Slideshows about nonviolence and nonviolent resolution of conflicts, economic alternatives, ecology, social change, spirituality : www.irnc.org , Slideshows in english Concepts : conflict, combativeness, struggle, force, violence, non-violence Classification of violences Actors of a violent relation Culture of violence Representations of violence Counter-violence Mass human destruction, barbary Delegetimising violence Realising alternatives to violence.

1. Violence :
Knowing it to fight it
Étienne Godinot
Translation : Claudia McKenny Engström
02.02.2015

2. Violence : Knowing it to fight it
Contents
- Clarifying concepts: conflict, combativeness, struggle, force, violence
- Definition of violence. Violences rather than Violence. Malfunction of the
conflict. When do we know there is violence ? What are the possible
reactions to violence ?
- Violence, a human phenomena.
- Classification of Violences: 1/ by the means used; 2/ by circumstance; 3/ by
the number of implicated actors; 4/ political violence; 5/ non-intentional
violence
- Actors of the violent relation (author, victim, third party, law). Words to
diminish violence.
- The cause of violence: 1/ The perversion of man’s combativeness; 2/ Fear; 3/
Imitation; 4/ Submission to authority; 5/ Antidemocratic ideologies; 6/
Contexts of violence; 7/ Alcohol and drugs; 8/ Culture of violence.

3. Violence : Knowing it to fight it
Contents (2)
- Representations of violence: Violence perceived as 1/ natural; 2/
affirmation of the subject; 3/ system of domination; 4/ Act of
transgression; 5/ language
- Violence as means of action. 1/ against injustice; 2/ against
violence within democracies.
- Human mass destructions.
The psycho-sociological roots of inhumanity.
- Media and violence.
- Delegitimize violence. Implementing alternatives to violence.
Promoting a culture of nonviolence.

4. Violence : Knowing it to fight it
Sources
- Jean-Marie Muller, Dictionnaire de la non-violence,
Le Relié, 2005
- Jacques Sémelin, Discourse on nonviolence - IFMAN,
fév. 2001
- Alexandre Adler, Les racines psychologiques de la
barbarie, review Psychologies, may 1999
- IFMAN (Violence, The actors of violent relations,
When is there violence ?, etc.)
- Review Sciences humaines, nr 89, dec. 1998

5. Clarifying a few concepts *
1- The conflit
The conflict, latent or open, stems from a tension, a
disagreement, a difference. Entering in conflict is to affirm
oneself before another, dare to say “no”, seeking recognition of
ones rights. Its also means releasing oneself from
powerlessness, complaint or submission. It means avoiding the
unsaid, which create frustration and unease.
It means allowing oneself to express on the needs, aspirations,
interests, values and points of view of all, on the tensions in the
group.
It means allowing suffering to exteriorise rather persist in
resentment, hatred and violence.
* The first part on “Concepts” incorporates the developments contained in
the introductory slides “What is nonviolence ?”.

6. Clarifying a few concepts
The conflit
Accepting conflict is accepting to change, inventing and
creating thanks to someone else who is different to me, but
who potentially has similar desires to mine.
Conflicts are sign of life, exchange, confrontation, Democracy.
To combat violence, conflict needs to be rehabilitated, only
resolved in the respect of others.
Conflicts don’t have to be destructive: they can be source of
progress, of better interpersonal relations, of a better collective
organisation. Conflict builds life when it is animated by
dialogue, negotiation and imagination as dynamics of
collective life.

7. Clarifying a few concepts
The conflict
It is by learning to manage daily small conflicts that we can
learn how to handle bigger ones :
- By managing minor conflicts in a couple, man and wife
can avoid divorcing.
- By regularly managing conflicts in a classroom, youth
clubs or sports clubs, we avoid incivility at school or the
uprising of entire neighbourhoods.
- By taking into account the needs of an identity,
recognition, natural resources or the territory of a people,
we can avoid wars.

8. Clarifying a few concepts
The conflict
Conflicts are more often than not, unavoidable, sometimes
necessary, often useful, but always uncomfortable, tiring and
painful.
Even if it necessary, the conflict is not a normal way for people
to interact, between individuals or groups. We can be worried
of a couple who never argues, but also of a couple who is
always in conflict…
A conflict can destroy life if it is a confrontation of forces.
It can degenerate into violence if respect is no longer the
rule, if combativeness is not mastered, if anger is not
controlled, if the different actors are trapped in a symmetrical
escalation of words and gestures.

