Read The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Online
Authors: Steven Pinker
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (77 page)
Harff sums up the pathways by which these risk factors erupt into genocide:
Almost all genocides and politicides of the last half-century were either ideological, exemplified by the Cambodian case, or retributive, as in Iraq [Saddam Hussein’s 1988–91 campaign against Iraqi Kurds]. The scenario that leads to
ideological genocide
begins when a new elite comes to power, usually through civil war or revolution, with a transforming vision of a new society purified of unwanted or threatening elements.
Retributive geno-politicides
occur during a protracted internal war . . . when one party, usually the government, seeks to destroy its opponent’s support base [or] after a rebel challenge has been militarily defeated.
169
The decline of genocide over the last third of a century, then, may be traced to the upswing of some of the same factors that drove down interstate and civil wars: stable government, democracy, openness to trade, and humanistic ruling philosophies that elevate the interests of individuals over struggles among groups.
For all the rigor that a logistic regression offers, it is essentially a meat grinder that takes a set of variables as input and extrudes a probability as output. What it hides is the vastly skewed distribution of the human costs of different genocides—the way that a small number of men, under the sway of a smaller number of ideologies, took actions at particular moments in history that caused outsize numbers of deaths. Shifts in the levels of the risk factors certainly pushed around the likelihood of the genocides that racked up thousands, tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of deaths. But the truly monstrous genocides, the ones with tens of millions of victims, depended not so much on gradually shifting political forces as on a few contingent ideas and events.
The appearance of Marxist ideology in particular was a historical tsunami that is breathtaking in its total human impact. It led to the dekamegamurders by Marxist regimes in the Soviet Union and China, and more circuitously, it contributed to the one committed by the Nazi regime in Germany. Hitler read Marx in 1913, and although he detested Marxist socialism, his National Socialism substituted races for classes in its ideology of a dialectical struggle toward utopia, which is why some historians consider the two ideologies “fraternal twins.”
170
Marxism also set off reactions that led to politicides by militantly anticommunist regimes in Indonesia and Latin America, and to the destructive civil wars of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s stoked by the Cold War superpowers. The point is not that Marxism should be morally blamed for these unintended consequences, just that any historical narrative must acknowledge the sweeping repercussions of this single idea. Valentino notes that no small part of the decline of genocide is the decline of
communism
, and thus “the single most important cause of mass killing in the twentieth century appears to be fading into history.”
171
Nor is it likely that it will come back into fashion. During its heyday, violence by Marxist regimes was justified with the saying “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
172
The historian Richard Pipes summarized history’s verdict: “Aside from the fact that human beings are not eggs, the trouble is that no omelet has emerged from the slaughter.”
173
Valentino concludes that “it may be premature to celebrate ‘the end of history,’ but if no similarly radical ideas gain the widespread applicability and acceptance of communism, humanity may be able to look forward to considerably less mass killing in the coming century than it experienced in the last.”
174
170
Marxism also set off reactions that led to politicides by militantly anticommunist regimes in Indonesia and Latin America, and to the destructive civil wars of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s stoked by the Cold War superpowers. The point is not that Marxism should be morally blamed for these unintended consequences, just that any historical narrative must acknowledge the sweeping repercussions of this single idea. Valentino notes that no small part of the decline of genocide is the decline of
communism
, and thus “the single most important cause of mass killing in the twentieth century appears to be fading into history.”
171
Nor is it likely that it will come back into fashion. During its heyday, violence by Marxist regimes was justified with the saying “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
172
The historian Richard Pipes summarized history’s verdict: “Aside from the fact that human beings are not eggs, the trouble is that no omelet has emerged from the slaughter.”
173
Valentino concludes that “it may be premature to celebrate ‘the end of history,’ but if no similarly radical ideas gain the widespread applicability and acceptance of communism, humanity may be able to look forward to considerably less mass killing in the coming century than it experienced in the last.”
174
On top of that singularly destructive ideology were the catastrophic decisions of a few men who took the stage at particular moments in the 20th century. I have already mentioned that many historians have joined the chorus “No Hitler, no Holocaust.”
