Author: mk66

Bloxham, Donald, ‘Organized Mass Murder: Structure, Participation, and Motivation in Comparative Perspective’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 22, no. 2 (2008), pp. 203-245 – Zak W

Bloxham’s article begins by stating that the state does not need to be intimately involved with mass murder, that organisation is the defining factor no matter how rudimentary. Though the state is not inherently necessary, it can help to legitimise acts of violence in the eyes of its people and allies. He goes on to mention that studies of genocide often take what he refers to as a ‘reductionist’ approach in that they focus on the perpetrators and trying to make broad statements about the nature of genocide, putting the perpetrators under what he calls a ‘unified analyses.’ Instead, Bloxham opts for a comparative approach, looking at different acts of genocide throughout history to see of he can draw any parallels or meaningful comparisons. From this, he goes onto deny the ‘uniqueness’ of the holocaust, stating that it shared parallels with various acts.

Throughout the article, Bloxham looks at the Soviet Ethnic Cleansings in World War II, the Rwandan Genocide and the Armenian Genocide using them as comparisons for the Holocaust. In doing so, he comes to various conclusions about the nature of genocide. For example, he assesses how each act had differing degrees of popular participation, with the Rwandan Genocide having a high degree of civilian activity in the killings, whereas the Soviet cleansings were almost closed off to popular participations and the killings were enacted by instruments of the state apparatus.

Near the beginning he introduces three main principles that he found each instance to have shared. The first of which is that in each perpetrating nation, there was a prolonged suspicion or stereotyping of a particular ethnic or societal group, leading to the subjugation of that group when there was a new regime or reform in society. Secondly, this idea of revolutionary reform into a better society gave way for ‘exclusionary ideologies’ due to the desire to redefine state identity. The third and final principle was that of war, and how it helped to radicalise the state both in terms of policy and population, leading to a general acceptance of more radical ideas such as mass killings and genocide. These remain a staple of Bloxham’s argument throughout and help to contextualise his argument about the state and bureaucracies not being the sole factor behind genocide.

Through this comparative analysis, Bloxham can provide an interesting account for the nature of genocides, showing that each example has things in common but also wildly differ from each other in ways, such as having vast amounts of bureaucratic participation like the Final Solution or having relatively little, as seen in his account of the Armenian Genocide. Bloxham provides a very complex view of genocide, critical of those who would try to simplify it or put it down to one main factor such as Michael Thad Allan, whose account of genocide he calls ‘too easy’.

Word count: 473

Student Number: 2717372

Kramer, ‘The Burning of Louvain’ by Calum. H 

In this article Alan Kramer discusses atrocities committed by German soldiers in a wealthy Belgian town called Louvain at the beginning of the First World War. In summary – Kramer begins with an in-depth study of the barbaric acts committed in Louvain, taking on various victim’s accounts who share their stories of the horror faced in their hometown. Kramer explains how civilians were targeted for supposedly being ‘franc-tireurs’ (civilians who resisted the occupation with arms), despite there being very little evidence to suggest this was true. He places a great deal of emphasis on the burning of the university library in Louvain, and also crucially refers to the shelling of the Rheims cathedral in France in order to paint a wider picture of the German army’s lack of respect for foreign culture. Kramer makes connections between Louvain to similar events in Dinant and Andenne to insist the unfair treatment of civilians in Louvain by the German Army during WWI was not an isolated event. He concludes the chapter with the German justification for their actions, how their actions went against international law, and allied responses to the atrocities.

Kramer does an excellent job in associating the events in Louvain within a wider historical context. He demonstrates how such atrocities ‘wiped out sympathy with Germany in America’ (p. 30), and similarly led to Italian ‘estrangement’ from her allies (p. 15). His inclusion of the atrocities in Dinant and Andenne, and the similar ‘franc-tireur’ defence used by the Germans is also very useful, but his jumping between the case studies could confuse the reader and tarnishes what was a very clear structure up until this point. Kramer concludes that the barbarism in Louvain was a result of anti-Catholic sentiment within the German army and that it was the driving force in German military nationalism (p. 20). Whilst this is a thought-provoking statement, his argument needs more substantial evidence and it would be a stronger assertion if this was made clear earlier on in the chapter.

Overall, Kramer’s ‘The Burning of Louvain’ is an excellent piece of work which encourages us to reflect on the horrors faced by many civilians across Europe during WWI. His inclusion of various victim’s accounts is most fitting and allows us to consider the unnecessary nature of violence faced by civilians during the war. There is no doubt that the German soldiers broke international law during their campaign, but to improve his argument, Kramer should have included evidence from the atrocities committed in Dinant and Andenne which would support his belief that there was a strong anti-Catholic sentiment within the German army.