9. Clarifying a few concepts
2 - Combativness
Combativeness is necessary to deal with conflicts.
Combativeness is a strength in life and a necessity to
affirm oneself before others, to confront without
hedging, to overcome ones fear of acting.
This is the positive aspect of aggressiveness (ad-gradi :
walk towards), but it can also express itself in its
perverse form: destructiveness, pathological, most of
the time provoked by past sores.
The first task of a nonviolent action will be to awaken
the combativeness of those who suffer injustice.
Photo : Martin Luther King calling to fight against racial
segregation

10. Clarifying a few concepts
3 - The struggle
The struggle is a confrontation, a fight to obtain respect
of a right, concretisation of a demand, evolution of a
law.
Struggle for justice requires just and adjusted means,
that is to say, nonviolent.
“To want victory and not want to fight, I say that is to be
badly behaved”, Charles Péguy (1873-1914).

11. Clarifying a few concepts
4 - Force (strenght, power)
Force (or strenght, power) is a cause that provokes an effect or
movement (a force of traction, of an acid, the strenght of an
argument, the power of the soul, etc.).
Force is what obliges the adversary to negotiate and/or yield is
not the violence that wounds or destroys him.
The ratio of power creates the conditions of a dialogue allowing
to negotiate a just solution to a conflict.
It can result in:
- a simple evaluation by an actor of his or her capacity to
mobilise and act, a capacity which is in itself a factor of
dialogue and negotiation.
- a confrontation, a relation where forces are released
(demonstration, strike, boycott, civil disobedience, etc.).
Photos: - The power of a truck
- The power of a sit-in (Ekta Parishad movement in India)

12. Clarifying a few concepts
5 - Violence
Violence is any kind of word, action or omission that
violates another human being, his or her rights,
identity; what wounds or destroys another, physically
or psychologically.
Violence is the result of the absence of words,
communication, between different actors. It is the
failure and perversion of conflicts, and also very often
a cry of desperation towards those who have not
heard.
Photos :
- Racket in the school
-"Ordinary" violence: 10 % of women suffer abuse from their partner
- Extreme violence : the Holocaust

13. Violence
“Violences” rather than violence
Before becoming criminal, acts of violence which affect men
and women in their daily lives can be found in
- lack of respect, incivilities
- smaller offences on goods and repeated acts of degradation
- sometimes violences on people.
To fight them efficiently, the diverse forms they take must be
distinguished: family violence (machism, etc.); economic
violence (gigantic salaries, tax havens), social violence
(unemployment, exclusion, etc.), political violence (denigrating
an opponent, corruption, dictatorship, etc.), ecological violence
(pollution, destruction of ecosystems, etc.), cultural violence
(exacerbated superficiality, etc.).

14. Violence
Violence, malfunction of a conflict
Communication, or combativeness and force exercised in
struggle, allow the nonviolent resolution of a conflict.
To the contrary, violence is a malfunctioning of a conflict: it
disturbs its functioning and does not allow it to fulfil its task,
which is to establish a dialogue and/or justice between the
opponents. In the case of a malfunctioning conflict, one (or
both) actors use means that threaten the others integrity or
life.
The conflict then runs the risk of not being the search for a
just solution, but a means to eliminate the adversary.
To uproot violence, conflicts need to be managed
intelligently.

15. Violence
When do we know there is violence ?
- when it can be seen: crying, blackmailing, bruises, cuts, in
battle fields, etc.
- when the author “informs” his or her victim (“I will kill you !”, or
shouts out a racist comment, etc.)
- when the victim informs third parties of what he or she is
suffering (“I was insulted”, “he hit me”, etc.). The victim might
also know there is violence, even if others might not see it.
- when a third party says it (by informing a judge, testifying)
- when legal provisions forbid a behaviour, whether victim or
author are aware of it (incest, marital violence, child abuse,
excision, etc.)