175
But Hitler was not the only tyrant whose obsessions killed tens of millions. The historian Robert Conquest, an authority on Stalin’s politicides, concluded that “the nature of the whole Purge depends in the last analysis on the personal and political drives of Stalin.”
176
As for China, it is inconceivable that the record-setting famine of the Great Leap Forward would have occurred but for Mao’s harebrained schemes, and the historian Harry Harding noted of the country’s subsequent politicide that “the principal responsibility for the Cultural Revolution—a movement that affected tens of millions of Chinese—rests with one man. Without a Mao, there could not have been a Cultural Revolution.”
177
With such a small number of data points causing such a large share of the devastation, we will never really know how to explain the most calamitous events of the 20th century. The ideologies prepared the ground and attracted the men, the absence of democracy gave them the opportunity, but tens of millions of deaths ultimately depended on the decisions of just three individuals.
THE TRAJECTORY OF TERRORISM175
But Hitler was not the only tyrant whose obsessions killed tens of millions. The historian Robert Conquest, an authority on Stalin’s politicides, concluded that “the nature of the whole Purge depends in the last analysis on the personal and political drives of Stalin.”
176
As for China, it is inconceivable that the record-setting famine of the Great Leap Forward would have occurred but for Mao’s harebrained schemes, and the historian Harry Harding noted of the country’s subsequent politicide that “the principal responsibility for the Cultural Revolution—a movement that affected tens of millions of Chinese—rests with one man. Without a Mao, there could not have been a Cultural Revolution.”
177
With such a small number of data points causing such a large share of the devastation, we will never really know how to explain the most calamitous events of the 20th century. The ideologies prepared the ground and attracted the men, the absence of democracy gave them the opportunity, but tens of millions of deaths ultimately depended on the decisions of just three individuals.
Terrorism is a peculiar category of violence, because it has a cockeyed ratio of fear to harm. Compared to the number of deaths from homicide, war, and genocide, the worldwide toll from terrorism is in the noise: fewer than 400 deaths a year since 1968 from international terrorism (where perpetrators from one country cause damage in another), and about 2,500 a year since 1998 from domestic terrorism.
178
The numbers we have been dealing with in this chapter have been at least two orders of magnitude higher.
178
The numbers we have been dealing with in this chapter have been at least two orders of magnitude higher.
But after the September 11, 2001, attacks, terrorism became an obsession. Pundits and politicians turned up the rhetoric to eleven, and the word
existential
(generally modifying
threat
or
crisis
) had not seen as much use since the heyday of Sartre and Camus. Experts proclaimed that terrorism made the United States “vulnerable” and “fragile,” and that it threatened to do away with the “ascendancy of the modern state,” “our way of life,” or “civilization itself.”
179
In a 2005 essay in
The Atlantic,
for example, a former White House counterterrorism official confidently prophesied that by the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks the American economy would be shut down by chronic bombings of casinos, subways, and shopping malls, the regular downing of commercial airliners by shoulder-launched missiles, and acts of cataclysmic sabotage at chemical plants.
180
The massive bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security was created overnight to reassure the nation with such security theater as color-coded terrorist alerts, advisories to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape, obsessive checking of identification cards (despite fakes being so plentiful that George W. Bush’s own daughter was arrested for using one to order a margarita), the confiscation of nail clippers at airports, the girding of rural post offices with concrete barriers, and the designation of eighty thousand locations as “potential terrorist targets,” including Weeki Wachee Springs, a Florida tourist trap in which comely women dressed as mermaids swim around in large glass tanks.
existential
(generally modifying
threat
or
crisis
) had not seen as much use since the heyday of Sartre and Camus. Experts proclaimed that terrorism made the United States “vulnerable” and “fragile,” and that it threatened to do away with the “ascendancy of the modern state,” “our way of life,” or “civilization itself.”
179
In a 2005 essay in
The Atlantic,
for example, a former White House counterterrorism official confidently prophesied that by the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks the American economy would be shut down by chronic bombings of casinos, subways, and shopping malls, the regular downing of commercial airliners by shoulder-launched missiles, and acts of cataclysmic sabotage at chemical plants.
