Moving From Repression to Prevention of Genocide

Abstract

Much of history is a tale of humankind’s capacity for organized cruelty and violence . Far from being an aberration, conquest and war have been defining features of our collective past, integral to our conceptions of triumph and heroism . Indeed, the infliction of suffering on others has rarely been considered as necessarily evil. Rather, mass violence is always justified by appealing to higher ideals, if not the sacred. In this somber tale of history, the modern era holds a place of distinction. It is an era in which ancient murderous instincts reached a new stage of perfection, in the ideological guise of progress and civilization. Beyond atavistic hatred , totalitarianism ushered in a new age of extremes that made the violence of the past pale in comparison. It inspired the word “genocide”; a word that captured the transformation of the once unthinkable into historical reality. The challenge in our times is to consider whether this scourge is inevitable, or whether it can be prevented.