16. Violence
Possible reactions towards violence
• Fear and a feeling of powerlessness can
generate submission (but also vigilance,
escape, or look for support)
• The feeling of guilt can lead to active auto-
destruction (self-despise, alcohol, drugs, etc.),
but also request for forgiveness
• The feeling of non-recognition by others and
sadness can introduce fatalism and passivity
• The feeling of injustice and anger can wake up
combativeness, and can create violence if this
combativeness is not contained

17. Violence
Violence, a human phenomena
Violence, whether intentional or not, is a human
phenomena *. Nature destroys and kills, but without
knowing it.
Indeed, we do not refer to violence when speaking of
damages or disasters caused by
- the Earth (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.)
- climatic elements (droughts, floods, cyclones, etc.)
- animals (predators, deadly mushrooms, etc.)
- sicknesses (viruses, genetical anomalies, etc.)
- natural death (end of life, outcome of an illness, etc.)
These disasters are deadly, but not murderous.
* except cases of non-intentional violence.

18. Violence
Violence, a human phenomena
Man is a murderous animal, for only he is endowed with
reason. Only Man kills or wounds another knowingly *.
Men are the only species whose members kill each other,
sometimes in collective massacres.
In the face of violence, the conscious Man feels, at least
upon reflection, a sentiment of unjustifiable. A lucid Man
states that violence should never occur, even without
knowing what should or could be. Violence is divorced from
Man’s spiritual requirements and Man’s disenchantment from
the world.
This “no” from reason, consciousness and the heart that Man
opposes to violence are what ground an option based on
nonviolence.
* except cases of non-intentional violence

19. Violence
Classification of Violences
1) by the means used
- Physical violence: cuts, wounds, excision, rape, murder,
etc.
- Material violence: theft, degradation, robbery, voluntary
fires, etc.
- Verbal or written violence: insults, abuse and slander, etc.
-Psychological violence: verbal or written persecutions,
mockery, moral or sexual harassment, etc.

20. Classification of violences
2) by circumstance
- reactive or impulsive violence : slap in a moment of anger,
kick of fear, “legitimate defence”, etc.
- rational or instrumental violence, calculates, programmed :
murder, bombing, attack, genocide, etc.
Photo below : hanging of a black man by Ku Klux Klan

21. Classification of violences
3) by the number of implicated actors
- individual, against oneself : sadomasochism, self-
mutilation, suicide, etc.
- interpersonal : murder, fights, rape, etc.
- collective : riots, uprising, ransacking, etc.

22. Classification of violences
4) political violence and infra-political violence
- Infra-political violence: terrorist attacks, attacks…
- Civil wars: religious, against dissident minorities, inter-
ethnical massacres…
- Violence and inter State wars: exchanges of missiles, local
wars, global wars…
- Persecutions against minorities, heretics or groups that
are “different”, scapegoats : Inquisition, liquidation of the
Templars, Shoah, racial segregation…

23. Classification of violences
5) non-intentional violence
Most of the time, they can be avoided by being careful,
taking care of others and oneself, preventing, training and
maintaining a long term vision of the common good :
- domestic accidents (fires, electrocution, poisoning…)
- driving accidents
- accidents at work
- accidents during sports (ski, car races, hunting, etc.)
- accidents provoked by lack of knowledge of nature
(drowning, mountaining accidents, forest fires, accidents
caused by plants or animals, etc.)
- ecological catastrophes (chemicals, oil, nuclear, etc.)

24. The actors of a violent relation
Author
Domination, closing, refusal to
admit the injustice of a situation
and the consequences
of his/her behaviour
Victim
Caught in complaint,
submission, incapacity to talk
with the autor or third party;
résignation or hatred
Third party
Omission to say what he/she saw
(report), refusal to interven,
failure to provide assistance
to a person in danger
Law
unjust or inadapted
to the situation

25. The actors of a violent relation
Words to diminish violence
Violence manifests itself in an accomplished act against an
individual or group, but also in a status quo in which an
individual or group is submitted to the oppression of
another, or because it cannot satisfy its basic needs.
Individual attitudes and collective functioning usually
reinforce each other mutually. This violence can therefore
install itself in the long run and in the shadows.
To establish the degree of violence of an act, the points of
view of the author and victim must be confronted, as well as
the provisions of a legal document and a third party’s
opinion.
A circulating communication between these different people
help diminish the degree of violence.

