Worse than war : genocide, eliminationism, and the ongoing assault on humanity

The choice -- Clarifying the issues. Eliminationism, not genocide ; Worse than war : our age of suffering -- Explaining eliminationist assaults. Why they begin ; How they are implemented ; Why the perpetrators act ; Why they end -- Modern eliminationist politics. Sources and patterns ; Thinking and acting ; Actual minds, actual words -- Changing the future. Prologue to the future ; What we can do.

Summary:

A paradigm-changing investigation into the phenomenon of genocide and mass killing--explaining why genocides begin, are sustained, and end; why societies support them and why they happen so frequently; and how the international community should and can successfully stop them.

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Book

Length:

xii, 658 p. :

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Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
Non-Fiction	364.151 GOL	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's books are events. They stir passionate public debate among political and civic leaders, scholars, and the general public because they compel people to rethink the most powerful conventional wisdoms and stubborn moral problems of the day. Worse Than War gets to the heart of the phenomenon, genocide, that has caused more deaths in the modern world than military conflict. In doing so, it challenges fundamental things we thought we knew about human beings, society, and politics.

Drawing on extensive field work and research from around the world, Goldhagen explores the anatomy of genocide--explaining why genocides begin, are sustained, and end; why societies support them, why they happen so frequently and how the international community should and can successfully stop them.

As a great book should, Worse than War seeks to change the way we think and to offer new possibilities for a better world. It tells us how we might at last begin to eradicate this greatest scourge of humankind.

Author Notes

Worse Than War is the basis for a major documentary film with Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, produced by JTN Productions and 13/WNET for PBS.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Goldhagen expands the controversial argument of his bestselling Hitler's Willing Executioners to indict the world in this relentless j'accuse. His comparative study surveys a panorama of modern atrocities, encompassing the Holocaust, the Soviet gulag, Cambodia, the Rwandan and Darfur genocides, and even Harry Truman, a "mass murderer" who "should be put in the dock no less than Stalin [and] Pol Pot" for the atomic bombing of Japan. Goldhagen's elaborate concept of "eliminationism," complete with a two-dimensional matrix of "Types of Excess Cruelty" (is the action ordered or not? individually or collectively performed?) is similarly broad, comprising massacres along with nonlethal expulsions and repressions; in his hectoring, incantatory prose ("Think of hearing your victim's screams as you hack at or 'cut' her and then cut her again, and again and again"), it's less a theory than a nomenclature for cataloguing human devilry. As in Executioners, Goldhagen convincingly disparages bureaucratic "banality of evil" explanations of genocide and spotlights the ideologies of leaders who exploit ordinary citizens' hate-filled beliefs to instigate mass murder. It's not easy reading, but Goldhagen's vehemence and the sheer weight of horrors that he recounts move one's conscience. Photos. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Choice Review

Goldhagen (formerly, political science, Harvard) looks at genocide, or what he terms "eliminationism," from the perspective of the perpetrators and their ideology. "Why would people decide one day to slaughter other human beings by the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions," Goldhagen wonders. To answer that grotesque query, he surveys in varying detail most of the examples of 20th-century mass murder. For Goldhagen, the attempted elimination of whole groups of human beings is deliberate and begins with ideas--it is never accidental. He correctly dispenses with Hannah Arendt's notion of the banality of evil of the killers by showing that in almost all cases of genocide, the victimizers were not forced to partake in the atrocities, but did so willingly. The book contains many accounts of how governments were effective in manipulating popular opinion and in illustrating the intense hatred of what often constituted neighbors massacring neighbors. However, in trying to fit a plethora of variables from so many incidents, Goldhagen may draw too many generalizations. While his insights into the commonalities of elimination are valid, he slights some important distinctions among the different tragedies. Nonetheless, this readable if depressing book adds to the unfortunately growing body of scholarship on comparative genocide. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. G. R. Sharfman Manchester College

Library Journal Review

Goldhagen, famous for his groundbreaking Hitler's Willing Executioners, offers a brilliant investigation of eliminationism, of which genocide is only one type. He explores examples of genocides over the past 100 years in, e.g., Tibet, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Rwanda, and Armenia-even making a case that President Harry Truman was a mass murderer for ordering the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Goldhagen concludes with a call for the creation of an international watchdog organization empowered to put a quick halt to such slaughters as they become evident. Verdict This is an extremely important book on a serious topic. The text may be a bit difficult for general readers, but for scholars and others interested in the subject, this is essential reading.-Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Preface: The Choice	p. xi
Introduction: Clarifying the Issues
Chapter 1 Eliminationism, Not Genocide	p. 3
Human Beings and Mass Slaughter	p. 8
Eliminationism	p. 14
The Modern State, Transformative Power	p. 21
The Problems Defined	p. 25
Chapter 2 Worse than War: Our Age of Suffering	p. 33
Our AgeÆs Slaughters	p. 36
Varieties of Eliminationist Assaults	p. 43
The Scope of Eliminationist Assaults	p. 50
Part I Explaining Eliminationist Assaults
Chapter 3 Why They Begin	p. 59
Four Questions and Three Perspectives	p. 63
A New Perspective	p. 68
The Centrality of Political Leaders	p. 74
Chapter 4 How They Are Implemented	p. 85
The Perpetrators	p. 91
Eliminationist Institutions	p. 102
Means and Methods	p. 120
The Sympathies of Others and the Problem of Resistance	p. 130
Transformative Politics, Transformative Results	p. 137
Chapter 5 Why the Perpetrators Act	p. 145
Why Do the Killers Kill?	p. 148
The PerpetratorsÆ Other Actions	p. 168
The PerpetratorsÆ Beliefs and How They Come to Hold Them	p. 194
From Beliefs to Action	p. 216
Chapter 6 Why They End	p. 233
The Genocide Convention	p. 235
The International Political EnvironmentÆs Crucial Context	p. 241
How Eliminationist Assaults End	p. 252
Part II Modern Eliminationist Politics
Chapter 7 Sources and Patterns	p. 265
Modernity and Eliminationist Politics	p. 274
Four Kinds of Eliminationist Assaults	p. 289
Noneliminationist Outcomes	p. 293
The Crucial Character of PerpetratorsÆ Beliefs	p. 297
Chapter 8 Thinking and Acting	p. 309
Discourse and the Dissemination of Eliminationist Beliefs	p. 311
Dehumanization and Demonization	p. 319
Dealing with Demons	p. 330
From Discourse to Action	p. 342
Chapter 9 Actual Minds, Actual Worlds	p. 361
Eliminationist Worlds	p. 364
Communal Worlds	p. 381
Camp Worlds	p. 401
Personal Worlds	p. 429
Actual Worlds	p. 478
Part III Changing the Future
Chapter 10 Prologue to the Future	p. 485
The New Threats	p. 490
Chapter 11 What We Can Do	p. 515
The Need for a Powerful Anti-Eliminationist Discourse	p. 517
The International CommunityÆs Promise and Pathologies	p. 532
Stopping Eliminationist Politics	p. 558
Notes	p. 599
Credits	p. 629
Thoughts and Thanks	p. 631
Index	p. 637

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Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Choice Review

Library Journal Review

Table of Contents