Abstract
Beginning with early studies in the 1970s, dehumanisation has become a key feature in attempts to grasp the fundamental dynamics and conditions under which mass atrocities emerge. One of the most long-standing, prominent and widely accepted conceptions sees the loss of moral status as a key constitutive component of processes of dehumanisation, suggesting that the victims’ exclusion from the moral universe of obligation breaks down moral barriers, enabling forms of persecution outside the established practices of violence among human communities. With reference to the paradigmatic case of the Holocaust, this article critically interrogates this so far unquestioned equation of a loss of moral standing with dehumanisation. Overall, it argues for a much more nuanced differentiation between normative and analytical uses of dehumanisation, the need for more detailed reflections on its empirical appearances and relevance, and a more critical engagement with its conceptual grounding. Doing so will lead dehumanisation research beyond its current state and would allow for a more intricate assessment of its uses, meanings and relevance in cases of mass violence.
Introduction
Emerging from the ruins of the First World War (WWI), the problem of violence has been of central importance to the study of International Relations since its inception. With the 20th century not only disappointing hopes for a less violent international environment after WWI but also bearing witness to ever more indiscriminate forms of violence, the question of why we continue to see the emergence of such violence remains at the forefront of attention. Within this broad context of the study of politically motivated mass violence, the process of dehumanisation has been seen as central in grasping the fundamental dynamics and conditions of mass atrocities (see, for instance, Ephgrave, 2016; Haagensen and Croes, 2012; Hagan and Rymond-Richmond, 2008; Haslam, 2020; Kelman, 1973; Livingstone Smith, 2020; Steizinger, 2018). It has become ubiquitous both in the scholarly literature on the subject but also in accounts of perpetrators and victims alike (see, for instance, Levi, 1987: 118 and Livingstone Smith, 2021: xi) to the point where ‘[t]he idea that dehumanization is an essential element in genocidal conflicts is now almost a truism [. . .]’ (Haslam, 2020: 119; see also Kressel, 2002: 172 and Over, 2021a: 3).
This general conviction notwithstanding, the field of dehumanisation studies continues to be divided regarding the exact nature, role and function of dehumanisation. In addition, we have recently seen the emergence of wholesale critiques of dehumanisation which question its relevance for understanding mass atrocities. Within these ongoing and heterogeneous debates, one of the most long-standing and prominent conceptions sees dehumanisation as a loss of moral status (Bar-Tal, 1990; Hinton, 2005; Kelman, 1973; Kressel, 2002; McDoom, 2020; Opotow, 1990), conceiving the exclusion of victims of mass violence from the universe of obligation as equivalent to the denial of their human standing. It is this conception of dehumanisation as the loss of moral status that provides the core focus of this article. In particular, it will interrogate two core assumptions: (a) that the loss of moral status is constitutive of dehumanisation, and (b) that dehumanisation (as loss of moral status) is necessary for mass violence to take place. The article demonstrates that both assumptions are conceptually and empirically problematic. On a conceptual level, it relies on deeply contested notions of what it means to be ‘human’ and how such a status grounds moral considerability. At an empirical level, while recognising that a loss of moral standing can be connected to processes of dehumanisation, there are equally empirical circumstances in which this connection is tenuous or even absent.
Adding to the growing literature critical of existing understandings of dehumanisation and its role and relevance in mass atrocities (Lang, 2010, 2020; Mariot, 2020; Over, 2021a, 2021b), the article highlights three central shortcomings in understanding dehumanisation as a loss of moral status: (a) insufficient attention is given to the distinction between moral universalism and moral particularism when it comes to understanding the position of perpetrators; (b) there is a problematic conflation between normative and analytical uses of ‘dehumanisation’; and (c) there is insufficient recognition of the complexity of forms of dehumanisation and a lack of a clear conceptual understanding of what binds these different forms together as expressions of the phenomenon of ‘dehumanisation’.
In order to pursue these aims and objectives, the article proceeds in four steps. First, it provides a brief overview to familiarise the reader with the main areas of contention in current dehumanisation research to ground the subsequent discussions. Second, it presents a critical appraisal of the main claims connecting dehumanisation to a loss of moral status. Third, using the paradigmatic case of the Holocaust, the article offers a conceptual and empirical critique of this understanding, demonstrating that the often-assumed equation of loss of moral status and loss of human status is conceptually and empirically questionable. Finally, the article provides some reflections on the emerging challenges – empirically and conceptually – in pursuit of a more sound approach to the study of dehumanisation during mass atrocities.
Fault lines in current dehumanisation research
Across much of the literature on mass violence, it has been widely accepted that both the scope and scale of mass atrocities can only be mobilised and sustained if perpetrators somehow come to see their victims as less than, or even non-human (Bandura, 1999: 200; Lammers and Stapel, 2011: 114). Indeed, ‘[w]hen violence becomes excessive, it is common to explain it with reference to dehumanisation’ (Lang, 2010: 236). While this general sense of the importance of dehumanisation is widely shared, a closer look reveals a number of fault lines within dehumanisation research which have been subject to sustained debate and criticism.
First, there is no clear agreement as to the exact role dehumanisation plays in the emergence of mass violence. Positions reach from those that see dehumanisation as a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for mass violence to occur to those that ‘merely’ assign it a facilitating function. Proponents advancing the strong claim that dehumanisation is a necessary precondition for mass violence often do so with reference to inbuilt inhibitions which ‘usually’ prevent humans from committing mass atrocities against other (unarmed, defenceless) humans (see, for instance, Salzman, 2012: 107–108; Anderson, 2017: 39 or Kelman, 1973: 48). The argument here is that without a mechanism to overcome or displace such inhibitions, atrocities would not occur (or at least would be considerably more muted). Some critics of this strong position, on the contrary, challenge the assumption that inhibitions against killing fellow humans are so strong as to require dehumanisation in order to overcome them (Kuper, 1981: 86). Others acknowledge that overcoming such inhibitions is vital but see dehumanisation as one among a number of contributing processes. They argue that while dehumanisation may be a facilitating condition (see, for instance, Savage, 2013: 155; Williams, 2021: 142–146 or Livingstone Smith, 2021: 32–33), the emergence of mass violence is a highly complex phenomenon which relies upon a number of often context-specific enabling factors; the exact role of dehumanisation, therefore, requires a case-specific investigation rather than a blanket assumption of its central importance generally.