26. The cause of violence
1 – The perversion of man’s combativeness
Man is made of instincts and impulsive. Combativeness
(or contained aggressiveness), such as sexuality, is a
positive energy.
But, akin water and fire, these energies can become
noxious when the impulsive network is destructured.
Man becomes violent if he cannot master his impulses,
gets caught in them, does not canalise his natural and
healthy combativeness in pacific forms of action, and in
case of conflict, in nonviolent forms of resistance and
struggle.

27. The cause of violence
2 – Fear
In his most inner self, a human being knows fear : fear of
lacking, of making a mistake, fear of the other, of the future,
of the unknown, of God, etc. Man’s first enemy is fear.
This fear is commonly rooted in the fear of dying. The bet
made by the one who chooses violence is to kill before
being killed, to wound before being wounded.
Man kills to escape the anxiety of death, but when killing,
finds himself before the anxiety of murder : he needs to
justify his murder to negate the feeling of guilt that
surrounds him.

28. The cause of violence
Fear : looking at death in the eyes
The anguish of suffering and death is probably one of
the major causes or Man’s vulnerability in succumbing
to the temptation of violence.
More than anything else, the perspective of death
engages him in a quest for meaning. All of us, before
the matters, need to reflect personally and define
singular attitudes. This reflection and attitude will
orientate ones existence.

29. The cause of violence
3 – Imitation
Because our desires are not stable, are floating and
uncertain, we need a third party to desire : a mediator, a
person who will enlighten us and help us design the
object of our desire. We will then imitate.
But when two people desire the same object, there is
conflict, imitational rivalry or crisis. This process of
opposition, rivalry and conflict, is the source of disputes
between neighbours, at work, as well as in bloody wars.
We need a scapegoat, victims who carry the illness of
the world and will resolve the imitational universal crisis.

30. The cause of violence
Imitation
A human being carries within him the proclivity of
reproducing violence he himself has already suffered.
Parents who hit their children have often been abused
children;
The worse dictators (Hitler, Stalin, Ceausescu) where
victims of repeated psychological and physical violence as
children.
This proclivity is not a fatalism : resilience is the capacity
not only to overcome and move beyond ones past, but can
also become a lively strength for others.

31. The cause of violence
4 - Submission to authority
Quasi unconditional obedience to authority, to the point of
consciously inflicting suffering on innocents, is a
phenomena that can be observed in all countries, social
strands, and that is linked to cultural “acquis”.
History – and the experiments led by Stanley Milgram –
have proved that ordinary people, deprived of any kind of
hostility, can become, by simply executing the tasks they
were given, abominable agents of a destructive process.
These processes are based on:
- an authoritarian model, or even their conditioning
- a devaluation of the image/representation of the victims
- accustoming to violence

32. The cause of violence
5 – Anti-democratic ideologies
Among the causes of violence, anti-democratic ideologies
grounded on exclusion, discrimination and xenophobia cannot
be spared. These are:
- nationalism
- racism
- xenophobia (anti-Semite, anti-Islam, etc.)
- sexism, machism
- religious fundamentalism
- economic liberalism only grounded on the search for
immediate profit
Photos :
-The unjust sentence against Alfred Dreyfus (nationalism + anti-Semitism)
- Public flagellation in countries under Islamic Sharia rule.

33. The cause of violence
6 - The context of violence
Certain context stimulate violence more than others.
For instance :
- in case of violent demonstrations, new violences occur
and are committed by uncontrollable elements : ransacking,
cars set on fire…
- in case of war, violences can occur that would be almost
impossible in time of peace : execution of resisting citizens,
“traitors”, village plundering, massacres, rapes, genocides
(armenien during the first world war 1914-1918; Shoah
during the second world war 1939-1945), etc.
Photo below : Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane by nazi SS division Das
Reich, 10th June 1944.

34. The cause of violence
7 - Alcohol and drugs
Alcohol and drugs, which alter a person’s cognitive and
sensorial capacities, constitute an important risk factor when
it comes to violence, without being a necessary or sufficient
condition.
- alcoholism and drug addiction are present in more than
90 % of violence against women.
- alcohol is at the source of a big part of car, domestic, or
work accidents.
- alcohol increases the gravity of a crime, namely physical
and sexual, as well as the risk of incivility, assaults, fights…
- 40% of suicides were committed under the influence of
alcohol.

