After visiting Berlin a few years ago, I wanted to learn why the holocaust occurred, and if it was possible to prevent similar events ever happening again. After reading and thinking about this troubling subject, I learnt that the circumstances and mindset of it's perpetrators has been common throughout history, it is just that in modern times, we have the means to carry out slaughter on a massive scale.
Firstly, it must be accepted that people like the Nazi’s, Hutu militias or Stalinist's are not monsters. They did monstrous, evil acts, but they were perfectly rational human beings. When they faced trial, they behaved just like any other criminal would. Many didn’t think they had done anything wrong, and went to their deaths unrepentant. To simply call them monsters, is to deny their humanity, which makes the problem too easy for us to dismiss. We must accept they were humans, just like us, and try to understand why and how they carried out such evil acts. We have to accept, that if we had grown up in Germany, Russia or Rwanda just prior to the Holocaust, Holodomor or Rwandan Genocide, it is highly likely that we too would have also participated, or done nothing too stop, crimes, awful crimes, against humanity.
Not any easy truth to acknowledge, but once accepted, understanding can develop and then prevention.
So having accepted the horrific fact that normal human beings are capable of great evil against others, why does it happen? Well the key word is “others”. Crimes against humanity are always carried out against others. And prior to the crimes occurring, these others will have been portrayed as “lesser others” - People who are of lower status, inferior, unimportant, or descendants of some perceived past crime, such as migration or stealers of wealth. If this portrayal is carried to such an extreme, those other human beings are seen as not equal, as animals, filth, coach roaches or sub human, or, if they hold different religious or political views, as wrong, or just simply, such as rainforest people, not considered at all.If this is the case, then any cruel and barbarous act against them can be portrayed as actually doing good, similar to an act of cleansing, or progress or improvement to the world. If this view is widely held in a society, then genocides can, and in the past, frequently have happened.
Especially, when those views are held by those in power. When this occurs, even if the general population does not hold these views, the elites, by passing laws and rewarding those who enforce and obey those laws, can control behaviour to such a high degree that individuals will not stand up and speak out against, what becomes, the perceived majority view. To do so will mean a long prison sentence, reprisals against loved ones or even execution. Few have the moral courage required, and the elites ensure those that do, cannot join and work together. The elites know that if dissenters get organised, they become more powerful and pose a threat to their privileged position. At the first sign of trouble, alternative views are crushed. And so the genocide, holocaust and holodomor is permitted by almost everyone.*
What’s this got to do with our current problem of man-made Climate Change? Well, I’m getting worried. I see parallels in how we are thinking about man-made climate change, and how genocides have occurred in the past.
Because, when it comes to the issue of global warming, the “others” this time includes billions of “future others“, Those “others” cannot vote today because they are yet to be born. Their needs, wants and lives are not heard, are not equal, not considers and seen to be of less importance to our own, They can be easily dismissed and ignored. By radically altering the planet, will we not be harming them before they even exist?
Because, when it comes to the issue of burning fossil fuels, are we not committing genocide, not against other humans, but this time against other species, whose habitats are being destroyed? The world of the Emperor Penguins and the Polar Bear are being rendered, for them, uninhabitable. The vast majority of us know this, but do we do anything? Are we not just looking the other way, while the concentration camps are in full operation, pumping out their carbon dioxide rather than Zyklon B and carrying out unseen mass murder on an industrial scale ?
Because, when it comes to rising planetary temperatures, are we, especially in wealthy high emitting countries not treating the "others" who live in the tropics, as human beings whose lives, wants and desires are unimportant compared to ours? Are we not treating them as un-equals, as lesser beings?
Thermometers don’t lie. And we shouldn’t lie to ourselves, we are all capable of evil acts.And the future may look back on the continued burning of fossil fuels, as the most evil act of them all.
* There is now an excellent book called Bystander Society by Prof Mary Fulbrook on this process. This book together with Orwell's 1984 should be read by everyone.)