Second, the field of dehumanisation research continues to be characterised by heterogeneous understandings of the exact nature of dehumanisation. Beyond the widely shared commitment to the tautological statement that dehumanisation means the ‘denial of humanity or human status’, what exactly this denial of humanity consists in remains contested. As a result, we can identify a wide variety of often mutually exclusive understandings. Some conceive of dehumanisation as a discursive process in which perpetrators linguistically frame and metaphorically refer to victims in non-human terms (Savage, 2013; see also Bar-Tal, 2000: 122). If successfully employed, such a discursive use of dehumanising metaphors not only permeates perpetrator ideology and propaganda but also becomes normalised in everyday language use in the form of embedded stereotypical characterisations or derogatory slurs (Tileaga, 2007; Yanagizawa-Drott, 2014). Dehumanisation here is understood as a ‘discursive strategy’ (Savage, 2013: 144) to motivate perpetrators, legitimise the persecution of their victims and justify the use of violent means usually seen as prohibited in inter-human conduct.
Quite distinct from these metaphorical or discursive approaches, we find accounts which see dehumanisation as a specific cognitive phenomenon. Particularly in the field of social psychology, one of the most prolific areas of dehumanisation research, dehumanisation is often understood as the lack of recognising victims as (fully) human. While there continues to be disagreement about the specific dimensions of humanness being denied in instances of dehumanisation (Livingstone Smith, 2023; Zlobina et al., 2023: 1), proponents of a cognitive understanding of dehumanisation emphasise that it manifests itself as a ‘cognitive bias’, an ‘attitude . . . that happens inside people’s heads’ (Livingstone Smith, 2021: 9). Dehumanisation in these accounts constitutes a central component of the psychological make-up of perpetrators rather than a ‘mere’ rhetorical device.
A third conception moves away from linguistic practices or cognitive perceptions and understands dehumanisation as manifest in behavioural practices causing physical and/or psychological harm to victims (see, for instance, Le Moncheck, 1985). Contrary to cognitive accounts that see harmful behaviour as an effect of a dehumanising attitude, behavioural accounts of dehumanisation posit harmful corporeal practices as constitutive of dehumanisation. It becomes manifest in the different forms of action brought upon the persecuted victim group ‘which [perpetrators] dehumanize by torture and slaughter’ (Hron, 2011: 140). In some accounts, this is pushed to the point where dehumanisation becomes a consequence rather than an enabling condition of such violence (Luft, 2015: 164; also Luft, 2023).
A fourth approach shifts the focus away from the individual perpetrators and locates dehumanisation on an institutional or structural level. The work of Zygmunt Bauman (1991), for instance, is one of the most prominent examples linking dehumanisation to the rise of functional differentiation in modern society. The emergence of modern state bureaucracy in particular allows for a decoupling of means and ends, opening the possibility for dehumanisation as part of an instrumentally rational process of problem-solving in which victims appear as entities to be administered in an ethically indifferent manner (Bauman, 1991: 102). Dehumanisation occurs as bureaucratic processes frame victims as merely quantifiable units, treated in accordance with demands of efficiency and utility maximisation (see, for instance, Sherrer, 2000 and Clegg, 2009).
Finally, there are prominent conceptions of dehumanisation that propose an intricate link between dehumanisation and the loss of moral status. In such accounts, dehumanisation consists in the exclusion of victims from the horizon of moral responsibility of perpetrators (see, for instance, Kelman, 1973: 48). In contrast to the competing notions of dehumanisation outlined above which inter alia locate a denial of human status in cognitive, discursive, structural or behavioural processes, accounts focussing on the denial of the victims’ moral status understand dehumanisation ‘not as a denial of specific attributes but rather as a categorical act of exclusion from a moral community’ (Haslam and Loughnan, 2014: 401; see also Bar-Tal, 1990: 65–66; Smith, 1999: 4).
In addition to these continuing disagreements and contestations regarding the role and nature of dehumanisation in cases of mass violence, we, third, find considerable differences in views on the relationship between dehumanisation and morality. Discussions on this relation revolve around two separate but related questions, namely, whether (a) the often observed loss of moral status of victims is constitutive of dehumanisation or ‘merely’ a consequence of it and (b) dehumanisation is characterised by a form of moral engagement or disengagement. Regarding the former, proponents of a moralistically grounded notion of dehumanisation (e.g. Bar-Tal, 1990; Kelman, 1973; Opotow, 1990) see the loss of moral status as the constitutive element of the process of dehumanisation in the sense that being recognised as ‘human’ is inextricably linked to being recognised as a bearer of basic rights. Having these rights denied amounts to a denial of human status and vice versa. Proponents of alternative conceptions of dehumanisation locate the constitutive elements of dehumanisation in particular processes (e.g. the denial of mind in others; Waytz and Schroeder, 2014), the anonymity and instrumental utilitarianism of bureaucratic processes (Bauman, 1991), the denial of human uniqueness or human nature traits in victims (Haslam et al., 2007) and so on). In these instances, the loss of moral status is seen as a consequence of these processes (see for instance, Haslam and Loughnan, 2014: 416). In other words, scholars continue to disagree as to whether a lack of moral consideration is expressive of an ongoing or completed process of dehumanisation or whether it presents an integral, constitutive part of such processes.
Regarding the second point of contention concerning the relationship between dehumanisation and morality, the majority of dehumanisation scholars establish a link between dehumanisation and moral disengagement (see, for instance, Bandura, 1999: 200) to the extent that the victims’ removal from moral consideration breaks down moral barriers that ‘normally’ inhibit violence against other human beings. Such disengagement is seen as an important facilitator, if not a prerequisite, to lessen moral guilt among perpetrators (Kelman, 1973: 48; Waytz and Schroeder, 2014: 253). On the contrary, we also find prominent voices arguing that dehumanisation is not linked to moral disengagement but rather ‘fosters violence precisely because it fans the flames of an immensely destructive kind of moral engagement’ (Livingstone Smith, 2021: 33–34).
