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4 - The Proud Executioner: Pride and the Psychology of Genocide

from Part I - Causes and Dynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2018

Thomas Brudholm
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
Johannes Lang
Affiliation:
Danish Institute for International Studies
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Summary

Social psychologist Johannes Lang explores the role of pride in the psychology of genocide. To feel proud is to feel good about oneself and one’s attachments, and we embrace our identity, our self, in part by feeling good about who we are. From this perspective, pride is an inescapable component of the good life: it expresses a sense of recognition, dignity, and self-esteem. But pride also has more sinister connotations, associated with arrogance and hubris. Drawing on the long intellectual history of pride, this chapter explores the philosophical and psychological complexities of this emotion, and asks what pride does in the context of genocide. Using examples from the Holocaust, Lang argues that pride helps sustain some of the most important social structures and psychological mechanisms involved in genocide and other forms of mass atrocity. Pride inspires loyalty and obedience; pride exacerbates the perceived distance between perpetrator and victim; and ultimately pride is one of the most distinctive features of the genocidal imagination: the arrogant presumption that some people have the right as well as the power to remake the very texture of humanity itself.
Type
Chapter
Information
Emotions and Mass Atrocity
Philosophical and Theoretical Explorations
, pp. 64 - 80
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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