important to point out that the vast majority of people with mental illness do not commit violent crimes. For instance, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291714000695">in one study</a>, about 15% of people with schizophrenia had committed violent crimes, as compared to 4% of a group of people without schizophrenia. Although this clearly identifies the increase in risk, it also highlights that the majority of people with schizophrenia had not committed violent crimes. It’s important not to stigmatize the mentally ill, which may reduce their incentive to seek treatment.</p>
<p>So improving access to mental health services would benefit a whole range of people and, by coincidence, occasionally bring treatment to someone at risk of committing violence. But focusing only on mental health is unlikely to put much of a dent in societal violence.</p>
<h2>Mass homicides are becoming more frequent?</h2>
<p>Mass homicides get a lot of news coverage which keeps our focus on the frequency of their occurrence. Just how frequent is sometimes muddled by shifting definitions of mass homicide, and confusion with other terms such as active shooter.</p>
<p>But using standard definitions, most data suggest that the prevalence of mass shootings has <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767913510297">stayed</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1891/0886-6708.VV-D-16-00039">fairly</a> <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/04/mass-shootings-more-deadly-frequent-research-215678">consistent</a> over the past few decades.</p>
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<p>To be sure, the U.S. has experienced many mass homicides. Even stability might be depressing given that <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/421900-crime-murder-rates-drop-in-big-cities">rates of other violent crimes have declined</a> precipitously in the U.S. over the past 25 years. Why mass homicides have stayed stagnant while other homicides have plummeted in frequency is a question worth asking.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, it does not appear that the U.S. is awash in an epidemic of such crimes, at least comparing to previous decades going back to the 1970s.</p>
<p>Mass homicides are horrific tragedies and society must do whatever is possible to understand them fully in order to prevent them. But people also need to separate the data from the myths and the social, political and moral narratives that often form around crime.</p>
<p>Only through dispassionate consideration of good data will society understand how best to prevent these crimes.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121471/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher J. Ferguson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mentally ill, white supremacist video game-playing men are pushing rates of mass homicide ever higher in the US? The real data is more nuanced than common misperceptions suggest.Christopher J. Ferguson, Professor of Psychology, Stetson University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/986772018-06-25T10:35:06Z2018-06-25T10:35:06ZSchool safety commission should not worry about violence in entertainment media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224279/original/file-20180621-137717-116fux4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Strong link lacking between violence in entertainment and violence in society. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-man-pistol-gun-standing-front-442773577?src=hRRPBgRl1VuH72Cu4Nq0Pw-1-1">Mike Focus/www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On June 21, I testified before Education Secretary Betsy Devos’s school safety commission on the impact that violence in entertainment media has on violence in society. </p>
<p>I’m a psychologist who has studied violent media for 15 years and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C22&q=CJ+Ferguson&btnG=">published dozens of studies</a> on the topic in peer-reviewed journals. </p>
<p>As I told the commission, current evidence suggests that the impact of violence in entertainment media is precisely zero and the commission would be better served attending to other issues.</p>
<p>Here are five main takeaways from my testimony:</p>
<h2>1) Violence down despite more violent media</h2>
<p>Society’s consumption of entertainment violence has been associated with <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jcom.12129">significant</a> <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-33466-001">declines</a> in actual violence in society. The reality is that youth violence has dropped by over <a href="https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/beh5.asp">80 percent</a> over the last 25 years even as society has consumed more violence games and movies.</p>
<h2>2) Media violence is not a risk factor</h2>
<p>A few dozen studies track kids over time to see if entertainment media at an early point in life predicts bullying, youth violence or later arrests. Studies from this pool of research <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272486349_Violent_Video_Games_and_Physical_Aggression_Evidence_for_a_Selection_Effect_Among_Adolescents">generally find</a> that exposure to entertainment violence is not a risk factor for later violent behavior. Instead, issues like <a href="http://christopherjferguson.com/SmithFergusonBeaver.pdf">mental health</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28042897">family environment</a> tend to be real risk factors for youth violence.</p>
<h2>3) Mass shooters don’t consume much violent entertainment</h2>
<p>Data on mass shooters, dating back to a <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/ERIC-ED466024/content-detail.html">2002 U.S. Secret Service/Department of Education report</a> and updated more recently in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313853398_Moral_Combat_Why_the_War_on_Violent_Video_Games_is_Wrong">my work</a> with Villanova’s Patrick Markey, suggest that mass shooters consume less, not more, entertainment violence than <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313853398_Moral_Combat_Why_the_War_on_Violent_Video_Games_is_Wrong">other males their age</a>. Society’s obsession with video games and mass shooters stems from confirmation bias – a psychological phenomenon in which we attend to cases that fit our beliefs and ignore those that don’t, such as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/10/02/police-shut-down-part-of-las-vegas-strip-due-to-shooting/?utm_term=.c8af6c8a7bca">Las Vegas shooting massacre</a> of 2017, a case in which the shooter was a 64-year-old male. Further, even some young shooters, like the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131015095917/http://www.governor.virginia.gov/TempContent/techPanelReport-docs/FullReport.pdf">Virginia Tech</a> and <a href="https://publicintelligence.net/ct-sandy-hook/">Sandy Hook</a> shooters, were found to prefer nonviolent rather than violent games. </p>
<h2>4) Other countries less violent</h2>
<p>Data that look at trends across countries find no relationship between entertainment consumption and societal violence. For instance, some of the most video game-loving countries, such as the Netherlands and South Korea, tend to be among the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/22/if-video-games-spur-gun-violence-its-only-in-the-united-states/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.066c518bdc25">least violent</a>. </p>
<h2>5) No scholarly consensus</h2>
<p>Lastly, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jcom.12182">surveys of scholars</a> make clear there is no consensus that entertainment causes violence. In fact, only a vocal minority of scholars who study media truly believe that entertainment media causes violence in society. If the school safety commission really wants to reduce violence in schools, one thing is absolutely clear to me: Focusing on entertainment violence is entirely a waste of time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98677/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher J. Ferguson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As a federal school safety commission searches for ways to lessen school violence, a psychology professor advises the commission that focusing on violence in entertainment media is a waste of time.Christopher J. Ferguson, Professor of Psychology, Stetson University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/893362018-01-04T04:33:27Z2018-01-04T04:33:27ZAllowing mentally ill people to access firearms is not fueling mass shootings<p>On a quiet Sunday last November, a young man wielding an assault-style weapon took aim at a church in rural Texas, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/us/church-shooting-texas.html">killing 26 people</a>. </p>
<p>In so doing, Devin Patrick Kelley added his name to an ever-growing list of American mass killers and forced the nation to grapple, once again, with gun violence. Kelley’s well-documented <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/us/devin-patrick-kelley-texas.html">history of violence</a> was on full display across the nation’s televisions and print media, and for good reason – <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/193591">prior violence</a> is a significant predictor of gun violence. However, something far more troubling was also making its way into the narrative.</p>
