One thing that completely captivates my interest and imagination is reading about genocides. Some might perceive it as an immature morbid fascination, but for me I think genocide connects aspects of history, politics and human psychology I find interesting.
I collect certain things related to genocide. I have a ‘srbosjek’ - a Serb cutter. The hand knife was used to cut the throats of Serbs during the genocide by the Croatian Ustasze.
I have always thought that beneath the veneer of human civility and empathy, most humans are under certain conditions capable of psychopathic acts of cruelty. Humans bend to social pressure with ease and our empathy is not as strong as it is performed. Lord of the Flies is an understatement.
I visited Cambodia and was really blown away by the history there. The ideology of the Khmer Rouge was fascinating. The number of people that took part in the genocide and only 3 were prosecuted.
It is very difficult to find some actual information on genocides which isn't tainted by politics or propaganda. I wonder why politicians and governments have such a fixation on this stuff. Maybe it is simply because they were committed by political regimes.
I find it very interesting that genocide isn't something "that just happens after society completes 10 stages of genocide". Rather it happens naturally during interethnic conflicts, and we usually see similar patterns of behaviour emerge every time. I would even argue it is somewhat evolutionary conserved.
Viewing genocide as a natural social phenomenon rather than "this one time when my political boogeyman of choice killed a lot of people" would greatly improve public conciousness. That's because thinking it is tied to any particullar group of people, or that it is "barbaric practice" that can be eradicated by adding "Schindler's List" into school curriculums or having weaker national identity, make one think he would never act like this and that it can't happen here.
Unfortunately talking about things like these with normies and expecting them to be neutral is impossible.
The Cambodian genocide and Pol Pot are really interesting to me. How did the Khmer Rouge go along with Pol Pot's plans? Was everyone just extremely politically indoctrinated? How do you watch entire cities get depopulated and deported to death camps and think nothing is wrong? Most other genocides at least follow some sort of clear pattern in regards to who the perpetrators targeted, but with the Khmer Rouge, they just liquidated millions of regular Cambodians. It makes no sense to me.
How did the Angkar keep this shit going for YEARS with no internal attempts at a coup or uprising? Literally everyone in the country was suffering, but it didn't end until the Vietnamese intervened. How long would the regime have stayed in power if that didn't happen?
it really is mind-blowing. At least most genocides have some defined line where the perps can convince themselves that they’re only killing ”them”, not their own (of course, usually still requires some self-deception to keep that up), but I just don’t see how you’d create a coping mechanism powerful enough to justify the Khmer Rouge version to yourself.
>>6268You should watch the documentary 'the act of killing' - I think the human brain just normalizes whatever the superstructure sets in motion.