180
The massive bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security was created overnight to reassure the nation with such security theater as color-coded terrorist alerts, advisories to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape, obsessive checking of identification cards (despite fakes being so plentiful that George W. Bush’s own daughter was arrested for using one to order a margarita), the confiscation of nail clippers at airports, the girding of rural post offices with concrete barriers, and the designation of eighty thousand locations as “potential terrorist targets,” including Weeki Wachee Springs, a Florida tourist trap in which comely women dressed as mermaids swim around in large glass tanks.
All this was in response to a threat that has killed a trifling number of Americans. The nearly 3,000 deaths from the 9/11 attacks were literally off the chart—way down in the tail of the power-law distribution into which terrorist attacks fall.
181
According to the Global Terrorism Database of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (the major publicly available dataset on terrorist attacks), between 1970 and 2007 only one other terrorist attack in the entire world has killed as many as 500 people.
182
In the United States, Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995 killed 165, a shooting spree by two teenagers at Columbine High School in 1999 killed 17, and no other attack has killed as many as a dozen. Other than 9/11, the number of people killed by terrorists on American soil during these thirty-eight years was 340, and the number killed after 9/11—the date that inaugurated the so-called Age of Terror—was 11. While some additional plots were foiled by the Department of Homeland Security, many of their claims have turned out to be the proverbial elephant repellent, with every elephant-free day serving as proof of its effectiveness.
183
181
According to the Global Terrorism Database of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (the major publicly available dataset on terrorist attacks), between 1970 and 2007 only one other terrorist attack in the entire world has killed as many as 500 people.
182
In the United States, Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995 killed 165, a shooting spree by two teenagers at Columbine High School in 1999 killed 17, and no other attack has killed as many as a dozen. Other than 9/11, the number of people killed by terrorists on American soil during these thirty-eight years was 340, and the number killed after 9/11—the date that inaugurated the so-called Age of Terror—was 11. While some additional plots were foiled by the Department of Homeland Security, many of their claims have turned out to be the proverbial elephant repellent, with every elephant-free day serving as proof of its effectiveness.
183
Compare the American death toll, with or without 9/11, to other preventable causes of death. Every year more than 40,000 Americans are killed in traffic accidents, 20,000 in falls, 18,000 in homicides, 3,000 by drowning (including 300 in bathtubs), 3,000 in fires, 24,000 from accidental poisoning, 2,500 from complications of surgery, 300 from suffocation in bed, 300 from inhalation of gastric contents, and 17,000 by “other and unspecified nontransport accidents and their sequelae.”
184
In fact, in every year but 1995 and 2001, more Americans were killed by lightning, deer, peanut allergies, bee stings, and “ignition or melting of nightwear” than by terrorist attacks.
185
The number of deaths from terrorist attacks is so small that even minor measures to avoid them can
increase
the risk of dying. The cognitive psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has estimated that in the year after the 9/11 attacks, 1,500 Americans died in car accidents because they chose to drive rather than fly to their destinations out of fear of dying in a hijacked or sabotaged plane, unaware that the risk of death in a plane flight from Boston to Los Angeles is the same as the risk of death in a car trip of twelve miles. In other words the number of people who died by avoiding air travel was six times the number of people who died in the airplanes on September 11.
186
And of course the 9/11 attacks sent the United States into two wars that have taken far more American and British lives than the hijackers did, to say nothing of the lives of Afghans and Iraqis.
184
In fact, in every year but 1995 and 2001, more Americans were killed by lightning, deer, peanut allergies, bee stings, and “ignition or melting of nightwear” than by terrorist attacks.
185
The number of deaths from terrorist attacks is so small that even minor measures to avoid them can
increase
the risk of dying. The cognitive psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has estimated that in the year after the 9/11 attacks, 1,500 Americans died in car accidents because they chose to drive rather than fly to their destinations out of fear of dying in a hijacked or sabotaged plane, unaware that the risk of death in a plane flight from Boston to Los Angeles is the same as the risk of death in a car trip of twelve miles. In other words the number of people who died by avoiding air travel was six times the number of people who died in the airplanes on September 11.