<p>As has been the case with the <a href="http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301557">overwhelming majority</a> of other mass shootings in recent memory, <a href="https://www.click2houston.com/news/sutherland-springs-church-shooter-escaped-mental-health-facility-months-after-attack-on-wife-child">media</a> and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-texas-church-shooting-mental-health-problem-not-guns-situation/">political</a> coverage of Kelley began to focus on his mental health status. And, as has been the <a href="http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302242">case</a> before, this narrow focus on mental illness reignited <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-texas-church-shooting-mental-health-problem-not-guns-situation/">calls for broader restrictions</a> on firearm access for people with mental illnesses, despite evidence that mental illness contributes to <a href="https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.2006.163.8.1397">less than 5 percent of all violent crimes</a> and that most individuals with severe mental illness <a href="https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article-abstract/52/1/62/2258968">do not behave violently</a>. </p>
<p>Still, these calls beg the question: Are mentally disordered people with access to firearms really driving America’s gun violence problem?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160252717300262">Our recent analysis</a> suggests the answer is no. In fact, we found that people with serious mental illness who have access to firearms are no more likely to be violent than people living in the same neighborhoods who do not have mental illnesses. </p>
<h2>The myth of the armed and dangerous mentally ill</h2>
<p>Our study draws on data from the groundbreaking <a href="http://www.macarthur.virginia.edu/risk.html">MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study</a>, a study of individuals who experienced short-term stays in inpatient psychiatric hospitals. These individuals were followed for one year after being released in the mid 1990s. The project represents one of the most comprehensive studies of violence by and against people who suffer from mental illness to date. </p>
<p>In our analysis, we take advantage of the study’s inclusion of a comparison group of individuals without mental illness who were drawn from the same communities as the patient sample. This allows us to compare the risks associated with firearm access for individuals who suffer from mental illness versus those who do not. Respondents were asked if they had committed any violent or aggressive acts toward others over the prior 10 weeks. They were also asked if they had access to firearms, either belonging to them or others in their social networks. Reliance on self-reports of behavior can be problematic because respondents may over or underreport. To improve accuracy, the study also included reports from close family members or friends.</p>
<p>Our analyses show no difference in the risk for violence between the two groups on the basis of firearm access. These findings cast doubt on whether <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/19/2016-30407/implementation-of-the-nics-improvement-amendments-act-of-2007">policies</a> designed to reduce interpersonal gun violence by restricting access based on mental health status are useful.</p>
<h2>Reality of risk</h2>
<p>Our study finds that the reality of firearm-related risk among individuals with mental illness lies not in the potential for harm to others, but in the risk of harming oneself. In fact, we were shocked by the dramatic difference in risk for suicidal thoughts that firearm access posed to respondents with and without mental illness.</p>
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<p>Firearm access was not associated with suicidal thoughts for people in the community sample in our study who did not have mental health problems. On the other hand, firearm access almost doubled the likelihood that respondents with mental illness would experience suicidal thoughts. These findings support <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1047279714001471">prior research</a> indicating that suicide, not homicide, is the most serious firearm-related problem facing individuals experiencing acute mental health crises. This is especially significant given that almost two-thirds of all firearm-related deaths are <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031914-122535">suicides</a>, not homicides. The available data did not allow us to examine attempted or completed suicides – only suicidal thoughts.</p>
<h2>Shooting in the dark</h2>
<p>One of the most disturbing aspects of our study is that it emerges from what amounts to an empirical vacuum. The <a href="http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2013/02/gun-violence.aspx">passage</a> and quiet <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-02/quietly-congress-extends-ban-cdc-research-gun-violence">reauthorization</a> of the Dickey Amendment, an addition to the 1996 federal omnibus spending bill, effectively prohibits federal funding of gun violence research. Since its enactment, scholars have been unable to conduct comprehensive research projects to better understand gun violence. This is partially why our study uses data from the early 1990s.</p>
<p>The Dickey Amendment is also the reason that no comprehensive, nationally representative studies have been conducted in recent years to examine the causes of gun violence. As a result, gun lobbyists have been free to compose the <a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-rocol-nra-hammer-airport-shooting-story.html">narrative of their choice</a>, namely that mass shootings are a mental health problem. We just don’t have enough data to know the causes.</p>
<p>There is certainly an argument to be made for the <a href="https://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-gun-policy-and-research/publications/GPHMI-State.pdf">temporary removal</a> of firearm access for individuals actively experiencing mental health crises. However, the threat of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/10/the-gop-is-making-it-easier-for-mentally-ill-people-to-buy-guns-they-have-a-point/?utm_term=.78076e7ddc16">permanent loss</a> of one’s Second Amendment right could cause harm. People might <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/1674804">avoid treatment</a> for fear of losing their guns.</p>
<p>As individuals with mental illness are further vilified, people experiencing mental health crises may avoid <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/experts-tougher-ny-gun-control-law-may-discourage-therapy/">seeking help</a>, despite being at higher risk for suicide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89336/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After mass shootings, calls go out to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. But data show this solution is misguided.Miranda Lynne Baumann, Doctoral Candidate, Georgia State UniversityBrent Teasdale, Professor and the Department Chair in Criminal Justice Sciences, Illinois State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/856582017-11-22T22:09:32Z2017-11-22T22:09:32ZThe way we tell the story of Hollywood sexual assault and harassment matters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190222/original/file-20171013-3561-6jyds4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hollywood women who have spoken out against sexual harassment</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Reporter Paula Froelich claims she once observed Harvey Weinstein <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/10/18/558495749/harvey-weinstein-is-battling-a-crisis-of-his-own-making">assault a woman at a book party</a>. Her editor responded with, “Maybe it’s not really a story.” </p>
<p>As it turns out, Weinstein and others are becoming a never-ending story, as more women reveal experiences with powerful men – not just in Hollywood, but across multiple industries. This story typically has two acts. First come the women’s reports – followed by the inevitable dismissal and undermining of them.</p>
<p>As a scholar who has <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RWaqL4wAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">studied violence against women for more than 20 years</a> and watched public outrage over harassment and assault wax and wane, my question is: Could this time be different?</p>
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<p>Of course, the volume of reports is new. Never before have we witnessed such an outpouring. It’s also new to see organizations such as the <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/11/03/561781232/npr-management-under-fire-over-sexual-harassment-scandal">newsroom at NPR</a> or the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/business/media/harvey-weinstein-ousted-from-motion-picture-academy.html?_r=0">Academy of Motion Picture Artists</a> hold leadership accountable for failing to act. </p>
<p>But other aspects of this cultural moment are all too familiar. Already, the act of making a report of harassment or assault has been termed <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-young-weinsteining-goes-too-far-20171101-story.html">“Weinsteining,”</a> and the collective action of women who have done the reporting has been termed the <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/veil-silence-falls-weinstein-effect-124803748.html">“Weinstein effect</a>.” The use of these terms removes the women from the stories, and maintains a narrow focus on a singular perpetrator. </p>