(Word Count – 434, including mini references)

Bach Jensen: ‘Daggers, Rifles and Dynamite’

In this article Bach Jensen summarises the dynamics of terrorism in Europe in the late nineteenth century, which he depicts as constituting a relatively coherent wave. There were isolated attacks in the 1880 in countries like Germany, and these became more severe and more successful in the 1890s, as well as shifting to countries like Spain, Italy and France.

He describes a range of factors that led to this wave of anarchism, including ideology, repression, economic problems and technological innovation (e.g. dynamite). The principle of ‘Propaganda by the Deed’ emerged in the 1870s in a context of failure and defeat for revolutionary groups, and seized on the alleged revolutionary potential of dynamite. On the role of ideology, given his later scepticism at the centrality of anarchism to this terrorism, it is not clear why such an emphasis on ideology and the background to the anarchist movement is useful here. I also find the economic backdrop to be less convincing, at least in terms of it is described here. The 1870s are important context, but how do they describe the 1890s? Don’t these factors need to be related much more closely to individual attacks?

Bach Jensen emphasises the importance of the media. The sensationalist press whipped up fears around anarchism and contributed to a situation of ‘mass hysteria’. The role of the media was important, perhaps, in elevating the symbolic role of dynamite as a potent weapon, given that this technological innovation was not infallible. While emphasising the media, he does fail to analyse one particular point in sufficient detail, however. He fails to explain why attacks proliferated in Spain and Italy given that literacy was lower and a mass media less developed in these countries (p. 142).

On the whole, Bach Jensen is sceptical regarding the role of anarchism in this wave of terrorism. Anarchists and terrorists were not one and the same. Few anarchist thinkers ‘sympathised’ with the attackers, but they did often apologise for them, particularly given the response of the state to terrorism. This meant that anarchists appeared to associate themselves with terrorism. Nevertheless, he argues, quite convincingly, that attacks were planned and executed by individuals or small groups. (Although I’m doubtful personally that there was anything approximating a coherent transnational anarchist movement at this time anyway.)

Morrissey, ‘Terrorism and Ressentiment’

Morrissey adopts a very different approach to terrorism compared to Bach Jensen. She focuses on Russia in the early twentieth century and examines the texts and testimonies produced by attackers or those sympathetic to them. She interrogates the tone, emotions and language of these texts in order to understand the narrative “framing” of terrorism. What others have dismissed as emotive rhetoric, she examines. She argues that vengeance was central to the dynamics of terrorism and that we need to understand the violence of individuals in the context of violence by the state. Terrorism was, she argues, an act of ‘popular sovereignty’, a means of claiming rights, dignity and a voice; it was an act of ‘self-defence and self-affirmation’, and perhaps by extension of declaring oneself to be a citizen.

Terrorists constructed their acts as fundamentally moral. They saw themselves as ‘heroic, virtuous individuals [battling] the arbitrary, violent state’. Individuals linked their own experience of state violence to other episodes and a wider understanding of the political, social and economic context in Russia. Gender is also mentioned – perhaps too briefly? State violence was on occasion understood as the ‘rape’ of the ‘(feminine) body of the Russian nation’.

Morrissey shows us that Russia experienced a large number of attacks – into the thousands – in the first decade of the twentieth century. It is not clear, however, how thousands of small scale attacks constituted terrorism as opposed to acts of politically motivated violence. In other words, what is terroristic about these attacks, particularly if they were quite isolated (p. 133)? These attacks seem quite different to what Bach Jensen is describing.

In addition, the definition of terrorism could be clearer. She opens with a comment on the importance of ‘spectacle’ to terrorism. But there is not much here on the actual ‘spectacle’ of terrorism itself.

I think it can be useful to bring state violence into dialogue with terrorism, but I wonder if this objective is achieved successfully here. The emphasis is solely on attackers’ narratives of themselves; does this mean that her analysis is incomplete – and also problematic?

Summary Comment

These two readings offer contrasting approaches to terrorism, which is perhaps a result of their different primary sources. Bach Jensen is sceptical of the relationship of anarchist politics to violence and does not centre his analysis on the role of the state in the same way. Morrissey places much more emphasis on the thoughts and ideas of attackers themselves. They also define terrorism differently. Yet there is, I think, a common understanding of the importance of the media and public communication that underpins both articles and of escalating dynamics of terroristic violence in Europe between 1890 and 1914.