The following article by Alette Smeulers is a response to the contributions to JiC’s recent symposium on Alette’s book, Perpetrators of Mass Atrocities Terribly and Terrifyingly Normal?. Alette is a professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her research takes an inter- and multidisciplinary approach, focuses on on the causes and perpetrators of international crimes and terrorism, as well as the international criminal justice systems dealing with these crimes. Other contributions to the symposium can be found here.

I’d like to start by thanking all the contributors for reading the book, Perpetrators of Mass Atrocities – Terribly and Terrifyingly Normal? and for their blogposts, which were enriching and thought provoking. Also, many thanks to Mark Kersten and Aleja Espinosa for providing room and space for the book symposium.

The comments were overwhelmingly positive. Several contributors stressed or added important insights: Mirza Buljubasic emphasized the role of society in normalizing crimes; Mina Rauschenbach’s contribution centered around the moral agency of perpetrators; Bart Nauta discussed the traumatized perpetrator; and Nandor Knust suggested some potential benefits for transitional justice, with which I agree and for which I am very grateful. Two contributors, Iva Vukusic and Carola Lingaas were also, in many ways, positive but clearly more skeptical about my approach. In this response I will focus on their points of critique.

Studying perpetrators of mass atrocities is done by scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, criminology, political science, anthropology, history, genocide studies, terrorism studies, and law. It has become a very inter- and multidisciplinary endeavor. This has significant advantages, leading to a rich and thriving field with many cross fertilizations between the subdisciplines. It also has a few disadvantages, among them that what one scholar is doing does not always sit easily with how another scholar views things. 

This disadvantage is illustrated in two of the commentaries. Iva Vukusic indicates that ‘we should not lump together perpetrators of mass violence in the context of war with those individuals who perpetrate mass violence in a functioning state, and in peace time’.  I agree in the sense that there are indeed important differences, as also Carola Lingaasargues. 

However, there are also important commonalities between the two which was the very starting point of my research. Lawyers and historians tend to focus on the unique aspects of a perpetrator and/or a situation and therefore focus on the differences. Psychologists and criminologists, on the other hand, tend to look more at common factors and draw parallels despite (acknowledged) differences. I seek to draw such parallels by developing a typology which gives me (and hopefully will also give my readers) a deeper insight into human behavior in different kinds of situations. 

Both approaches (focusing on unique features and focusing on commonalities) are important and valuable as they add different things to the table. Both methods complement each other and together lead to a better understanding of both the act of perpetration and the perpetrator. So, to study them together has merit, however, counterintuitive to lawyers and historians.

In addition, the nature of warfare has changed. As a result we see a merger of war criminals and ordinary criminals. As Basra and Neumann argue, we also see a merger between ordinary criminals, organized crime and terrorism. Ever since the terrorist organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), managed to establish an Islamic State, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between ordinary criminals, war criminals, and terrorists. To argue, as Iva and Carola do, that there are fundamental differences between the various situations and case studies is -also for these reasons- no longer always true. 

Comparing violent human beings in different situations is valuable and provides new perspectives and insights that a case study cannot. Through my book, I did what criminologists and psychologists tend to do: focus on the common human behavior and look at common factors, mechanisms, and dynamics despite the sometimes very different surroundings. I am also not the first scholar who sees parallels between school shooters and terrorists for instance (despite also very clear differences). I therefore see the added value of a typology despite its inherent rigidity as also Nandor rightfully concluded. I strongly believe that both the focus on the differences as well as on the commonalities is important and adds to our knowledge. They both add new insights.

Vukusic  also argues that we need to study action. I agree, but I disagree with her suggestion that this is the better (or even the only valid) approach. As I stated in the book, perpetrators have different motives for different actions. Many perpetrators have also -at times- saved people for which they might have had very different motives than when committing violent acts. This shows the importance of looking at the variation of motives for different actions. From this we can conclude that studying actions is indeed also crucial. But so is studying types of perpetrators. The added value of studying perpetrator types (rather than action) is that doing so shows how people gradually radicalize and change. As Staub writes in his book Roots of Evil, they progress on a continuum of destructiveness in which each action makes the next more likely. Or, to use my own words from a previous article: What transforms ordinary people into perpetrators?

This is something which we can much better identify when taking perpetrators as the starting point rather than actions. By doing so we can see, identify and pinpoint the changes (which were very much stressed in the book) and this we could have easily missed when merely looking at actions. In a way actions and actors cannot be differentiated as the actions define the actor but human beings as actors tend to show fairly consistent behavior while simultaneously progressing on the continuum of destructiveness and becoming more and more extreme. One needs to look at these consistent patterns to fully understand how they affect and transform someone into a perpetrator. I thus see not just an important but even crucial value in both types of research: action oriented and actor oriented. 

Mirza argues that some societies are structured in such a way that they ‘make atrocity normal’. I fully agree and also tried to point that out in the book. Next to identifying the characteristics of such societies (and social environments), it is important to show how ordinary people respond to those social contexts and thus how and why they transform into perpetrators. What almost all perpetrators have in common is that they do not see themselves as perpetrators but as the (real) victims or as people doing the right thing by defending themselves against pure evil or as the ones trying to create a better world. In the process they normalize violence.  It is all interrelated: individuals shape society and society shapes individuals. 

With this book I tried to show how different kinds of people gradually transform into different types of perpetrators and that, by making small seemingly insignificant choices, they can end up on a slippery slope towards a psychological trap. I wanted to focus on the social-psychological processes and mechanisms rather than on circumstances simply because there are so many terrifying parallels to what is happening in the world right now. We can see all around us how destructive leaders undermine and erode democracy, the rule of law and the international legal order which paves the way for an unchecked radicalization and might make us end up in a third world war. We are already witnessing an ongoing genocide in Gaza, pure acts of aggression in deviance of international law by Russia in Ukraine, and the radicalization of societies and the people in it in the US and many Western countries.

If Mirza is right that my book ‘is not just about the past’, but also ‘a lens through which we can understand the present’ then I have achieved my most important aim. Next to sharing my insights, I also wanted this book to act as a warning. Perpetrators are not just others. They could be us and this I tried to show by focusing on the human individual responding to (many different types of) situations. I would thus like to end with partially repeating the title and adding to it: Research on perpetrators requires and benefits from a multi-angled approach: on actions and actors, on differences and similarities, on case studies and typologies but not necessarily all at once or in the same book!