<p>These cutesy terms also <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/weighing-the-costs-of-speaking-out-about-harvey-weinstein">diminish the agony</a> women face when deciding whether to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15299730903502912">make a formal complaint</a> to an authority. Those who have been victimized report <a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/240971/original/sable_article.pdf">fear of reprisal or of being disbelieved, and feel shame, guilt and embarrassment</a>. These fears and reactions are evident across women’s recent accounts. Many spoke of years of torment, fear, shame and guilt, including physical reactions like nausea when recalling the event. </p>
<p>Let me be clear. Such fears are rational. Though some actors allegedly victimized by Weinstein or James Toback continued in the industry and found success, many others were excluded from major films, and a good number <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories">left the industry entirely</a>. Other women were encouraged to sign agreements that effectively <a href="https://theconversation.com/taxpayers-are-subsidizing-hush-money-for-sexual-harassment-and-assault-86451">stopped them from telling their own stories</a>.</p>
<p>Another way of undermining women’s reports is to downgrade the women’s experiences from the categories of harassment, sexual assault and rape and instead label them <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-young-weinsteining-goes-too-far-20171101-story.html">abuse, minor bad behavior or innocent miscommunication</a>. For example, the claim that Toback engaged in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/leon-wieseltier-a-reckoning/544209/">“low-level lechery”</a> and not sexual assault is absurd. What <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-toback-follow-up-20171023-story.html">Toback has been accused of</a> – obtaining sexual stimulation or orgasm by rubbing against a person without the person’s consent – is a crime called <a href="https://www.officer.com/investigations/forensics/bloodstain-identification/article/10657993/frotteurism-sexual-assault-or-accidental-encounter">frotteurism</a>.</p>
<h2>No woman is immune</h2>
<p>The victimization of powerful celebrities shows that no woman is immune.</p>
<p>Years of social science data underscore the pervasiveness of sexual violation in women’s lives. The sad truth is that the number of women who have been raped or assaulted in their lifetime has not decreased during the past 30 years, or longer. </p>
<p>An analysis of different studies of women in academia, government, the private sector and the military – representing 86,000 women in all – documented that <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2003.tb00752.x/abstract">58 percent</a> said they had experienced at least one instance of sexually harassing behavior. Recently, researchers at the University of Oregon were surprised to find that <a href="http://pwq.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/04/25/0361684316644838.full">nearly 60 percent of women graduate students</a> reported experiences of sexual harassment. In 2010 the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a> estimated that 20 percent of American women overall have experienced rape. Estimates of rape and attempted rape in higher education students has remained at a steady 20 percent since psychologist Mary Koss’s <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3494755">1987 groundbreaking study</a>. </p>
<p>If we look at Hollywood as a microcosm of society, men like Weinstein and Toback effectively exerted a pattern of intimidation, fear and social control through sexual predation. As author Susan Brownmiller wrote in her classic 1975 book, <a href="http://www.susanbrownmiller.com/susanbrownmiller/html/against_our_will.html">“Against Our Will</a>,” the behavior of these men isn’t about sex – it’s about intimidation, fear and social control. </p>
<p>Diminishing and undermining the process of women bravely reporting experiences of sexual harassment, rape and other forms of sexual assault by calling it “Weinsteining” allows predators to hold onto power. Describing women’s real experiences with words that match the horror they faced is a first step toward dismantling that power and the structures that support it. If more women come forward and name their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/opinion/men-sexual-harassment.html">experiences</a> and others remember that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/opinion/men-sexual-harassment.html">bad manners</a>, assault and harassment are not synonymous, this time may be different. I’m hopeful; but only time will tell.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85658/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah L. Cook received funding from the National Institute for Health, the National Center for Injury Control and Prevention, and the National Institute of Justice.</span></em></p>This story typically has two acts. First come the women’s reports of harassment – followed by the inevitable dismissal and undermining of them. Could this time be different?Sarah L. Cook, Professor & Associate Dean, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/825462017-08-21T10:52:53Z2017-08-21T10:52:53ZWarning signs of mass violence – in the US?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182691/original/file-20170820-7952-1f9a6p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters with opposing views face off at a 'Free Speech' rally in Boston.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Michael Dwyer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-reynosa/why-comparing-donald-trum_b_11097020.html">those who say</a> that comparing President Donald Trump’s rhetoric to that of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/25/the-theory-of-political-leadership-that-donald-trump-shares-with-adolf-hitler">Adolf Hitler</a> is alarmist, unfair and counterproductive. </p>
<p>And yet, there has been no dearth of such comparisons since the 2016 presidential election. Many commentators have also drawn parallels between the conduct of Trump supporters and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-right-hand-salute_us_56db50d8e4b03a405678e27a">Holocaust-era Nazis</a>.</p>
<p>The comparisons continue today, and Trump’s comments in the wake of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-virginia-overview.html">Charlottesville</a> attack show why. The president’s reference to violence on “<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-on-charlottesville-i-think-theres-blame-on-both-sides/">both sides</a>” implies moral equivalence, which is a familiar <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/09/10/moral-equivalence-and-donald-trump/?utm_term=.3c94a721693a">rhetorical strategy</a> for signaling support to violent groups. His comments give white supremacists and neo-Nazis the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/neo-nazi-daily-stormer-trump-charlottesville_us_59905c7ee4b08a2472750701">implied approval</a> of the president of the United States.</p>
<p>Many of these groups explicitly <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/national-socialist-movement">seek to eliminate from the U.S.</a> African-Americans, Jews, immigrants and other groups, and are willing to do so through violence. As co-directors of Binghamton University’s <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/i-gmap/">Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention</a>, we emphasize the importance of recognizing and responding to early warning signs of genocide and atrocity crimes. Usually, government officials, scholars and nongovernmental organizations look for these warning signs in <a href="http://genocidewatch.net/alerts-2/new-alerts/">other parts of the world</a> – Syria, Sudan or Burma. </p>
<p>Has the time come to watch for these warning signs in the United States?</p>
<h2>Is it possible in the US?</h2>
<p>The term “genocide” invokes images of <a href="http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/auschwitzgaschambers.html">gas chambers</a> the Nazis used to exterminate Jews during World War II, the Khmer Rouge <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/08/07/why-the-world-should-not-forget-khmer-rouge-and-the-killing-fields-of-cambodia/?utm_term=.afd11df0ea84">killing fields</a> of Cambodia and thousands of Tutsi bodies in the <a href="http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/052194rwanda-genocide.html">Kagera River</a> in Rwanda. On that scale and in that manner, genocide is highly unlikely in the United States.</p>
<p>But genocidal violence can happen in the U.S. It has happened. Organized policies passed by elected U.S. lawmakers have targeted both <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/indian-treaties">Native Americans</a> and <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/interactive/slavery-united-states/">African-Americans</a>. The threat of <a href="https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf">genocide</a> is present wherever a country’s political leadership tolerates or even encourages acts with an intent to destroy a racial, ethnic, national or religious group, whether in whole or in part.</p>
<p>The Holocaust took the international community by surprise. In hindsight, there were many signs. In fact, scholars have learned <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/how-to-prevent-genocide/early-warning-project">a great deal</a> about the danger signals for the risk of large-scale violence against vulnerable groups.</p>