35. The cause of violence
8 - The culture of violence
Structural violence (economic, social, political, ecological,
cultural), whether past or present, are more or less
perceived by a majority of the population as fatal,
insurmountable, inscribed in “nature”, in Man’s “destiny”:
injustice, oppression, hunger, war, unemployment, misery,
exclusion, etc.
Ideologies and collective behaviours feed this fatalist
sentiment :
- ideologies grounded on the exclusive search for material
well-being and consumerism
- the cult of permanent competition, exacerbated in all
domains of life (education, sports, economy)
../..
Photos : - Sexist publicity
- Uncontrolled competition

36. The cause of violence
The culture of violence
- valorisation of violence by education (war toys),
collective rituals (lyrics of La Marseillaise), media
(video games)
The culture of violence is everything that, in a society
- institutions, customs
- prejudices, ways of appreciating, feeling, collective
representations, etc.
tend to develop in citizens and public authorities an
easy and spontaneous recourse to diverse forms of
violence in order to solve a conflict, inevitably
generated by social life.
Photos : - Video games based on violence
- Violence of industrial farming

37. Representations of violence
1 - Violence seen as natural
The conception of violence as inscribed in human nature is the
classical approach of philosophy and political science
(Thomas Hobbes, Friedrich Nietzsche).
We often generalise and wrongfully express the “violence of
an effort”, “the violence of animals” or “the violence of the
wind”.
For some, the simple fact of living unconsciously implies the
desire to kill another.
Others have tried to give violence a genetically based
definition, but the “crime chromosome” has revealed itself as
much in basketball players…
For some anthropologists, violence was born with agriculture
and the bronze era.
Photos : - Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher (1588-1679)
- Jean Bergeret, psychoanalyst, author of The fundamental violence.

38. Representations of violence
Violence perceived as natural
For Pr. Pierre Karli, violence has a cultural origin, and is linked
to sociological conditioning, passions, imagination, fear.
There is a cultural distribution of roles: violence in boys is
mostly expressed by slaps, kicking, hurting; for girls, violence
is rather to be found in words and looks.
But the experiments led by Stanley Milgram have shown that
statistically, the proclivity to exercise violence against
innocents by means of submission to authority is equal to both
genders.
The profile of a serial killer is the one of a young and single
man, but in the Nazi, Soviet or Chinese concentration camps,
women fulfilled their task as executioner just as men did.
Photos : Pierre Karli and one of these books

39. Representations of violence
2 - Violence as affirmation of the subject
Violence is a language, a way of affirming oneself, for individuals
as much as groups.
Violence contributes to building a group (initiation rituals, big
men). “State makes war, but war makes a State”.
Others (Michel Wieworka) state on the contrary that the
affirmation of the self is reached by speech, symbolic relations,
and not violence.
Violence is a way of representation (parades, uniforms).
Violence is also a way of dedicating one’s life to a superior cause
(sacrifices, heroes).
Suicide, violence against oneself and forbidden by the Church, is
also an act of freedom, forbidden in Nazi concentration camps for
instance.

40. Representations of violence
3 - Violence as system of domination
Violence is also a way of weighing on the actions of
another, of imposing ones will on the other.
Violence is in the relation with another, whatever the
means used : everything can be violent, not only blows
and wounds or murder, but also words, writings, a smile
or silence.
Photos :
- Slavery
- The wars led by Louis XIV
- The massacre of Sharpeville (21st March 1960) during the apartheid in
South Africa.

41. Representations of violence
Violence as system of domination :
structural violence
Structural violence* is a system, an organisation of society
which weighs on the will, desires, aspirations, projects of
others.
It is a violence provoked by systems and ideologies of
domination, discrimination and injustice.
Ex. : slavery, colonialism, machism, tax havens, corporate
lang grabbing, corruption, etc.
It is the mother violence, because it creates in the
oppressed, a violence of resistance, itself crushed by a
violence of repression.
* Expression used by John Galtung. Helder Camara spoke of “violence of
the established disorder”.
Photos : - Colonialism
- Machism, male domination
- Bank secrecy, pedestal of fiscal fraud.