As a result of these continuing contestations, discussions among dehumanisation researchers continue to provide rich, if highly contested, exchanges regarding the conceptual, theoretical and empirical components of dehumanisation. These reach from specific critiques on existing conceptions of dehumanisation and their concomitant empirical grounding (see, for instance, Livingstone Smith (2023) on the shortcomings in current socio-psychological accounts of dehumanisation), to attempts to synthesise diverging perspectives into single, coherent frameworks (for instance Haslam, 2006; Waytz and Epley, 2012 or Michel, 2023). In addition to these ongoing debates within dehumanisation scholarship, we have more recently also witnessed the emergence of sceptical voices drawing into question the empirical soundness, conceptual clarity and analytical relevance of dehumanisation in general by claiming that ‘although the dehumanisation hypothesis is prima facie reasonable and indeed intuitively compelling, it does not withstand scrutiny’ (Over, 2021a: 3). Consequently, the once firmly held and unquestioned assumption of the central role of dehumanization in mass atrocities has come under much closer scrutiny with its critics maintaining that ‘[a]lthough there may be some cases in which out-group members are genuinely believed to be less than human, there is not yet convincing evidence that this is a common phenomenon’ (Over, 2021a: 3).
While these critiques have successfully initiated a more detailed, rigorous and critical engagement with specific approaches to and claims about the nature, role and function of dehumanisation outlined above, one of the most prominent understandings of dehumanisation – dehumanisation as the loss of moral status – has so far mostly escaped more meticulous discussion. To some extent, this is not surprising given that most accounts of dehumanisation accept a connection between dehumanisation and the moral status of victims (without, however, agreeing on its exact nature).
In addition, literature on mass violence more widely continues to explore the normative dimension underwriting the conduct of perpetrators. While one can analyse the psychological dispositions of perpetrators or highlight the specific social and situational dynamics which condition their behaviour (see, for instance, Browning, 2001; Goldhagen, 2008; Jensen, 2008; Staub, 2009; Waller, 2007; Welzer, 2008), the crucial aspect of how perpetrators justify their participation in these crimes – to others and to themselves – inevitably raises questions of the moral beliefs that facilitate indiscriminate and unrestrained violence and, crucially, allow perpetrators to deny the humanity of their victims (see, for instance, Bandura, 1999; Bar-Tal, 1990; Kelman, 1973; Lammers and Stapel, 2011; Opotow, 1990). In light of this continued relevance of the intersections between dehumanisation and morality, subjecting the relationship between human status and moral status to more meticulous scrutiny offers a new avenue to interrogate our understanding of dehumanisation and enables a closer reflection on the role of morality in instances of mass violence more generally. To do so, the remainder of this article will interrogate, conceptually and empirically, accounts of dehumanisation that posit the loss of moral status as constitutive of dehumanisation.
Dehumanisation as a loss of moral status – a critical appraisal
At the heart of approaches that defend a constitutive relation between the denial of moral status and dehumanisation lies the assumption that ‘all of us have moral worth and deserve moral treatment simply by virtue of being human’ (Haslam et al., 2012: 203). Reaching as far back as the work of Herbert Kelman (1973), the connection between being human and having moral status is linked to the claim that ‘the inhibitions against murdering fellow human beings are generally so strong that the victims must be deprived of their human status if systematic killing is to proceed in a smooth and orderly fashion’ (Kelman, 1973: 48). The process of dehumanisation is central as ‘[t]o the extent that the victims are dehumanized, principles of morality no longer apply to them and moral restraints against killing are more readily overcome’ (Kelman, 1973: 48). This process of moral exclusion enables perpetrators ‘to act with incredible cruelty towards others’ (Opotow, 1990: 4) as the ‘delegitimised groups are perceived as not deserving human treatment’ (Bar-Tal, 1990: 69). For some, this process of dehumanisation even extends to perpetrators as through their ‘[c]ontinuing participation [the perpetrator] loses the capacity to act as a moral being’ (Kelman, 1973: 50–51; see also Scull, 2016: 340–341).
Despite the widely accepted and intuitively compelling connection between dehumanisation and loss of moral status, there are both conceptual and empirical challenges that require more nuanced and sustained reflections on the often taken-for-granted notions of ‘human status’, ‘moral status’ and the connection between them.
First, as Helen Fein observed early on in these debates, ‘[t]he exclusion of the victim from the universe of obligation need not entail dehumanisation. The concept of dehumanisation presumes a universalistic norm barring collective violence; . . . this cannot be taken for granted’ (Fein, 1993: 36). Equally, Leo Kuper noted that attempts to link dehumanisation to morality rely on ‘a liberal assumption as to the nature of man [sic]. The underlying assumption is not articulated’ (Kuper, 1989: 158). Indeed, it seems that there is a specifically assumed content to the notion of ‘moral status’ and a contour as to the boundaries of the universe of moral obligation. The denial of moral status is often seen as the denial of basic human rights (see, for instance, Esmeir, 2006: 1544–1551), yet it seems fair to ask ‘[w]hat are these basic human rights? Definitions of human rights vary with time and place, with historical period and social context’ (Kuper, 1981: 86). Second then, the question is not only whether and how the victims’ moral status is being denied in particular instances but also what constitutes the notion of ‘moral status’ in the first place. At the very least, this means we need to clarify who establishes the relevant content and boundaries – are they universally given and external to the specific cases of mass violence we study, or are they situationally established by the bounded morality of perpetrators? The existing literature posits a seemingly unproblematic notion of what it means to be human and ties it to notions of moral exclusion, moral status and the universe of moral obligation as if they were conceptually clear, substantially sound and uncontroversial.
To clarify the resulting problems for the concept of dehumanisation as a loss of moral status, it seems necessary to address both alternatives in more detail: we can either assume a position according to which perpetrators deny the victims’ humanity by placing them outside a universally accepted moral framework. Alternatively, we can assume a situational, perpetrator-focussed morality in which case perpetrators create a particular moral horizon and victims become dehumanised by their exclusion from it. As we will see with reference to the paradigmatic case of the Holocaust, both alternatives create empirical and conceptual inconsistencies.
Dehumanisation and moral universalism
In the first alternative, the concept of dehumanisation is developed based on a version of natural law, which posits a universal set of moral standards that prescribe basic principles of inter-human conduct applying to humans qua humans (Brown, 1997: 44–45 and Haas, 1988: 383). Such a universal conception is prevalent in key covenants grounding basic rights, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (Morsink, 1984: 316). In such an understanding, all human beings (often captured by the term ‘humanity’) deserve moral consideration and their humanity hinges on its acceptance and enactment (Le, 2016: 203). Within such a moral universalism, moral status and human status are co-extensive and inextricably linked to each other to the extent that dehumanisation inevitably entails an exclusion from the universally posited realm of moral obligation and vice versa.