<p>In 1996, the founder and first president of the U.S.-based advocacy group <a href="http://www.genocidewatch.org/">Genocide Watch</a>, <a href="http://www.genocidewatch.org/aboutus/bydrgregorystanton.html">Gregory H. Stanton</a>, introduced a model that identified <a href="http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/8stagesofgenocide.html">eight stages</a> – <a href="http://genocidewatch.org/genocide/tenstagesofgenocide.html">later increased to 10</a> – that societies frequently pass through on the way to genocidal violence. Stanton’s model has its <a href="https://africacheck.org/2016/09/15/analysis-genocide-watch-thin-transparency-methodology/">critics</a>. Like any such model, it can’t be applied in all cases and can’t predict the future. But it has been influential in our understanding of the sources of mass violence in <a href="http://makuruki.rw/en/spip.php?article1344">Rwanda</a>, <a href="http://time.com/4089276/burma-rohingya-genocide-report-documentary/">Burma</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/03/15/the-u-s-house-just-voted-unanimously-that-the-islamic-state-commits-genocide-now-what/">Syria</a> and other nations.</p>
<h2>The 10 stages of genocide</h2>
<p>The early stages of Stanton’s model include “classification” and “symbolization.” These are processes in which groups of people are saddled with labels or imagined characteristics that encourage active discrimination. These stages emphasize “us versus them” thinking, and define a group as “the other.”</p>
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<p>As Stanton makes clear, these processes are universally human. They do not necessarily result in a progression toward mass violence. But they prepare the ground for the next stages: active “discrimination,” “dehumanization,” “organization” and “polarization.” These middle stages may be <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=dn8nH-TFEyYC&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=dehumanization+as+predictor+of+genocide&source=bl&ots=1NcxXXnKTO&sig=65w1626sw7v2hAC5NjhZg8Eatco&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6_7fd4d7VAhVMxCYKHYTVDFA4ChDoAQglMAA#v=onepage&q=dehumanization%20as%20predictor%20of%20genocide&f=false">warning signs</a> of an increasing risk of large-scale violence.</p>
<h2>Where are we now?</h2>
<p>Trump’s political rhetoric helped propel him into office by playing on the fears and resentments of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-and-the-rise-of-white-identity-in-politics-67037">electorate</a>. He <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_us_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b">labeled out-groups</a>, hinted at <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/03/politics/trump-conspiracy-theories/index.html">dark conspiracies</a>, winked at <a href="http://mashable.com/2016/03/12/trump-rally-incite-violence/#4xz9X6b1Tiqp">violence</a> and appealed to <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20170427/100-days-trumps-america">nativist and nationalist sentiments</a>. He has demanded discriminatory policies including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/us/politics/trump-travel-ban.html?_r=0">travel restrictions</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/26/trump-just-eviscerated-his-claim-to-being-an-lgbt-ally/">gender-based exclusions</a>. </p>
<p>Classification, symbolization, discrimination and <a href="https://humanrightspolicy.org/2017/05/07/president-trumps-dehumanizing-rhetoric-represents-a-lingering-american-problem/">dehumanization</a> of Muslims, Mexicans, African-Americans, the media and even the political opposition may be leading to polarization, stage six of Stanton’s model. </p>
<p>Stanton <a href="http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/8StagesBriefingpaper.pdf">writes</a> that polarization further drives wedges between social groups through extremism. Hate groups find an opening to send messages that further dehumanize and demonize targeted groups. Political moderates are edged out of the political arena, and extremist groups attempt to move from the former political fringes into mainstream politics.</p>
<p>Do Trump’s implied claims of a moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and counterprotesters in Charlottesville move us closer to the stage of polarization? </p>
<p>Certainly, there are reasons for deep concern. Moral equivalence – the claim that when both “sides” in a conflict use similar tactics, then one “side” must be as morally good or bad as the other – is what logicians call an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Informal-Logical-Fallacies-Brief-Guide/dp/0761854339">informal fallacy</a>. Philosophers take their red pens to student essays that commit it. But when a president is called on to address his nation in times of political turmoil, the claim of moral equivalence is a lot more than an undergraduate mistake. We suggest this is a deliberate effort to polarize, and an invitation to what comes after polarization. </p>
<h2>Responding and preventing</h2>
<p>Polarization is a warning of the increased risk of violence, not a guarantee. Stanton’s model also argues that every stage offers opportunities for prevention. Extremist groups can have their financial assets frozen. Hate crimes and hate atrocities can be more consistently investigated and prosecuted. Moderate politicians, human rights activists, representatives of threatened groups and members of the independent media can be provided increased security. </p>
<p>Encouraging responses have come from the electorate, business leaders, government officials and the international community. Individuals and groups are following the recommendations for action presented in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_ten_ways_to_fight_hate_2017_web.pdf">guide to combating hate</a> in supporting victims, speaking up, pressuring leaders and staying engaged. Business leaders have also <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/08/14/ken-frazier-trump-charlottesville-response/">expressed their discontent</a> with Trump’s polarizing statements. </p>
<p>Local governments are declaring themselves <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/us/judge-blocks-trump-sanctuary-cities.html">sanctuary cities</a> or <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/10/aclus-people-power-project-launch-cities-resistance-effort">cities of resistance</a>. At the national level, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/16/politics/joint-chiefs-charlottesville-racism/index.html">strong statements</a> have been made by leaders of all of the military branches. </p>
<p>Several international leaders have also spoken up. German Chancellor Angela Merkel <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/world/europe/charlottesville-far-right-trump-merkel.html">condemned the racist and far-right violence</a> displayed in Charlottesville, and U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/16/theresa-may-joins-cross-party-criticism-donald-trump-charlottesville-speech">harshly criticized</a> Trump’s use of moral equivalence. </p>
<p>In our assessment, these actions represent essential forms of resistance to the movement toward polarization, and they reduce the risks of genocide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82546/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two genocide and mass atrocity prevention scholars argue Trump’s response to the Charlottesville attack is a red flag.Max Pensky, Co-Director, Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkNadia Rubaii, Co-Director, Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, and Associate Professor of Public Administration, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/727812017-02-22T02:09:38Z2017-02-22T02:09:38ZThreats of violent Islamist and far-right extremism: What does the research say?<p>On a Tuesday morning in September 2001, the American experience with terrorism was fundamentally altered. Two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six people were murdered in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Thousands more, including many first responders, lost their lives to <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/16/9-11-death-toll-rising-496214.html">health complications</a> from working at or being near Ground Zero.</p>
<p>The 9/11 attacks were <a href="https://9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf">perpetrated</a> by Islamist extremists, resulting in nearly 18 times more deaths than America’s second most devastating terrorist attack – the Oklahoma City bombing. More than any other terrorist event in U.S. history, 9/11 drives Americans’ perspectives on who and what ideologies are associated with violent extremism.</p>
<p>But focusing solely on Islamist extremism when investigating, researching and developing counterterrorism policies goes against what the numbers tell us. Far-right extremism also poses a significant threat to the lives and well-being of Americans. This risk is often ignored or underestimated because of the devastating impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.</p>
<p>We have spent more than 10 years collecting and analyzing empirical data that show us how these ideologies vary in important ways that can inform policy decisions. Our conclusion is that a “one size fits all” approach to countering violent extremism may not be effective.</p>
<h2>By the numbers</h2>
