The Path to Extreme Violence
In the following section we shall see that early warning signs are a feature of individual as well as collective violence and, if heeded, could be used for preventative action. We shall also see that the lengthy development which leads a potential criminal to extreme violence bears many similarities with the process enabling a small group of criminals to implicate whole communities in acts of genocide.
The dynamics that lead a serial killer to a first act of murder develop over a long period of time. I have identified five stages in this process, namely (Cotter, 2007):
Emotional problems
Initiation
Adaptation to murder
Trigger event
Act of murder
The serial killer's extreme violence, based on domination and coercion, is a form of compensation for severe emotional problems. When does an individual become aware of the potential of this compensation mechanism? It happens very early on, in childhood. FBI research into the origins of violence in the most dangerous criminals emphasises the early onset of this initiation stage (Ressler et al., 1992). The troubled, socially isolated child, who develops a taste for the thrill experienced whilst engaging in deviant behaviour, will use his intellectual abilities to construct egocentric alternatives which serve to offset the low level of satisfaction derived from everyday social interaction (Douglas and Olshaker, 1999).
Having discovered that authoritarian behaviour can compensate for lack of social skills the “apprentice murderer” sets out on a long path which will gradually put in place the fantasies and systems of self-justification allowing him to act. The trigger event is usually a negative episode in everyday life (financial problems, loss of a job, break up of a relationship) which has the effect of throwing the potential murderer off balance. He plunges into extreme violence and seeks refuge in the exultation brought on by the knowledge that he has absolute power over his defenceless victims (Ressler and Schachtman, 1992).
The dynamics that lead a serial killer to a first act of murder develop over a long period of time. The same applies to collective atrocities (Staub, 1989). What marks the progression towards genocide? It is always a gradual radicalisation process and consists in a series of incontrovertible stages, as detailed below (Cotter, 2007):
Social brutalisation. At this first stage a crisis-ridden society is confronted with a multitude of economic, political and ideological difficulties which create extreme social tensions, making individuals more tolerant of acts of brutality (Mosse, 1990).
Fascist consensus. Social brutalisation leads to an alliance between extremists, whose violence is presented as a solution to problems, and the masses who accept them in the hope of restoring cohesion. Once in power, the extremists impose dictatorship (Kershaw, 1987; Fromm, 1991).
Trigger event. Last stage in the process culminating in genocide, a trigger event occurs (as is the case for serial killers) that precipitates systematic mass murder. This usually takes the form of military defeat: in Nazi Germany genocide came in the wake of the first military setbacks of the Russian campaign. The tipping point happened in the summer of 1941, when the Nazi leaders became aware that they no longer had the upper hand in the Second World War and that their despotic authority was weakening. Genocide was a means of reasserting their power by targeting a defenceless group whom they blamed for all their difficulties (Burrin, 1994).
Other twentieth century collective atrocities had similar trigger events. In Cambodia, genocide began when the Khmer Rouge suffered several military defeats against Vietnam (Kiernan, 2002). The Armenian genocide got underway when the Ottoman Empire was humiliated by Russia during the First World War (Akçam, 2004). The trigger event in the genocide of the Rwandan Tutsis was rather paradoxically the 1993 Arusha (Tanzania) peace talks when the extremists in power realised that the agreements would force them to make major concessions. They began planning genocide as a means of reasserting their absolutism by attacking defenceless victims (Human Rights Watch, 1999).