Beyond the question raised by Kuper above regarding the underlying (Western liberal) assumptions which ground such conceptions of ‘human status’, we also see continuing and controversial debates even within the Western/liberal tradition that leave two central questions essentially contested: (a) how do we demarcate the boundaries of ‘humanity’, and (b) how do we justify and assign moral status to those inside these boundaries?
In response to these questions, two basic positions have emerged that link ‘moral status’ (or moral considerability) to a notion of what it means to be human: the biological position and the criterial position (Chappell, 2011: 2). The former delineates human status based on species membership, that is, all those beings falling within the biological boundaries of ‘human’ (most often understood as homo sapiens) constitute humanity and their specific moral status is derived solely from this species membership (Steinbock, 1978: 253–256). While this position seems intuitively appealing and may even be observable in various common practices, its critics have pointed out that not only are species boundaries not as clear cut as proponents of the biological approach make out (Livingstone Smith, 2021: 143–144). More damningly still, they argue that assigning moral status solely on the basis of species membership amounts to nothing short of ‘speciesism’, which is ‘a prejudice or attitude of bias towards the interests of one’s own species and against those of members of another species’ (Singer, 2002: 6). As such, it is akin to other forms of prejudice such as sexism and racism (Cushing, 2003: 556) which rely on biases based on attributes which are irrelevant in delineating moral considerability (Singer, 2002: 6; see also Albersmeier, 2021: 513–514; Steinbock, 1978: 247).
Conversely, those who argue for a criterial view in order to demarcate human status and moral considerability differentiate between ‘human’ and ‘person’ (Hymers, 1999: 126) – the former designating a biological category without intrinsic moral status and the latter describing a group of beings whose moral status is grounded in specific characteristics. This move towards a delineation of ‘persons’ avoids the charge of speciesism as it recognises that not all (biological) humans are persons and not all persons have to be (biologically) human (Singer, 1993: 87). At the same time, it creates a number of different challenges. First, it remains contentious which criteria ground personhood and how these are to be delineated (DeGrazia, 1997: 303–305; Hymers, 1999: 127). Second, it is unclear to what extent these criteria need to be present (are there minimum thresholds?); do they need to be present at all or could beings count as persons if they have the potential to develop these criteria (e.g. infants)? Finally, how do we treat what is often referred to as ‘marginal cases’, that is, those that are (biologically) human but lack the characteristics of persons (severely disabled people, for instance) (Pluhar, 1987: 27–30). Are we prepared to say that because they neither have the actual attributes of persons nor the potential to develop them, they are not afforded (full) moral status (Hymers, 1999: 131; Johnson, 2012: 375–376)? Despite long-standing and highly complex and sophisticated debates, these questions remain essentially contested and constitute the most basic challenge to a conception of dehumanisation as a loss of moral status: who counts as (biologically or criterially) human and on what basis is moral status affirmed to those identified as such?
For the purpose of this article and its specific focus on dehumanisation during mass violence, one could of course argue that these philosophical contentious are negligible, as the overwhelming majority of victims will fall within the category of ‘human’ (whether biologically or criterially grounded) and their moral status is most obviously violated, however these categories may be defined. Even if one would take this position (and it is at least partly problematic as we will see later in relation to the Nazi euthanasia campaign), there are empirical difficulties with deriving dehumanisation from a perspective of moral universalism. These difficulties emerge as in such accounts the exclusion of victims from moral consideration does not entail a rejection or change of existing moral values but a redrawing of the boundaries of their applicability to the extent that ‘[t]he denial of humanity allows perpetrators to deviate from norms without directly assaulting the norms themselves’ (Anderson, 2017: 49). Placing victims beyond these boundaries allows perpetrators to claim that accepted moral principles do no longer apply to members of the victim group (Hagan and Rymond-Richmond, 2008: 876) without, however, changing the moral standards of perpetrators as such – a view that ‘articulates a popular illusion – that morality, the collection of ideas about good and evil, is independent of time and space and the same for all humans and societies’ (Kuehne, 2018: 215). While there is an internal logic within universalist conceptions of morality linking human status and moral status, the empirical question arises whether such universalist conceptions adequately capture the realities of the relationship between victims and perpetrators in cases of mass violence (Zimmermann, 2009: 13) – do perpetrators really just redefine the boundaries of existing norms? Or are they assaulting the norms as such? An assessment of the Holocaust will prove instructive in answering these questions.
A moral (re-)consideration of the Holocaust which has long been deemed unnecessary (and maybe even immoral in itself) only emerged gradually and, at the beginning, hesitantly (see, for instance, Gross, 2012; Haas, 1988; Konitzer and Gross, 2009; Koonz, 2003; Roth, 1999). Yet, at closer scrutiny, growing research into the moral framework of Nazism suggests more was at work than a simple redrawing of moral boundaries which excluded certain victim groups from the realm of humanity and, concomitantly, from moral obligation. Indeed, at the centre of the Nazi vision for a reformed German society was what Rolf Zimmermann (2009: 17) called a ‘morality of redemption’. This new morality was outspokenly particularistic (Kauders, 2022: 47; Tugendhat, 2009: 61; Zimmermann, 2009: 23), not simply proposing a redrawing of moral boundaries to exclude ‘racially inferior’ peoples but putting forward a wholesale rejection of moral universalism as a corrosive Judeo-Christian invention (Chapoutot, 2018: 72–81; Kuehne, 2018: 225). What was needed in the eyes of Nazi ideologues was a fundamental and radical shift in moral outlook and principles (see, for instance, Haas, 1988: 383–393; Koonz, 2003 and Weikart, 2009). More than simply excluding victims from an otherwise intact moral framework, the Nazi’s reorientated the boundaries of morality away from a general notion of humanity (however broadly or narrowly understood). Instead, they advanced a stratified conception of humanity, both biologically/criterially and normatively. The relevant standard of morality is no longer tied to ‘simply’ being human/a person but needs to be considered in light of what kind of human/person one is in racial terms 1 (Chapoutot, 2018: 13; Zimmermann, 2009: 18–19). Normative standards are connected to racial membership in direct contradiction to (and rejection of) ‘the Judeo-Christian, Western tradition of universal ethics that demand charity for all human beings, not only those of one’s own race or nation’ (Kuehne, 2018: 225). Rather than ‘just’ redrawing the boundaries of applicability of an existing universalist conception of morality, the Nazi movement developed a particularistic morality which ‘limited subjects and objects of moral acts rigidly to one group’ (Kuehne, 2018: 216), constituting ‘a radical break with universal humanism’ (Bialas, 2013: 4).
