Books about 'evil' and the capacity for human cruelty and violence

[dylans]

Primo Levi's If This Is A Man, non-fiction about life in a concentration/death camp. And most of Levi's other stuff.

Yes, Primo Levi is the man. The Damned and the Saved.

 

[Dirty Martini]

*bump*

I'm just reading If This Is A Man by Primo Levi at the moment. I bought it earlier this week when it sort of hit me, despite having studied the holocaust and other nasty things, that there were so very many people involved in its implementation and that that is just very difficult to square with human nature.

So I was interested when seeing this thread and reading through it. No one really makes any justification for reading these sort of books or wanting to know about people doing very bad things.

I was wondering whether the impulse of curiosity, morbid or otherwise, that drives the attraction of these books is not too far off the areas of the mind that allow people to do very bad things.

*bumps the bump*

I've been thinking about precisely these issues recently. Probably deserves its own thread.

Anyway, I've just re-read Christopher Brownings's Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and The Final Solution in Poland that I recommended earlier in the thread. It's not a book I ever expected to re-read, but I got much more out of it this time round having read a fair bit more about the Holocaust since, and coming off the back of Nazi Germany & The Jews by Saul Friedlander. There's a fascinating debate here about how ordinary people became mass murderers, and about the question of ideological imperative and 'human nature'. Browning is very critical about the idea that genocide was the natural consequence of a longstanding all-pervasive antisemitism unique to Germany in the 20th century.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and The Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning

How a group of middle-aged German police reservists became mass murderers in Poland. Has a lot to say.

After starting this a couple of years ago (and just getting distracted a hundred pages in), I've been properly reading this. Riveting, and completely accessible to the general reader, if - by necessity - very repetitive.

 

[BigMoaner]

Son, by Jack Olsen is mental.

 

[BigMoaner]

I've read Gitta Sereny's Cries Unheard and The German Trauma which understands mankind's propensity for unimagiable cruelty, without letting any of the perpetrators off the hook
I've also read Blake Morrison's As If, which explores children's capacity for terrible cruelty.
And I think the humanity of Pat Barker's novels breaks a lot of ground in our understanding of the extraordinary acts of violence and harm people can do to one another.
I would like people to recommend me some more books which do more to explore the dark side of the human condition without lazily labellling them as 'evil'.
Your suggestions please.

The German Trauma is an incredible little book

 

[BigMoaner]

'The Ice Man' by Phillip Carlo, about deceased serial killer and Mafia hitman Richard Kuklinski, is well worth a read.

his video interview is astonishing.

 

[BigMoaner]

Brain Masters incredible Killing for Company and At The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer.

 

[trabuquera]

The Gate by Francois Bizot - an account of his time in captivity with the Khmer Rouge in the early 70s. Astonishing because as a Khmer speaker and student of Buddhism he could - up to a point - separate out what was 'innate' Cambodian fatalism and what was new-fangled ideology in their bonkers worldview. Even more astonishingly he managed to talk Comrade Duch, killer of tens of thousands, to write him a 'get out of Tuol Sleng free' letter and made it out of the country. It's spine chilling - very little blood or violence but all about the mind games and the feeling of utter powerlessness.

 

[Pickman's model]

*bump*

I'm just reading If This Is A Man by Primo Levi at the moment. I bought it earlier this week when it sort of hit me, despite having studied the holocaust and other nasty things, that there were so very many people involved in its implementation and that that is just very difficult to square with human nature.

and what do you think about human nature now?

 

[Diamond]

and what do you think about human nature now?

I think you are bored.

 

[Pickman's model]

I think you are bored.

i think you have not learned anything of human nature in the last six years.

 

[seventh bullet]

The Gate by Francois Bizot - an account of his time in captivity with the Khmer Rouge in the early 70s. Astonishing because as a Khmer speaker and student of Buddhism he could - up to a point - separate out what was 'innate' Cambodian fatalism and what was new-fangled ideology in their bonkers worldview. Even more astonishingly he managed to talk Comrade Duch, killer of tens of thousands, to write him a 'get out of Tuol Sleng free' letter and made it out of the country. It's spine chilling - very little blood or violence but all about the mind games and the feeling of utter powerlessness.

