Special Report - The killing fields..(quite long)

[dudeness]

Changes in the character of war partially account for the mass murders of the past century. But the rise of democracy also plays a role. By Robert Skidelsky




Reading about the Rwandan atrocities set me thinking about my own first trivial experience of collective brutality. It was when I was 14. It took place at my very English boarding school and involved very ordinary English boys. It was a Sunday evening, and the group of small boys in our "prep room" had spent an enjoyable hour or so "ragging" an unpopular, physically unprepossessing boy, who could barely hold back his tears. The chapel bell sounded and we trooped in to a sermon on the evils of bullying. After it was over, the boys went back to their bullying as though the sermon had never been.


snip






Twentieth-century war legitimised mass killing of civilians for war purposes. Democracy and nationalism served to make it an aim of policy. The weaponry of mass killing has long been available: the Hutus killed Tutsis with machetes. What was lacking, at least after the 17th-century wars of religion, was the required degree of hatred, fanaticism and idealism to kill civilians on a large scale apart from war. The 20th century provided, in the religion of democracy, a project worthy of mass killing. In the 17th century, men killed in the name of God. In the 20th century, they killed in the name of the people.


http://www.newstatesman.com/nscoverstory.htm