This break also signalled a shift towards a collectivist understanding of the worth and role of the individual within society (Bialas, 2013: 23). As Hitler remarked, ‘I am aiming for a condition in which each individual knows: he lives and dies only to preserve his race!’ (Picker, 1976: 81). 2 Subordinating the worth of the individual to the racial collective meant that ‘[o]ne should not place too much value on an individual life. . . . What needs to be maintained is . . . the racial substance. . .’ (Hitler in Picker, 1976: 79). 3 Within such a view, ‘[a]n individual-bourgeois morality was replaced by a volkisch morality of race and community’ (Bialas, 2013: 23). This shift towards a morally particularistic, harmonious, and racially homogeneous Volksgemeinschaft (Wildt, 2018: 55–59) was one of the big drawing cards in Nazi propaganda and mass mobilisation (Kershaw, 2018: 33–34), promising a ‘selective racial morality that helped replace a universal morality of reason’ (Bialas, 2013: 21).
While the shift to the racial community as the main object of moral concern redefined the standing of the individual within Nazi society, the effects of racially stratified moralities on those deemed to be detrimental to and therefore outside the Volksgemeinschaft were immeasurably worse (Chapoutot, 2018: 194–273). Their persecution, in the eyes of perpetrators, constituted a morally permissible and justified path of action (Pollefeyt, 1999: 223) and the resulting violence presents the enactment of the norms of a newly formed Nazi morality (Haas, 1988: 388–391). Subsequently, the assumption of a universally valid moral order from which victims of mass violence were excluded by way of dehumanisation to enable their persecution is highly questionable if not outright misleading (Welzer, 2004: 16).
These reflections suggest that a basic error in analyses that see dehumanisation as a denial of moral status derived from moral universalism lies in conflating different uses of the term ’dehumanisation’ and its application on different levels of analysis. ‘Dehumanization’ can be, and has been, used in at least three connected yet different ways: descriptively to capture the horrendous experiences victims and survivors have suffered at the hands of perpetrators, normatively to delegitimise attempts by perpetrators to justify violence against victims and condemn their concomitant persecution and analytically to argue for a facilitating role of dehumanisation in explaining or understanding how perpetrators come to participate in acts of extreme and indiscriminate violence (which forms the central claim in the literature that sees dehumanisation as a loss of moral status). It is in particular the conflation between normative and analytical uses that creates problems as it blends the normative position of observers with an analytical assessment of the dynamic between perpetrators and victims. ‘[It] not only attributes a prior moral capacity to the murderers, but one that is astonishingly similar to the kind we like to credit ourselves with’ (Welzer, 2004: 16). We may perceive that our accepted moral standards are being violated by the perpetrators, and within this context, we come to see the victims as being excluded from the moral considerations we would expect the perpetrators to have (and hence describe their status as dehumanised). While this perception may highlight the discrepancy between our moral standards and those of the perpetrators, it does not consider whether the perpetrators actually perceived their victims as non-human and the extent to which this had been facilitating their persecution and murder. The error lies in assuming that perpetrators are ‘people who violated a previous, better moral capacity’ (Welzer, 2004: 16), while in fact they ‘acted within a different normative framework from that which we retrospectively apply to their perceptions, interpretations and actions’ (Welzer, 2004: 28). Consequently, conceptualising dehumanisation as the exclusion from and denial of a universally grounded moral status of victims risks reducing ‘dehumanisation’ to an external, case-independent normative judgement from the vantage point of the observer (a judgement many will rightfully share), while analytically not telling us much about the context-specific dynamic of mass violence. 4 Indeed, when trying to understand the dynamic of dehumanisation, ‘one cannot make any progress by insisting on transcendental and universally valid moral principles’ (Welzer, 2004: 22).
Beside the empirical and conceptual problems the assumption of a moral universalism entails, its critique and the concomitant acknowledgement of a moral particularism also suggests the need to decouple the connection between human status and moral status as exclusions from a particularised moral community do not necessarily entail an exclusion from humanity. It is perfectly conceivable that proponents of a moral particularism deny the applicability of basic rights to others, yet, at the same time, recognise those outside their own moral community as having human status. The question we would need to ask then is whether in particular cases the exclusion from a particularistic moral community also leads to the denial of human status of those excluded. We will turn to this question in the next section, again focussing on the Holocaust as our empirical example.
Dehumanisation and moral particularism
A morally particularistic view necessitates moving away from a preconceived and axiomatic assumption which conceives of ‘crimes against humanity as the ultimate collapse of (a universal) morality’ (Kuehne, 2018: 215). In return, it offers the opportunity to shift our analyses from an external normative judgement (which we can still maintain based on our own moral convictions) to a case-specific analytical angle that investigates the actual dynamic between perpetrators and victims, reorienting our focus to the need to dissect the normative foundations of perpetrators’ beliefs and actions when it comes to the moral and human standing of their victims. To do so, it will be necessary to analyse whether and how victims feature in moral considerations of perpetrators and the extent to which such considerations, or the lack thereof, impacts perceptions of humanness of victims. With reference to three different perpetrator types in the case of the Holocaust, 5 we will see that not only are there indeed instances in which perpetrators restrict moral considerations to their own kind and treat those excluded from their community as less than or non-human (Hayden, 2009: 14). The empirical reflections also demonstrate that (a) in such instances the role of morality is much more complex than so far assumed and (b) that there are indeed instances where the denial of moral considerability can be decoupled from the perception of the humanity of victims.
To demonstrate this rather complex relationship between human status and moral status, the following considerations will, first, look at the nature of victims in the eyes of some leading participants in the Nazi euthanasia programme; second, at the conception of victims prevalent among some of the economic and demographic experts planning the socio-economic reforms for the newly conquered Eastern territories; and finally, at the status of victims targeted by some of those directly participating in the killing actions as part of the Final Solution. As we will see, the constructions of victim identity, both in moral and human terms, differ widely across perpetrators, raising questions as to the analytical usefulness and accuracy of any undifferentiated understanding of dehumanisation as loss of moral standing.