<p>Historically, the U.S. has been home to adherents of many types of extremist ideologies. The two current most prominent threats are motivated by Islamist extremism and far-right extremism. </p>
<p>To help assess these threats, the Department of Homeland Security and recently the Department of Justice have funded the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546553.2012.713229">Extremist Crime Database</a> to collect data on crimes committed by ideologically motivated extremists in the United States. The results of our analyses are published in peer-reviewed journals and on the website for the <a href="http://start.umd.edu/publications?combine=ECDB&year%5Bvalue%5D%5Byear%5D=">National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism & Responses to Terrorism</a>.</p>
<p>The ECDB includes data on ideologically motivated homicides committed by both Islamist extremists and far-right extremists going back more than 25 years. </p>
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<p>Between 1990 and 2014, the ECDB has identified 38 homicide events motivated by Islamist extremism that killed 62 people. When you include 9/11, those numbers jump dramatically to 39 homicide events and 3,058 killed.</p>
<p>The database also identified 177 homicide events motivated by far-right extremism, with 245 killed. And when you include the Oklahoma City bombing, it rises to 178 homicide events and 413 killed.</p>
<p>Although our data for 2015 through 2017 are still being verified, we counted five homicide events perpetrated by Islamist extremists that resulted in the murders of 74 people. This includes the <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482322488/orlando-shooting-what-happened-update">Pulse nightclub massacre</a> in Orlando, which killed 49 people. In the same time period, there were eight homicide events committed by far-right extremists that killed 27 people. </p>
<p>These data reveal that far-right extremists tend to be more active in committing homicides, yet Islamist extremists tend to be more deadly.</p>
<p>Our research has also identified violent Islamist extremist plots against 272 targets that were either foiled or failed between 2001 and 2014. We are in the process of compiling similar data on far-right plots. Although data collection is only about 50 percent complete, we have already identified 213 far-right targets from the same time period.</p>
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<p>The locations of violent extremist activity also differ by ideology. Our data show that between 1990 and 2014, most Islamist extremist attacks occurred in the South (56.5 percent), and most far-right extremist attacks occurred in the West (34.7 percent). Both forms of violence were least likely to occur in the Midwest, with only three incidents committed by Islamist extremists (4.8 percent) and 33 events committed by far-right extremists (13.5 percent).</p>
<p>Targets of violence also vary across the two ideologies. For example, 63 percent of the Islamist extremism victims were targeted for no apparent reason. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, often visiting symbolic locations or crowded venues such as the World Trade Center or military installations. </p>
<p>In contrast, 53 percent of victims killed by far-right extremists were targeted for their actual or perceived race or ethnicity. Far-right extremists, such as neo-Nazis, skinheads and white supremacists, often target religious, racial and ethnic, and sexual orientation and gender identity minorities.</p>
<h2>Motives and methods</h2>
<p>There are also differences in violent extremists across demographics, motives and methods. For instance, <a href="http://start.umd.edu/publication/twenty-five-years-ideological-homicide-victimization-united-states-america">data show</a> that guns were the weapon of choice in approximately 73 percent of Islamist extremist homicides and in only 63 percent of far-right extremist homicides. We attribute these differences to far-right extremists using more personal forms of violence, such as beating or stabbing victims to death.</p>
<p>We have also found that suicide missions are not unique to Islamist extremists.</p>
<p>From 1990 to 2014, we identified three suicide missions in which at least one person was killed connected to Islamist extremism, including the 9/11 attacks as one event. In contrast, there were 15 suicide missions committed by far-right extremists.</p>
<p>Our analyses found that compared to Islamist extremists, far-right extremists were significantly more likely to be economically deprived, have served in the military and have a higher level of commitment to their ideology. Far-right extremists were also significantly more likely to be less educated, single, young and to have participated in training by a group associated with their extremist ideology.</p>
<h2>Threat to law enforcement and military</h2>
<p>Terrorists associated with Islamist and far-right extremist ideologies do not only attack civilians. They also pose a deadly threat to law enforcement and military personnel. During the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, 72 law enforcement officers and 55 military personnel were killed by members of Al-Qaida. On April 19, 1995, 13 law enforcement officers and four military personnel were killed when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed by an anti-government far-right extremist in Oklahoma City.</p>
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<p>Outside of these two events, Islamist extremists are responsible for the murders of 18 military personnel in three incidents, and seven law enforcement officers were killed in five incidents between 1990 and 2015. Far-right extremists have murdered 57 law enforcement officers in 46 incidents, but have never directly targeted military personnel. </p>
<p>Far-right extremists, who typically harbor anti-government sentiments, have a higher likelihood of escalating routine law enforcement contacts into fatal encounters. These homicides pose unique challenges to local law enforcement officers who are disproportionately targeted by the far right.</p>
<h2>Moving forward</h2>
<p>The events of 9/11 will continue to skew both our real and perceived risks of violent extremism in the United States. To focus solely on Islamist extremism is to ignore the murders perpetrated by the extreme far right and their place in a constantly changing threat environment. </p>
<p>Some have even warned that there is <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2010.514698">potential for collaboration</a> between these extremist movements. Our own <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2010.514698">survey research</a> suggests this is a concern of law enforcement.</p>
<p>Focusing on national counterterrorism efforts against both Islamist and far-right extremism acknowledges that there are differences between these two violent movements. Focusing solely on one, while ignoring the other, will increase the risk of domestic terrorism and future acts of violence.</p>
<p>Both ideologies continue to pose real, unique threats to all Americans. Evidence shows far-right violent extremism poses a particular threat to law enforcement and racial, ethnic, religious and other minorities. Islamist violent extremism is a specific danger to military members, law enforcement, certain minorities and society at large. It remains imperative to support policies, programs and research aimed at countering all forms of violent extremism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Parkin receives funding from the Department of Homeland Security. He is affiliated with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeff Gruenewald receives funding from the National Institute of Justice. He is also affiliated with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua D. Freilich receives funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). He is affiliated with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) and is a member of its executive committee.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Chermak receives funding from National Institute of Justice. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brent Klein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Data on violent incidents in the US reveal that our focus on Islamist extremism since 9/11 may be misguided.William Parkin, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Seattle UniversityBrent Klein, Doctoral Student, School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State UniversityJeff Gruenewald, Assistant Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs, IUPUIJoshua D. Freilich, Professor of Criminal Justice, City University of New YorkSteven Chermak, Professor of Criminal Justice, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/680292016-11-03T00:17:50Z2016-11-03T00:17:50ZDylann Roof, Michael Slager on trial: Five essential reads on Charleston<p><em>Editor’s note: The following is a roundup of archival stories related to race and violence.</em></p>
<p>Two white men are going on trial this month for shootings that happened in Charleston, South Carolina during 2015.</p>
<p>Michael Slager, a white former police officer, faces a murder charge for killing 50-year-old Walter Scott, a black man who was unarmed. Slager fired eight shots as Scott ran away.</p>
<p>Dylann Roof, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, faces 33 federal charges, including a federal hate crime for massacring nine black churchgoers at an AME church. He is eligible for the death penalty.</p>
<p>As the trials bring back memories of those horrifying events, we look at highlights from The Conversation’s archive.</p>