42. Representations of violence
4 – Violence as act of transgression
Transgression is not in all cases violent (ex.: civil
disobedience), but all violence is transgressive.
Already in 1215 (with the British Magna Carta), violence was
defined as the abuse of force, of energy. This leaves the
hypothesis that there could be a nonviolent force, which is not
an abuse.
Transgression can be an attack to physical integrity (rape,
murder), invasion of a home or territory, transgression of
anthropological rules (incest) or State laws.
The problem is that norms vary immensely in space and time
(ex.: the death penalty, practiced during centuries, was only
abolished in France in 1981; excision, authorised in some
African States, in qualified as crime in many other African or
other States, etc.).

43. Representations of violence
5 – Violence as language
Violence can be used as form of language, a type of
communication between individuals with a society that
doesn’t recognise them or allow them to speak up. In this
case, it is a desperate cry of those who are not heard.
Violence of those excluded, for instance youth from
“sensitive neighbourhoods”, is often a provocation, that is a
call.
But this call is both inefficient and inacceptable,
because it focuses on the violences committed and
not the real cause, which is exclusion.

44. Violence as means of action
1 - Violence as means of action against oppression and injustice
Violence is often a means of action against injustice and
oppression. It was often presented as the only way to destitute
those in power.
Nonviolence was therefore discredited by the idea that refusal to
resist to “evil” would disarm the good and strengthen the bad.
In reality, refusing to answer violence with violence is refusing to
submit oneself to the logic the oppressor wants to impose on us,
and in this sense, enhancing resistance.
- Spartacus, slave and gladiator who in his fight against slavery, shook the whole
Roman empire between -73 and -71.
- Lenin (1870-1924), theorist of the revolutionary violence against capitalism
- Ernesto Guevara, a.k.a Che, Cuban revolutionary man (1928-1967)
- Black Panther Party, revolutionary movement of the 70’ in the USA.

45. Violence as means of action
2 - Violence as means of action against violence in democracies
Violence, in a democratic regime, can also represent a
defence mechanism, to stop a person from harming
others, a way of protecting the group or society.
For Max Weber or Philippe Braud, the State has the
monopoly of legitimate violence (police, army).
The euphemism “force” is used to describe violent State
action (to neutralise criminals, fight terrorism, respond to
military aggression), when in fact, we should refer to
counter-violence instead.
Photos : - French GIGN (Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale)
- National Defence

46. Violence as means of action
Counter-Violence
Before violence, the nonviolent constraint seems
sometimes difficult or too slow to terminate unbearable
situations.
Counter-violence, or a violent action put in place to
stop a person from harming others, also by killing the
latter, has been extensively used in world history.
If it is legitimated by the theories of legitimate defence
or just war, it is most often abused, although it might
be necessary (think of Khadafi’s tanks threatening to
destroy Benghazi or snipers shooting civilians in
Sarajevo’s streets).

47. Violence as means of action
Counter-Violence
In the hypothesis where State exercised counter-
violence led to one or several deaths, this action cannot
be judged otherwise as being a dramatic failure.
In order to fight against a culture of violence, the
consequences of counter-violence must be incubated in
mourning, even though the counter-violence used is to
us all an exceptional measure.
It would be important and useful to insist on the pubic
ritual that should follow any such deadly exercise, during
which the State representative would recall this rule.
Photo : execution of criminal Jacques Mesrine in Nov. 1979 by the
French police force Brigade de Recherche et d’Intervention

48. Mass human destruction
- Ethnocide : deliberate destruction of a civilisation and/or
culture with the goal of exploiting economically or dominating
politically a population.
Ex.: Conquista in South America, African slavery during
colonialism, elimination of Indian populations of North America,
Aborigines in Australia or Amazonian natives, etc.
- Massacre : limited destruction of a group of victims with the
goal of creating an atmosphere of terror destined to facilitate
the submission of a larger population or even, inciting the latter
to flee a territory.
Ex.: St Barthelemy massacre, Commune of Paris, bombings
(Coventry, Dresden, Nagasaki), repression (Chechenia), etc.
../..
Photo : Massacre of Indian population in Amritsar by the English (13th April
1919).