Looking at the first group, we find perpetrators that explicitly exclude victims from their conception of ‘humanity’ and, on those grounds, deny them moral considerability. Such an understanding was central among key personnel overseeing and implementing the Nazi euthanasia campaign, Aktion T4. While instrumental arguments pertaining to the ‘economic burden’ of caring for the ‘hereditarily deceased’ were used to justify their persecution (Aly et al., 1994: 23; Burleigh, 2002: 102; Proctor, 2000: 183–185), these were supplemented with deeply moral considerations regarding the need to maintain a racially healthy population and relieving relatives from the continuous burden of care 6 (Friedlander, 1995: 20). Within the prevailing medical discourse and embedded in the racially motivated moral particularism of the Nazi worldview, racial hygiene was a deeply and intrinsically moral imperative in that it sought both to cleanse society internally from hereditarily rooted forms of ‘asocial’ and ‘criminal’ behaviour and externally to secure the survival of the Germanic race in the continuous struggle with other races (Conroy, 2017: 73–108; Klee, 2018: 19–33). Perpetrators participating in campaigns to sterilise or euthanise ‘life unworthy of life’ explicitly denied their victims both human and moral status, ‘denouncing “false humanity” and “exaggerated pity” as a crime against the German Volk’ (Kuehne, 2018: 217). This view persisted in those who participated in Aktion T4 even long after the end of the Nazi regime. Charged with ‘crimes against humanity’ after the end of World War II (WWII), Wilhelm Bayer, for instance, rebuked such charges, claiming, ‘Such a crime can only be committed against people, whereas the living creatures that we were required to treat could not be qualified as “human beings”’ (Klee, 2021: 33). Equally, as late as 1964, Werner Catel, a leading figure in the Nazi euthanasia campaign against disabled children, reiterated, ‘We are not talking about humans here, but rather beings that were merely procreated by humans and that will never in themselves become humans endowed with reason and soul’ 7 (Aus Menschlichkeit toeten?, 1964). Such dehumanising views were widespread in the medical community involved in processes of sterilisation and euthanasia and coincided with the specific moral boundaries drawn up in Nazi ideology which emphasised the existential necessity (both in racial and economic terms) to maintain and enhance racial purity (Weindling, 2022: 1668). For central figures within the Nazi medical community, the question of ‘disability’ was also a question of ‘humanity’ and their justifications and motivations for euthanasia demonstrate the direct connection between a denial of humanity and denial of moral considerability.
It is noteworthy to recognise that the controversies about the human status of severely disabled people still persist today and directly links to the broader philosophical discussions touched upon above (see, for instance, Feder Kittay, 2010; Johnson, 2012; Pluhar, 1987). The ‘problem of marginal cases’ in discussions of moral considerability grounded in notions of personhood presents a contemporary discourse at the centre of which still stands the question of the ‘human’ and ‘moral status’ of disabled people; to that extent these wider philosophical debates directly relate to the allocation of rights and the continued contestations of what it means to be human, even in cases of mass violence. 8
The second type of perpetrator instructive for our investigation, and quite different from the morally grounded dehumanising attitude exhibited by leading figures in the euthanasia campaign, are, in the words of Goetz Aly and Susanne Heim, ‘the architects of annihilation’ (Aly and Heim, 2003), those perpetrators which Hannah Arendt described as ‘quite ordinary, commonplace and neither demonic nor monstrous’ (Arendt, 1978: 4). Among those are the ‘economic experts and professional administrators – the regional planners, statisticians and agronomists, the labour deployment specialists and demographers’ (Aly and Heim, 2003: 5) tasked with the organisation and planning of the colonisation of the newly conquered Eastern territories. Distant from the everyday violence victims suffered, the nature of their work demanded a focus on instrumentally rational processes to achieve specific socio-economic outcomes. In their econometric calculations, focused on establishing a productive and sustainable socio-economic base, conceiving their work and the subsequent treatment of victims in moral terms appeared as a category mistake as victims fused with other forms of quantifiable objects (e.g. infrastructure, real estate, moveable assets) in pursuit of instrumentally rational and economically necessary objectives (Waller, 2008: 159). Demographic economists, such as Werner Oberlaender or Helmut Meinhold for instance, focussed on addressing the economic underperformance in the East, its low productivity and lack of economic efficiency resulting from a steadily growing population ‘which was inhibiting, or even blocking, economic development’ (Aly and Heim, 2003: 59). Aiming to achieve the optimum population size to allow for ‘the maximum possible return to be extracted from the economic resources of a country’ (Aly and Heim, 2003: 60), they advocated the reduction of the existing population, a context in which ‘the deliberate killing of people [. . .] worked in the interests of maintaining economic equilibrium’ (Aly and Heim, 2003: 61). In such technocratic calculations, ‘mass murder [is understood as] a reduction of population numbers’ (Aly and Heim, 2003: 61), a means to optimise economic output and performance. The victims of this process of ‘syphoning off surplus populations’ only appear as econometric variables, numbers on spreadsheets, units reduced to the measures of economic efficiency and productivity. What drives these perpetrators in their pursuit of maximising economic performance are questions of implementation (‘can we do it?’) rather than questions of justification (‘should we do it?’) (Bauman, 1991: 16–18). Consequently, persecution and murder appear as rational measures in the realisation of broader policy preferences such as creating Lebensraum for German colonisation in the East or as grounded in private motives such as career advancement or personal material gain (Aly and Heim, 2003: 5–7).
While we again encounter the denial of the human and moral status of victims, the connection differs markedly from the explicitly moralistic underpinnings motivating members of the medical profession as discussed above. In contrast to perpetrators like Bayer and Catel, the attitude Oberlaender and Meinhold exhibit towards their victims is one of instrumentally focussed (moral) indifference; their actions are neither inhibited by any moral norms that have to be overcome or suppressed nor, in many cases, are they primarily fuelled by moral convictions used to legitimise and justify the persecution of victims. It is these perpetrators of which Primo Levi remarked, ‘More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions’ (Levi, 1965: 228). With moral norms deemed outside the purview and responsibility of these functionaries, dehumanisation occurs with victims joining other non-human entities that can simply be treated as necessary according to the aims and objectives of perpetrators, a process which leads to the ‘dehumanisation of the objects of bureaucratic operation; the possibility to express these objects in purely technical, ethically neutral terms’ (Bauman, 1991: 102 [emphasis in original]; see also Clegg, 2009: 326–347 and Sherrer, 2000: 249–264). The occurrence of dehumanisation in cases of such instrumentally motivated violence has also found attention and support in the relevant socio-psychological literature, where Rai et al. (2017: 8511–8516) conducted a range of experiments, the outcomes of which suggest that mobilisation of a dehumanising attitude is present in cases of instrumental violence.
