Seeds of Violence

On p. 41 of Annals Australasia (June 2005), Alexander Cockburn is quoted from his article, From Howard Unruh to John Muhammad [Cached version from Google - The original article was unreachable when I tried to get to it]:

[Doug] Saunders [journalist for Toronto's Globe and Mail] quotes David Grossman, a former US military psychologist who helped develop programs to make new recruits more effective killers, to increase what's called the "trigger-pull ratio." These programs are now part of basic training. Grossman says that the trick is to break down the natural human aversion to killing. He calls this "disengagement." Once this aversion has been removed, it never comes back, and can make it easier for former soldiers to become murderers. "The ability to watch a human being's head explode and to do it again and again-that takes a kind of desensitization to human suffering that has to be learned," Grossman said.

So don't blame Charlton Heston. The US military is the chief sponsor of violence in this country. One day in 1949 Howard Unruh, a 28-year-old World War II veteran, shot thirteen of his New Jersey neighbors. His famous line was, "I'd have killed a thousand if I'd had enough bullets." His military firearms training made his "walk of death" the first modern serial-killer case.

From Unruh to [convicted Beltway Sniper John] Muhammad. Millions have been molded in this manner. Blowback is the consequence. It will be with us as long as the Empire needs war as its guarantor. America is living in the blowback years. What goes around comes around, with unforeseen consequences, or consequences foreseen but discounted. Unleash the mujahedeen on the Soviets in Afghanistan, and you get Osama bin Laden.

Blowback usually comes as a shock, because the art of politics is to separate actions from consequences.

Emphasis Mine

David Grossman apparently runs Killology Research Group. One book he has written is called On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. I have not read this book but I find that it is cited in many studies that appear to be against violence.

The quote from Alexander Cockburn implies that governments are actively seeking to make soldiers more ready to kill and this is putting more killers onto the streets. He is implying that the governments are, in effect, responsible for some of the serial killers out there.

But being mindful of what Pat wrote in Freedom is all in the mind about individual responsibility, I think that you would have to have to know what choices an individual thinks they have before judging their decision. Witness the build-up to the latest war in Iraq: we were presented with the choice of doing nothing and being nuked, or attacking Iraq to disarm Saddam of his WMD. Given that choice, no wonder many people opted for war.

In The Effects of Violence on Perpetrators (Peace Review, Mar2002, Vol. 14 Issue 1, p67), Rachel M. MacNair writes:

A related question is the psychological reaction of killing at the time that someone does the act—that is to say, the acute reaction at the time as opposed to the chronic reaction long afterward. At the time of the trauma itself, there are two features that have been shown in victims and rescuers to make the development of PTSD symptoms more likely in the future, and further research may show this to be the case when an act of killing is the trauma. One is distancing or avoidance at the time, which of course is often necessary to allow the violence to be done at all. One might think it would help avert later problems, but it does not seem to have that effect. The other is a sense of dissociation and time distortion—a sense of unreality, that things are happening as if in a dream or with the mind separated from the body. Time can often seem to slow down during the event. This was portrayed during battle scenes in the film Saving Private Ryan with sudden silence and slowness in the midst of battle. This has also been noted several times by those carrying out executions, even though these events were scheduled well in advance and would therefore involve more mental preparation.

Another psychological phenomenon at the time of killing seems paradoxical, but has been often noted: a sense of exhilaration that goes with the act of killing. This may be where the idea of being "bloodthirsty" comes from. Some researchers have proposed ideas, in the case of victims of trauma, about how this may be biological, involving opioids generated by the brain at times of intense stress. But this has not yet been studied enough even in victims to say what the cause is. Nor do we yet know if those who have this reaction are more prone to PTSD than those who do not. It does seem likely from interviews that this peritraumatic exhilaration at least does not protect those who have it from PTSD symptoms. That is why even a sense of euphoria, which is normally a desirable thing, does not keep the act of killing from being classified as a trauma.

The concept of "addiction to trauma" has so far been suggested primarily for those victims who continually seek out situations in which they are revictimized. Anecdotal instances of euphoria associated with killing are numerous enough to justify further inquiry. At this stage in our knowledge, it can only be accounted for as speculation, or as a hypothesis in need of testing. If there is a biological or habit-formed basis for committing violence as an addictive behavior, then of course the importance of learning about this for violence prevention purposes is obvious.

Emphasis Mine

(Rachel M. MacNair is the Director at the Institute for Integrated Social Analysis. With a bachelor’s degree in peace and conflict studies from Earlham College, she received a Ph.D. in psychology in order to pursue research in perpetration-induced traumatic stress.)

I think we come back what I think is a fundamental flaw in pacifism (Pacifism in Action) wherein the forces deployed by governments are not "decent human beings" but as people who are selected to do violence and are further desensitised to lower the threshold to committing violence. However, the threshold is not always crossed: it was in the case of Rachel Corrie but not in the Rosenstrasse Protest.

The problem then for protestors is how far can you go with your demands? If you go too far with demands, then there is a violent reaction from the forces of the state. Gerry's solution appears to be to use protestors as cannon fodder in he disrespects more peaceful ways...:

One of the strongest weapons of pacifism is that of public opinion. The more pacifists get killed or mistreated, the more the tide of public opinion swings away from the oppressors/aggressors and towards the pacifists' resistance.

As the current war in Iraq shows, public opinion accounts for very little indeed. Opinion poll after opinion poll shows minority support for the war but only one government has lost an election over the war: Spain's. Possibly 100,000 civilians are dead and the slaughther goes on. Public opinion is outraged. But so what if it is? John W. Howard is still PM and looks like staying on for a long time yet.

Yet, John Howard was dragged screaming into sending troops to protect the East Timorese in 1999. Why the difference? The answer appears to be that there was far more activity over that issue than over Iraq: there were strikes, continuing protests, e-mail campaigns, etc. With Iraq, we showed up for one day and went home.

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