49. Mass human destruction
- Mass purges : elimination of thousands of people in the
goal of terrorising the population and forcing it to submit.
This politic aims political or ethnic groups, social classes.
Ex.: Stalinism in USSR, repression in China and Tibet,
Khmer regime in Cambodia, "ethnic purification" in ex-
Yugoslavia…
- Genocide : total eradication of an entire human
community for ideological reasons.
Ex.: Armenians by Turks 1915-1917, holocaust 1941-1945,
Genocide of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda (1994)

50. Mass human destruction
Psychological roots of barbary *
1) A feeling, justified or not, of an internal threat weighing on a
group and its capacity to project itself in the future.
Military defeat of the Ottoman Empire 1914
Nazi defeat against USSR in 1941 and increased isolation
Vietnamese project of “Great Vietnam” threatening Cambodia
Presence of Albanian speaking Kosovars in Serbian speaking Kosovo
2) Break in the traditional system of thought under the influence of
fast and incomplete modernisation, emergence of beliefs of
substitution.
Young Turks doubting the value of an Ottoman Islam
Crisis of Christian religion, social Darwinism led by the Nazis
Collapse of communist movement for unity in South-East Asia
Serbs disappointed by Tito’s self-managed Marxism
* Alexandre Adler, historian and journalist, in Les racines psychologiques de la
barbarie, french review Psychologies, may 1999

51. Psychological roots of barbary
3) Doubting of its legitimacy, the group in power installs a
violence turned towards the exterior: the executioners
Group of Young Turks born after dismantlement of the army
SS in Nazi Germany, Oustachis in Croatia, Milice in Ukraine…
Young traumatised people who participated in the murders during
Chinese Cultural Revolution
Nationalist Serbs of Krajina in Kosovo
4) Will of the criminal epicentre of the group to diffuse its own
guilt as largely as possible, under the rule of a charismatic
leader :
Enver Pacha
Adolf Hitler
Pol Pot
Slobodan Milosevic

52. Medias and violence
- Theory of imitation : TV and video games encourage
aggressive tendencies in their viewers and players
- Theory of habit : viewers develop a habit to seeing violent
scenes to the point of becoming indifferent to it when it occurs
in reality
- Theory of inhibition : the representation of violence, by
provoking fear, enables to act
- Theory of catharsis : scenes of violence offer the possibility
of release, thus reducing tension and aggressiveness.
None of these theories make media prime responsible for
violence, but rather envisage it as one of the factors
explaining possible aggressive behaviours.

53. Delegitimising violence
To break the recourse to violence, presented as
necessary, legitimate and honourable, the first step
consists in taking stock of the entire reality of the
violence that exists in our relation to the other.
The second step consists in breaking the processes of
justification and legitimisation of violence, thus showing
that violence is not a fatality.
Top photo : Experiments led by Stanley Milgram to show submission to
authority

54. Realising alternatives to violence
Violence is a method of action that is or may seem
necessary
- to fight off the disorder that maintains oppression,
- to defend the order that guarantees freedom.
It is thus vain to condemn violence purely and
simply.
However, it is necessary and more useful to invent
and realise alternatives to violence.

55. Realising alternatives to violence
These are the reasons why partisans of nonviolence suggest
alternatives to violence, efficient in social life and political action :
- nonviolent communication and mediation in interpersonal and
collective relations
- nonviolent strategies of fight against oppression and injustice
- nonviolent civil defence against exterior aggressions
- civil intervention for peace between opponents in regional
conflict (inter-religious, inter-ethnical, etc.).
Photo below : International Peace Brigades (PBI), a civil force of intervention to
protect threatened people, observe the violation of human rights, separate the
opponents.
For these 4 themes, please consult the specific slides on www.irnc.org

56. Promoting a culture of nonviolence
A culture of on-violence is the development of a
knowledge, morals, ways of life, social institutions,
conscious and unconscious scales of values. I.e.,
collective ethics in all in its meaning,
with the objective of reducing the number of individual
and social violence, of inscribing nonviolence in conflicts
into the general practices of a people.
Photos :
- Monks at Tibhirine (Algeria)
- Meeting of Imams and Rabbis in Geneve during the initiative the
association Hommes de Parole.
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