186
And of course the 9/11 attacks sent the United States into two wars that have taken far more American and British lives than the hijackers did, to say nothing of the lives of Afghans and Iraqis.
The discrepancy between the panic generated by terrorism and the deaths generated by terrorism is no accident. Panic is the whole point of terrorism, as the word itself makes clear. Though definitions vary (as in the cliché “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”), terrorism is generally understood as premeditated violence perpetrated by a nonstate actor against noncombatants (civilians or off-duty soldiers) in pursuit of a political, religious, or social goal, designed to coerce a government or to intimidate or convey a message to a larger audience. The terrorists may want to extort a government into capitulating to a demand, to sap people’s confidence in their government’s ability to protect them, or to provoke massive repression that will turn people against their government or bring about violent chaos in which the terrorist faction hopes to prevail. Terrorists are altruistic in the sense of being motivated by a cause rather than by personal profit. They act by surprise and in secrecy; hence the ubiquitous appellation “cowardly.” And they are communicators, seeking publicity and attention, which they manufacture through fear.
Terrorism is a form of asymmetrical warfare—a tactic of the weak against the strong—which leverages the psychology of fear to create emotional damage that is disproportionate to its damage in lives or property. Cognitive psychologists such as Tversky, Kahneman, Gigerenzer, and Slovic have shown that the perceived danger of a risk depends on two mental hobgoblins.
187
The first is fathomability: it’s better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don’t. People are nervous about risks that are novel, undetectable, delayed in their effects, and poorly understood by the science of the day. The second contributor is dread. People worry about worst-case scenarios, the ones that are uncontrollable, catastrophic, involuntary, and inequitable (the people exposed to the risk are not the ones who benefit from it). The psychologists suggest that the illusions are a legacy of ancient brain circuitry that evolved to protect us against natural risks such as predators, poisons, enemies, and storms. They may have been the best guide to allocating vigilance in the prenumerate societies that predominated in human life until the compilation of statistical databases within the past century. Also, in an era of scientific ignorance these apparent quirks in the psychology of danger may have brought a secondary benefit: people exaggerate threats from enemies to extort compensation from them, to recruit allies against them, or to justify wiping them out preemptively (the superstitious killing discussed in chapter 4).
188
187
The first is fathomability: it’s better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don’t. People are nervous about risks that are novel, undetectable, delayed in their effects, and poorly understood by the science of the day. The second contributor is dread. People worry about worst-case scenarios, the ones that are uncontrollable, catastrophic, involuntary, and inequitable (the people exposed to the risk are not the ones who benefit from it). The psychologists suggest that the illusions are a legacy of ancient brain circuitry that evolved to protect us against natural risks such as predators, poisons, enemies, and storms. They may have been the best guide to allocating vigilance in the prenumerate societies that predominated in human life until the compilation of statistical databases within the past century. Also, in an era of scientific ignorance these apparent quirks in the psychology of danger may have brought a secondary benefit: people exaggerate threats from enemies to extort compensation from them, to recruit allies against them, or to justify wiping them out preemptively (the superstitious killing discussed in chapter 4).
188
Fallacies in risk perception are known to distort public policy. Money and laws have been directed at keeping additives out of food and chemical residues out of water supplies which pose infinitesimal risks to health, while measures that demonstrably save lives, such as enforcing lower highway speeds, are resisted.
189
Sometimes a highly publicized accident becomes a prophetic allegory, an ominous portent of an apocalyptic danger. The 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant killed no one, and probably had no effect on cancer rates, but it halted the development of nuclear power in the United States and thus will contribute to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.
189
Sometimes a highly publicized accident becomes a prophetic allegory, an ominous portent of an apocalyptic danger. The 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant killed no one, and probably had no effect on cancer rates, but it halted the development of nuclear power in the United States and thus will contribute to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.
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