While both these examples demonstrate the presence of a denial of moral status and a denial of human status, they already exhibit a quite different relationship between the role and significance of morality and the construction of victims as non-human. The picture becomes even more heterogeneous when we turn to examples where some Holocaust perpetrators deny moral considerability to victims while still recognising their humanity.
In such instances, our third example, we encounter perpetrators directly involved in the murder of victims of the Final Solution whose behaviour, in many instances, not only showed strong normative commitments to this violence, but also raises questions as to their perception of the human status of their victims. Normatively speaking, those outside the Volksgemeinschaft were not afforded moral considerability as their behaviour and motives were perceived as threatening the integrity of the Germanic race and jeopardised its survival (Weikart, 2009: 87). The subsequent violence used in their persecution was grounded in the perpetrators’ ‘need to humiliate, rape, and torture their victims, to force them to watch each other suffer, to conduct show trials, or to claim to their victims that the violence being done to them is morally laudatory’ (Rai et al., 2017: 8511). Their moral particularism which grounded acts of violence, however, did not invariably coincide with a denial of the human status of victims as multiple studies have demonstrated, both in relation to concentration camps (Lang, 2010) and the murderous actions of the Einsatzgruppen (Mariot, 2020). While it is indeed the case that we can find examples in these instances that show how victims were denied human status discursively, behaviourally or cognitively, ‘it is equally true that perceptions of victims as dehumanized are challenged by first-hand experience with victimization’ (Lang, 2010: 232).
To begin with, grounded in the constructed deviance inscribed into victims’ identities, we can observe that in justifying the various forms of extreme violence (Rai et al., 2017: 8511), victims of the Final Solution were ‘often described in ways that apply only to humans. For example, Nazi propaganda often referred to Jewish people as criminals, murderers, enemies, and traitors’ (Over, 2021a: 6; see also Manne, 2016: 403–404). More importantly though, this recognition of the human status of victims also pervades close encounters with perpetrators. Mariot (2020), for example, using personal correspondence of perpetrators and material from their judicial interrogations has shown that instances in which perpetrators recognised the humanity of their victims were not uncommon, without, however, leading to a reconsideration of their moral considerability. ‘They see women and children, not beasts or things. Even in their writing produced at the time, they admit that these are defenseless people. And yet they gun them down one after another’ (Mariot, 2020: 112). Within the innumerable close encounters, personal and human connections emerge between victims and perpetrators – victims addressing their murderers in German, victims and perpetrators recognising each other or victims reminding perpetrators of their own families. In all these instances, ‘it becomes difficult to imagine that the killers could have maintained any fictions of inhumanity [of their victims]’ (Mariot, 2020: 113). In many instances, contrary to the often invoked ubiquity and centrality of dehumanisation in enabling killers, these perpetrators ‘carried out the shootings in spite of their knowledge that they were slaughtering defenseless women and children, rather than non-human monsters’ (Mariot, 2020: 116), ‘recognising – even at the very moment of the massacre – the humanity of their victims’ 9 (Mariot, 2020: 117).
Lang (2010) in his discussion of the role of dehumanisation in Nazi concentration and death camps comes to similar conclusions, arguing ‘that the extent of the dehumanizing mindset in the perpetrators has been exaggerated’ (Lang, 2010: 226). Indeed, perpetrators in many ways stand in a continuing relational position to their victims in which the diverging and radicalised subjectivities between perpetrators and victims are used to create an ever wider and unbridgeable difference which enables practices of extreme violence. Yet, ‘while this violence might serve to increase the difference between perpetrator and victim, it is . . . a difference between two subjectivities, not between a subject and a dehumanized other’ (Lang, 2010: 228). Parallel to Mariot, Lang provides a number of empirical examples where the humanity of victims remained present for perpetrators despite discursive practices aimed at depriving them of human status. These instances occur in situations of close proximity where the anonymity of victims is compromised, and the ‘reality’ of their individual subjectivity breaks through linguistic constructions (Lang, 2010: 232). In such instances, ‘[w]hat might look like the dehumanisation of the other is instead a way to exert power over another human being without ending the social relationship: it is an opportunity to sustain domination over the victims before (or even without) killing them’ (Lang, 2010: 240). All this suggests that accounts that rush to characterisations that frame the ability of perpetrators to exert excessive violence with reference to dehumanisation too readily ‘[obscure] the aspects of the violence that derive their fundamental meaning from the subjectivity of the victim’ (Lang, 2010: 235).
While our reflections here centred on the case of the Holocaust, it is important to note that these observations are not limited to Nazi perpetrators. Much has been written about the central role of dehumanisation in Rwanda, for instance, and the ways in which Hutu propaganda consistently dehumanised the Tutsi minority, thus enabling widespread societal participation in their persecution and extermination. Yet, the analytical strength of the claim that dehumanising discourse was invariably linked to the loss of moral status and the subsequent violence can be called into question. Scott Strauss’ meticulous study of the Rwandan genocide and its perpetrators, for instance, casts doubt on the presence and facilitating role of dehumanisation, showing that among perpetrators ‘the language of threat, danger, and war was far more prevalent that any subhuman metaphors . . . [with] many respondents [framing] the genocide in terms of threat and security – as “fighting the enemy”, as “war”, or just as “killing”’ (Strauss, 2006: 158).
These insights return us to the different uses of the term ‘dehumanisation’ touched upon above. Victims may legitimately describe their suffering as dehumanising and many will use the term ‘dehumanisation’ to normatively condemn any attempt by perpetrators to justify their actions. Analytically, however, regarding the actual relationship between perpetrators and victims, these examples show a heterogeneous connection between the recognition of the humanity of victims and their moral considerability, prompting the need to reconsider more widely whether (a) a loss of moral status does invariably lead to the denial of human status, and (b) a denial of human status needs to be present to motivate perpetrators to take part in mass violence. Instances like those outlined above suggest that ‘perpetrators may even humanize victims when it is necessary to generate moral meaning for the violence they do’ (Rai et al., 2017: 8514), indicating that the affirmation of victims’ humanity may become a central feature to the extent that denying their human status ‘would strip victims of the qualities that necessitated the violence in the first place’ (Rai et al., 2017: 8512).
Concluding reflections: dehumanisation – Quo Vadis?