<h2>A dark past, present</h2>
<p>Parallels between the two shootings and South Carolina’s history of racial violence quickly rose to the surface.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-massacre-at-mother-emanuel-the-past-still-lives-with-us-43597">The past is still with us</a>, writes A.D. Carson, a Ph.D. student at Clemson University.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In 1876, State Senator Simon Coker – who was in Charleston investigating violence against blacks – was seized by a mob and shot in the head as he kneeled in a last prayer. One of the perpetrators of that atrocious event was none other than the eventual governor and senator, Benjamin Tillman, who made his disdain for black people known…”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A statue of Tillman still stands on the grounds of the South Carolina State House in Columbia. Remembering, not honoring, this dark past is important to stop the past from repeating itself, Carson writes.</p>
<h2>A place of hate, hope</h2>
<p>It also was <a href="https://theconversation.com/emanuel-ame-has-long-been-a-target-for-hate-as-well-as-place-of-hope-43601">not the first time</a> the Emanuel AME church was the target of racial violence, writes Sandra Barnes, a religion scholar at Vanderbilt University. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Here are just a few examples of the assaults that took place on Emanuel AME and other churches over the years: white raids; black church services being made illegal in Charleston between 1834 and 1865; the burning of Emanuel AME after the slave rebellion lead by Denmark Vessey; the police harassment of civil rights protesters at Emanuel AME in the 1960s.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Roof’s attack was one of many – part of systemic violence embedded in the state’s history.</p>
<h2>All oppression is connected</h2>
<p>Before opening fire, Roof said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not only are his words deeply racist, they are saturated with a form of sexism that reaches back to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lethal-gentleman-the-benevolent-sexism-behind-dylann-roofs-racism-43534">colonial mentality of entitlement</a>, writes Lisa Wade, a sociologist at Occidental College.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s most clearly articulated in the history of lynching, in which black men were violently murdered routinely by white mobs using the excuse that they had raped a white woman. Roof is the modern equivalent of this white mob.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A vulnerable father</h2>
<p>South Carolina also has struggled with an issue related to Walter Scott’s death – child support. Reports from the Scott case suggest he ran from Officer Slager because he was afraid of being jailed for not paying child support.</p>
<p>In 2011, a case went to the Supreme Court in which a South Carolina man served one year in prison when he failed to pay child support. Incarcerating poor men often makes <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-crisis-revealed-by-the-killing-of-walter-scott-how-were-failing-vulnerable-fathers-40610">a difficult situation much worse</a>, writes Ronald Mincy, professor of Social Policy at Columbia University.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The fear of incarceration bears indirect responsibility for Scott’s death. And Walter Scott was not alone in feeling this fear. At present, there are approximately 9 million nonresident fathers (that is to say, fathers who do not live in the same household as their child or children) of whom over half are economically vulnerable.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A movement grows</h2>
<p>After a video of Scott’s death was released, members of the #BlackLivesMatter movement called for more citizen oversight of policing. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ferguson-and-blacklivesmatter-taught-us-not-to-look-away-45815">This call to bear witness</a> has served as a form of resistance to oppression since the Jim Crow era, writes Nicholas Mirzoeff, professor at New York University.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The #BlackLivesMatter movement that began after the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012 insists not just that we sneak a sidelong glance, but that we pay full attention to the repeated deaths of African Americans. This looking is not a gaze, because it does not claim power over the victims. Rather, it creates the digital form of what Martin Luther King Jr called ‘the beloved community.’”</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68029/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Two major trials in the killings of black victims in South Carolina start this week. Learn about the state’s past and present struggle with racial violence in this roundup.Danielle Douez, Associate Editor, Politics + SocietyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/461402015-12-10T19:14:08Z2015-12-10T19:14:08ZFriday essay: a response to the Cronulla riots, ten years on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105194/original/image-20151210-7467-bketzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cultural context in which class, ethnic and racial tensions explode into open violence must be analysed honestly. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Paul Miller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In mid-December 2005, politicians of all persuasions branded the violent clashes that had just occurred on Sydney’s southern suburbs as “<a href="https://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30043760/halafoff-unaustralianvalues-2006.pdf">un-Australian</a>”. Whether the term was being applied to the racist white thugs who attacked Lebanese beach-goers or to the Chardonnay sippers who defended the “new Australians” right to be there was sometimes not clear.</p>
<p>“Un-Australian” was a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/03/14/1110649126449.html">zeitgeisty linguistic shield</a> a decade ago, successfully wielded by then Prime Minister Howard to fend off accusations that his government insidiously bred divisiveness and enmity among the populace. </p>
<p>(Ousted former Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently tried the same tactics with “<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbotts-team-australia-entrenches-inequality-20140821-106sdk.html">Team Australia</a>” but found the nation’s love of a sporting metaphor had hit a sticky wicket.)</p>
<p>Following the Cronulla riots, Howard looked us straight in the eye and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pm-refuses-to-use-racist-tag/2005/12/12/1134235985480.html">told us</a> that, “I do not accept there is underlying racism in this country”. Howard insisted that people would not “make judgements about Australia on incidents that occur over a period of a few days”. Cronulla was simply an isolated spot fire, a matter of law and temporarily disturbed order.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard holds a press conference in Sydney, following the 2005 Cronulla riots.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dean Lewins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since 2005, the emergence of the <a href="http://www.reclaim-australia.com/">Reclaim Australia</a> movement and <a href="https://www.partyforfreedom.org.au/">The Party for Freedom</a> (tagline: “Sydney is fun: Cronulla is a riot”), among other outbursts of brute bigotry and unalloyed stupidity, suggests otherwise. </p>
<p>But, of course, violent civilian conflict is not a recent trend. You don’t have to dig very deep into Australia’s past to reveal multiple episodes of riotous behaviour. Some might say that the peasants have always been revolting.</p>
<p>In fact, Australia’s key foundation stories have a narrative arc based on the slow simmering of social tension and anxiety culminating in an explosive release of group hostility. Similarly, some of our most iconic spaces are written over by the language and logic of territorialism, resistance and cruelty.</p>
<p>These events and places are not footnotes to our history; not graffiti on a pristine landscape of harmonious national growth and development. The frontier violence that lies at the dark heart of our colonial beginnings is the first clue that Australians have always drawn lines in the sand with blood.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chairman of the Party for Freedom Nicholas Folkes (centre) is confronted by Shayne Hunter (left) as he arrives at the Supreme Court in Sydney, Friday, Dec 4, 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Joel Carrett</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps the armed defence of homeland from an invading force is not strictly riotous behaviour. (The Australian War Memorial <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/australian-war-memorial-should-recognise-revised-aboriginal-death-toll-researcher-20140716-ztqr6.html">doesn’t think it’s military behaviour either</a>, for the record.) It is certainly unlikely that any redcoat or man in blue read the Riot Act before condemning Indigenous Australians to massacre.</p>
<p>But there are plenty of bona fides riots. In March 1804 at Castle Hill, 300 convicts rioted against their captors in the <a href="http://monumentaustralia.org.au/australian_monument/display/22941">Vinegar Hill uprising</a>, otherwise known as the Irish Convict Rebellion. Troops killed nine insurgents and the ringleaders were hanged.</p>