Their 'worldview' wasn't 'bonkers,' just still misunderstood. Michael Vickery has mocked Cambodian life as viewed from the outside, and the liberal journalist Philip Short clumsily talked about Cambodian society and its violence in his biography of Pol Pot, Anatomy of a Nightmare. He was a prisoner in a 'liberated zone,' no? S-21 was set up after the war.

You could pick up Beyond the Horizon, written by Laurence Picq, a French woman who lived and worked in DK. Another French person, the sociologist and Holocaust denier Serge Thion, wrote an article for an academic journal or bulletin about his time briefly spent in a rebel-controlled area not far from the capital and was unharmed, took part in cultural activities etc. He was working as a teacher there at the time. It's also briefly mentioned in Short's book, by way of a dug up intelligence report from Lon Nol's network of informants. Red-haired foreigner in sandals crossing the front to visit the Communists.

 

[trabuquera]

Their 'worldview' wasn't 'bonkers,' just still misunderstood.

Sorry - but I think an ideology which includes reverence of a 'mythic past' which induces people to abandon Western medicine, the use of eyeglasses, etc, and leads to the deaths of millions is a lot more than just misunderstood. Or am I misunderstanding you?

 

[seventh bullet]

Sorry - but I think an ideology which includes reverence of a 'mythic past' which induces people to abandon Western medicine, the use of eyeglasses, etc, and leads to the deaths of millions is a lot more than just misunderstood. Or am I misunderstanding you?

Well, from the above I think you need to read better material on the subject. And I wasn't saying anything positive about their 'ideology' either. We've all bluffed about things before, no need to get in a huff. Was it about 1.5 million that died?

 

[trabuquera]

I'm not "huffing" because I'm happy to admit I know very, very little about Cambodia (thanks for your condescension anyway though). I genuinely don't understand what you are driving at - whether you don't like Bizot, or just want to recommend other stuff you think is better, or what.

 

[seventh bullet]

It looked like a snotty post. Apols for the misunderstanding.

I was posting some recommendations and the first two, in part, touch on what you were talking about in Bizot's book, putting into some context violence in Cambodian society and that the Communists were unremarkable in that. The other two are mentions of others who have, if not abducted and kept prisoner, spent time with the Communists.

The first is Marxist Vickery's Cambodia, 1975-82, the chapter called The Gentle Land (which is a piss-take of the Reader's Digest crap Murder of a Gentle Land by Anthony Paul and John Barron). Be careful with the rest of his book, for while interesting, I think it's untenable in the nature of their rule (poor peasant-driven revolution). But who am I to argue with a prof?

 

[trabuquera]

fair enough - and thanks for replying. It's an inherent danger in this thread I guess - it's so important to try and understand how and why people (and political movements and countries) can commit evil acts, but it's hard to discuss without falling into verbal traps all over the place - curiosity doesn't equal wallowing in misery, wanting to understand folks who do bad things doesn't mean you endorse their beliefs, reading Mein Kampf doesn't make you a Nazi etc etc etc. (sort of parallel to what's been said in the IS thread, about unpicking the differences between 'deranged' people who have mental health problems vs ppl who believe in 'deranged' political programmes vs ppl whose beliefs you just don't share so you call them deranged just to insult them.) anyway. If I feel motivated any time soon to learn more about Cambodia I'll chase up those books. so cheers for that.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Anyway, I've just re-read Christopher Brownings's Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and The Final Solution in Poland that I recommended earlier in the thread. It's not a book I ever expected to re-read, but I got much more out of it this time round having read a fair bit more about the Holocaust since, and coming off the back of Nazi Germany & The Jews by Saul Friedlander. There's a fascinating debate here about how ordinary people became mass murderers, and about the question of ideological imperative and 'human nature'. Browning is very critical about the idea that genocide was the natural consequence of a longstanding all-pervasive antisemitism unique to Germany in the 20th century.

Polished this off tonight - Browning is very compelling in his arguments, and it is very readable, even though it's backed up by detailed study of primary sources, witness statements and court records.

The edition I have is topped off with an updated afterword, comprising his exemplary takedown of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, which had been written as a rebuttal of Browning's own thesis. Short version: Browning argues that ordinary people can be conditioned to undertake extraordinary acts of mass murder, and Nazism and war conditions greatly contributed by creating the extreme levels of antisemitism that facilitated this; Goldhagen argues that Germans are a uniquely anti-semitic people, and their anti-semitism led to Nazism and the war.