The picture that emerges from these reflections reveals a much more complex relationship between the moral considerability of victims on the one hand and the recognition of their humanity on the other. Contrary to much of the existing literature, it suggests that the connection between moral status and human status is both conceptually more nuanced and empirically less secure, thereby opening a number of paths to advance the existing literature on the nature, role and function of dehumanisation.
First, it seems prudent to further interrogate the often-implied necessary link between moral status and human status. Dehumanisation in this conceptualisation presupposes the presence of a normative order which recognises human status as being tied to a set of universally valid normative principles. Dehumanisation consists here in the denial of applicability of these normative principles to certain groups which consequently also means a denial of these groups’ human status. A closer look at the case of the Holocaust though suggests that perpetrators may not just redraw boundaries of an existing normative horizon but shift away from any universal conception of morality to endorse a moral particularism (in the case of Nazi perpetrators a particularism that is rooted in a belief of racially specific moral orders).
This, second, leads to a decoupling of the connection between moral status and human status. As normative values within a moral particularism are no longer tied to a universal conception of moral principles applying to all humans, there is no necessary link between denying moral status and human status. Instead, it becomes paramount to assess the extent to which perpetrators deny either or both in individual cases, requiring a much more differentiated conceptual and empirical analysis than prevalent in much of current scholarship.
Third, such a more differentiated analysis, as it has been done above in relation to perpetrators and victims of the Holocaust, has revealed a thoroughly heterogeneous relation between understandings of morality and humanity. Far from a simple and straightforward correlation, a brief assessment of three different perpetrator groups already shows that even in cases where the denial of moral status and the denial of human status are co-present, the nature of their connection can differ fundamentally. It also indicates that the assumed connection between a loss of moral status and a loss of human status is not a necessary one as some Holocaust perpetrators maintained a thoroughgoing human perception of their victims, in some cases to the extent that the violence they exerted depended in its meaning and purpose on the explicit recognition of the humanity of victims.
These observations throw into doubt the frequently invoked understanding of dehumanisation as a denial of moral status. As such, they fit within the emerging literature that is both critical of the importance of dehumanisation in violent conflict and questions the actual frequency of its occurrence (Over, 2021a: 3). Similar to the findings above, current critics argue that ‘[a]lthough there may be some cases in which out-group members are genuinely believed to be less than human, there is not yet convincing evidence that this is a common phenomenon’ (Over, 2021a: 11). The key problem therefore lies with the lack of sustained empirical and conceptual reflection on the nature, role and function of dehumanisation in cases of mass violence, a shortcoming in current dehumanisation research which even its proponents accept, with Livingstone Smith (2021: xi) observing that ‘there has not been much research into the nature of dehumanization’.
In addition to these emerging doubts about the so far widely assumed centrality of dehumanisation, the above analysis offers further opportunities to foster an empirically more nuanced and conceptually more coherent development of dehumanisation research in at least three respects. First, a critique of a notion of dehumanisation focussed on the denial of moral status highlights the pitfalls of undifferentiated invocations of ‘dehumanisation’ which conflate its related yet distinct descriptive, normative and analytical uses. As was already touched upon above, a critical analysis of the notion and function of dehumanisation in relation to morality suggests the need for further reflections on the normative framework that serves as the reference point for cases of dehumanisation. On the one hand, a charge of dehumanising practices can and does capture the moral condemnation of these acts from the vantage point of the observer and as such remains external to the relationship between perpetrator and victim. Such a normative use of ‘dehumanisation’ may well serve the purpose to express a fundamental rejection of the actions of perpetrators, delegitimise whatever justification they may present for committing these acts and posit the need for the recognition of basic moral standards which would prevent future occurrences of such violations. Analytically, on the contrary, such an externally posited use of ‘dehumanisation’ as a normative judgement may fail to penetrate the intricacies which characterise the often complex and multi-layered relations between perpetrators and victims in instances of mass violence. The externality of its position may hamper a differentiated understanding of heterogeneous perpetrator groups, their varying relations to victims and the manners in which the victims’ status as ‘human’ or ‘non-human’ is constructed morally, cognitively, discursively or institutionally. Consequently, using dehumanisation as a blanket, normative judgement in any description of mass violence risks an analytically superficial engagement with the actual practices of perpetrators, risking empirically questionable and conceptually problematic conclusions.
Recognising this often-unacknowledged entanglement between normative and analytical uses of ‘dehumanisation’ would, second, allow for a more sophisticated and balanced assessment of the empirical presence and relevance of dehumanisation. While differently focussed uses of ‘dehumanziation’ are by no means mutually exclusive, explicitly stating an experientially descriptive, normatively evaluative or analytically explanatory concern would allow for a much clearer sense of both the relevant framework and purpose of much of dehumanisation research. It would also help clarify what would be needed in terms of conceptual groundwork and empirical evidence to validate and defend respective normative or analytical conclusions. Especially in analytically focussed studies of the nature, function and role of dehumanisation in enabling and maintaining episodes of mass violence, it could help establish much more intricate, detailed and nuanced understandings of how dehumanisation is constituted, which perpetrator groups rely on it, and where it is peripheral to or even absent in perpetrator-victim relations.
Finally, recent critiques – the one above included – suggest not only that the phenomenon of dehumanisation requires a much more nuanced empirical study but may also benefit from further conceptual reflections. While the heterogeneous conceptions of dehumanisation can indeed draw on some support from available empirical evidence, none of them has demonstrated empirical or conceptual superiority which could provide a clear and comprehensive grounding. While this may demonstrate the multifaceted nature of dehumanisation (exclusivist positions notwithstanding; see, for instance, Livingstone Smith, 2021: 9)), it does raise the question as to what binds all these different forms together – in other words, we lack a clear understanding of what makes them part of the general phenomenon of ‘dehumanisation’. To achieve such an understanding, further research and reflection into the general character of dehumanisation is needed. While some attempts have been made recently to address this question (Michel, 2023), work remains to be done. Grounding dehumanisation conceptually requires a renewed and sustained engagement with the question that must underwrite all analytical and normative reflections of this phenomenon: what does it mean to be human?
Addressing these three areas touching upon normative versus analytical uses of dehumanisation, engaging in critical reflections on its empirical appearances and relevance and seeking a more comprehensive conceptual grounding promise to open dehumanisation research to a more intricate and nuanced assessment of its uses, meanings and relevance in cases of mass violence and allow it to move forward and engage with its critics more productively.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