<p>In June 1861 at <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/gold/story.php?storyid=56">Lambing Flat, NSW</a>, 3,000 miners attacked a Chinese camp on the diggings after months of mass protest meetings “for the purpose of taking into consideration whether [the district] is an European gold-field or a Chinese territory”. Tents were burned and the Chinese diggers fled for their lives. The NSW government considered the issue finally settled and restricted Chinese immigration.</p>
<p>The early-closing legislation that ushered in Australia’s infamous “<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/the-6-oclock-swill-wed-not-have-a-bar-of-it-now-20140111-30ns3.html">six o’clock swill</a>” had its origins during the first world war, as a response to a riot among soldiers. </p>
<p>The Liverpool Riot of 1916, otherwise known as the <a href="http://www.sydneyoutsider.com.au/SydneyOutsider/battle-of-central-station/">Battle of Central Station</a>, saw 15,000 returned Australian soldiers (otherwise known as Anzacs) rampage drunkenly through the streets of Sydney. The soldiers looted shops, commandeered pubs and smashed the windows of stores with foreign sounding names. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kalgoorlie after the race riots in 1934.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1934, on Australia Day no less, simmering undercurrents in the Western Australian mining districts erupted in open conflict after a bar room brawl. The <a href="http://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/wa-goldfields/getting-gold/ethnic-riots">Kalgoorlie Boulder race riots</a>, as the episode is conventionally known, began after a young, popular local footballer was knocked down and killed by an Italian barman at the Italian-owned Home from Home Hotel. </p>
<p>What followed, in apparent revenge for a mate’s death, was three days of riotous destruction and looting of hotels, shops and businesses belonging to the Italian and Slav communities. Witnesses reported that the mob “just got out of hand”. At the core of the conflagration lurked the politics of envy (imported European miners earned better wages than their local co-workers) and sensitivity to cultural difference. </p>
<p>One bystander reported that,“our women had to step out of the way when an Italian man walked down the street”. (The Cronulla rioters would use similar logic, claiming to be protecting clean Aussie sheilas from the Lebanese men who said “filthy things” to them at the beach.)</p>
<p>Burning down pubs is so common to the history of Australian political expression that it can almost be called a national pastime. Our most emblematic act of rebellion, the <a href="http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/eureka-stockade">Eureka Stockade</a>, also has its antecedents in the mob attack on a hotel. </p>
<p>In October 1854, a popular young miner was killed by a blow to the head outside Bentley’s Eureka Hotel, on the predominantly Irish-Catholic Eureka lead. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Battle of the Eureka Stockade (1834). JB Henderson. Watercolour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">J. B. Henderson – State Library of NSW. Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The people suspected Bentley, the newly wealthy and well-connected, Irish-Protestant ex-convict publican. When local authorities exonerated Bentley, 5,000 miners converged on the hotel and burnt it to the ground. A subsequent parliamentary inquiry into “the Ballarat riots” found that the incendiary mob included men and women, frustrated at the arbitrary exercise of local justice and the dying hope that the newly appointed Governor Hotham would address miners’ hatred of the iniquitous license fee and lack of access to farming land. </p>
<p>Two months later, Hotham’s law-and-order response to the escalating grievances of the Ballarat population ended in carnage.</p>
<p>In 2004, in the same week as the 150th anniversary of the Eureka rebellion was being commemorated, residents of Palm Island rioted after the death in custody of a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-30/palm-island-riot-footage-shown-to-court-in-class-action-trial/6818074">young Aboriginal man</a>, with chilling echoes of the Redfern riots only ten months earlier. </p>
<p>Both incidents highlighted the “two tribes” mentality that existed between local residents and police in these areas. Informed commentators pointed to the underlying social problems of poverty, unemployment and alcoholism in both communities, problems that successive administrations repeatedly failed to address despite warning signs that intense aggravation was mounting. Blind Freddy, they said, could see it coming.</p>
<p>Riots are not like tsunamis. They do not rise out of nowhere, capriciously assailing all who stand in their way. Riots conform more to the laws of physics than acts of God: pour another teaspoon of liquid into a bowl that has reached its maximum surface tension and the bowl will overflow, no matter whether the last spoonful contained any more bitter medicine than the critical mass below.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man is chased by an angry crowd at Cronulla beach in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 11, 2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Paul Miller</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We might not be able to predict exactly when grievance will spill over into riot, but there are some striking parallels in the episodes here briefly recounted. </p>
<p>Young men. Alcohol. Revenge. Contest over shared terrain, whether between autocrats and democrats, insiders and outsiders, gaolers and inmates. A liminal space – the goldfields, the beach, an island – seemingly ungoverned by the rules of everyday life. The oppressive heat of an Australian summer. The peculiar allure and entertainment of mob activity. A sense of entitlement unfulfilled: golden opportunities, the lucky country, we were here first. </p>
<p>Of course, there are points of difference too. Miners at Eureka were responding to the myriad economic and social cleavages wrought by the rapid change of a gold rush, where convicts would be overnight kings. Residents of Cronulla – the “insular peninsula” – demonstrate a resistance to change, defending their long-held monoculture against a feared invader.</p>
<p>Either way, the lesson is that governments would do better to listen to the word on the street, and act with due diligence and a duty of care to all its citizens, rather than to resort to meaningless jingoism and finger-wagging. </p>
<p>The cultural context in which class, ethnic and racial tensions explode into open violence must be analysed honestly and intelligently, alert to (and alarmed by) the gap between rhetoric and reality, between expectation and delivery.</p>
<p>Australia was never <em>terra nullius</em>. Its streets were never lined with enough gold for all. Boys do not have to be boys.</p>
<p>And clearly, not everyone is relaxed and comfortable, or even optimistic and agile, in our sunny suburbs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46140/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Wright receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Australia’s key foundation stories have a narrative arc based on the slow simmering of social tension and anxiety culminating in an explosive release of group hostility. Was Cronulla any different?Clare Wright, Associate Professor in History, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/482432015-10-01T00:36:23Z2015-10-01T00:36:23ZHow Indonesia’s 1965-1966 anti-communist purge remade a nation and the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96473/original/image-20150928-30986-1sysdn9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C2093%2C1398&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Back in 1965, bodies of victims of the anti-communist massacre floated along the Brantas River in Kediri East Java. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABrantas_140722-44832_kdi.JPG">Wibowo Djatmiko/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Between October 1965 and March 1966, members and supporters of Indonesia’s Communist Party (PKI), the third largest in the world at the time, were hunted down and murdered. Historian Robert Cribb estimates <a href="http://works.bepress.com/robert_cribb/2/">200,000 to 800,000 people</a> were killed.</em> </p>
<p><em>The anti-communist violence brought <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suharto">Suharto</a> to power in 1967, replacing the country’s founding president <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukarno">Sukarno</a>. In the midst of the Cold War, the tragedy changed Indonesia from a fiercely independent Asian nation into a pro-Western country.</em></p>
<p><em>Below historian Asvi Warman Adam explains what happened and the impact it had on Indonesia and global politics.</em></p>
<h2>Who carried out the killings?</h2>
<p>The army, with the help of civilian militias mostly from Islamic groups such as the <a href="http://www.insideindonesia.org/killing-for-god">Nahdlatul Ulama</a> (NU), carried out the murders of communists and their supporters. </p>
<p>The army trained the militias in Central and East Java with a directive to eradicate the PKI “down to its roots”. The militias interpreted this directive freely to encompass everything from arrest to murder. </p>
<p>Before the anti-communist crackdown, Muslim clerics and the PKI were already caught in conflict. The PKI and Indonesia Peasants Front (BTI) had been taking land from religious clerks and owners of Islamic boarding schools to be given to the state for land reform. Before October 1965, NU created a youth militia called Banser (an acronym for multi-purpose front).</p>
<p>Black campaigns that fuelled distrust between the two groups were also swirling around. A recent gathering of <a href="http://www.syarikat.org/en/tags/syarikat-indonesia">Syarikat</a>, a youth NU organisation working on truth and reconciliation for 1965 crimes, revealed that people from NU received a list of their names to be killed by PKI and vice versa. Neither side had a clue about the creator and distributor of the hit lists. It is not hard, however, to suspect the culprit. </p>
<h2>What triggered the downfall of the PKI?</h2>
<p>In <a href="http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/3938.htm">Pretext for Mass Murder</a>, historian John Roosa has provided the most comprehensive analysis on the events of 1965. </p>
<p>In the years leading to October 1965, there were three significant powers in Indonesia: Sukarno, the army, and its rival the PKI. A charismatic independence leader, Sukarno held the powers in balance. </p>
<p>The PKI placed fourth out of 172 political parties in the country’s first national election in 1955. They were popular among farmers because of their programs on land reform. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the army’s political power was also rising following their victory in crushing regional uprisings in 1958. In July 1959, Sukarno released a presidential decree to return to the 1945 Constitution, giving the military seats in the People’s Consultative Assembly. </p>
<p>By 1965, the balance between Sukarno, the army and the PKI became disturbed for three reasons. First, the army and PKI were concerned about Sukarno’s health after he suffered a mild stroke in August 1965. </p>
<p>Second, suspicions about army’s disloyalty grew after a letter allegedly written by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilchrist_Document">British ambassador Andrew Gilchrist</a> surfaced in May 1965. The letter raised the prospect of a joint military intervention in Indonesia with the US that would involve “our local army friends”. Third, there were rumours about a “Generals’ Council”, a group of generals meeting in secret that were planning to stage a coup against Sukarno on October 5, 1965. </p>
<p>The PKI politburo, collaborating with officers from the presidential guard, decided to carry out a pre-emptive move by kidnapping members of the so-called “Generals’ Council”. But the operation went horribly wrong. Instead of arresting the generals to be brought to Sukarno, they killed the generals and dumped the bodies in an unused well. </p>
<p>The operation – the “30th September Movement” – was easily crushed in a matter of hours by Suharto, the commander of the army’s strategic reserve, who proceeded to carry out a witch-hunt against communists and left-leaning groups. </p>
<h2>Where was Sukarno?</h2>
<p>Sukarno did not exactly know what happened on the night of the 30th September. On his way to the presidential palace from the residence of one of his wives, Dewi Sukarno, he saw unknown troops. Presidential guards decided to bring the president to Halim airbase. According to standard operational procedure, in emergency situations the president should be safeguarded to either an airbase or seaport. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96616/original/image-20150929-30964-1o9rkkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96616/original/image-20150929-30964-1o9rkkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96616/original/image-20150929-30964-1o9rkkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96616/original/image-20150929-30964-1o9rkkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96616/original/image-20150929-30964-1o9rkkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96616/original/image-20150929-30964-1o9rkkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96616/original/image-20150929-30964-1o9rkkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Sukarno.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Presiden_Sukarno.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At Halim airbase, Brigadier General Soeparjo, an officer that was part of the 30th September Movement, told the president about the movement that aimed to save Sukarno from a military coup. Soeparjo also told him that some of the kidnapped generals were shot. Upon hearing the report, Sukarno ordered the movement to stop.</p>
<p>Sukarno was aware of the anti-communist killings and condemned them. Between October and December 1965, he called for the killings to end. However, the army by then controlled the media and his speeches were no longer published in newspapers. He was still allowed to give speeches from October 1965 to February 1967. He was banned from giving speeches from then on until his death in 1970.</p>
<h2>What was international community’s role in the killings?</h2>
<p>In 1965, Western countries saw communists as their enemy. They knew of the mass murders but considered them a necessary evil. The Soviet Union mildly condemned the killings. Japan knew but kept silent. </p>
<p><a href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB52/">Declassified US files</a> show that the US supported the anti-communist operations in Indonesia by providing funds and radio devices. The US also gave a list of names of PKI members to the army to be killed.</p>
<p>The UK and Australia were also complicit. Declassified files from the UK showed that UK and Australia carried out <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1468274042000283144">covert operations</a> to spread false, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda">“black propaganda”</a> to encourage hostility against the PKI. The UK had an intelligence office in Singapore that they use to launch an anti-communism campaign. </p>
<h2>How did the violence change Indonesia and the world?</h2>
<p>The mass murder became a watershed moment for Indonesia. It transformed the country’s politics, economy and intellectual culture. </p>
<p>After the anti-communist massacre, Indonesia became very pro-Western. Previously it was an active player in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement">non-Aligned movement</a>. Western and Japanese capital <a href="http://www.scipublish.com/journals/ER/papers/480">flowed into Indonesia</a>, replacing economic co-operation with Eastern European countries. </p>
<p>Indonesia’s intellectual culture became uniform. During the era of Sukarno’s leadership there were many public debates between left- and right-wing intellectuals. In contrast, Suharto did not allow criticism and suppressed any dissent. </p>
<p>The destruction of communism in Indonesia benefited capitalist countries such as the United States and Japan. If the communists had come to power in Indonesia, the US forces in South Vietnam would have been surrounded by communist countries in Southeast Asia. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96614/original/image-20150929-31002-6n62nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96614/original/image-20150929-31002-6n62nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96614/original/image-20150929-31002-6n62nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96614/original/image-20150929-31002-6n62nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96614/original/image-20150929-31002-6n62nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96614/original/image-20150929-31002-6n62nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96614/original/image-20150929-31002-6n62nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Japanese investment entered Indonesia after the crushing of the communist party in Indonesia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Beawiharta</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Prior to 1965, Japan, which occupied Indonesia in the second world war, had very little investment in Indonesia. But after the anti-communist massacre, it became the biggest foreign investor in Indonesia. </p>
<h2>Will there be justice for the victims?</h2>
<p>Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission <a href="http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/07/23/komnas-ham-declares-1965-purge-a-gross-human-rights-violation.html">released a report in 2012</a> declaring the military responsible in gross human rights violation in 1965. There has yet to be a criminal inquiry. </p>
<p>However, there has been gradual progress in the political will of Indonesian leaders to resolving the 1965 tragedy. </p>
<p>In his election manifesto, Indonesian President Joko Widodo promised to solve past human rights abuses. He has incorporated this in his administration’s medium-term plan. </p>
<p>In his national address on August 2015, Widodo called for a national reconciliation. This is a step forward from his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. But how reconciliation will be carried out is yet to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48243/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asvi Warman Adam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a watershed moment for Indonesia’s history, the deadly 1965 anti-communist purge transformed Indonesia from an independent Asian nation in the midst of Cold War into a pro-Western country.Asvi Warman Adam, Researcher, Centre for Political Studies, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.