Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 2002, pp. 101–108

Evil and the Instigation of Collective Violence David R. Mandel* University of Victoria

Literature on the psychology of evil has tended to focus on the motivations of perpetrators of collective violence, but almost no work has examined the special role of instigators. This article examines some of the differences between instigators and perpetrators of collective violence with a focus on Osama bin Laden. Compared with perpetrators, instigators are more powerful and less interchangeable, and they tend to rely on some form of nationalism to rally support. The article also examines the attributional bases of evil and how differences of construal can contribute to an escalation of violence. The September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States and the response of the United States and its allies point to the need to critically examine the role of instigators of collective violence. The growing conflict between the United States and its allies and Islamic militant groups has been framed by both sides as a struggle against the forces of evil by the forces of good. These overly simplistic construals of “the other side as evil” and “our side as just” have contributed to an escalation of international violence and threaten us with the possibility of a long-term conflict. In this article, I examine the current conflict from a social psychological perspective. I begin by considering the distinction between instigators and perpetrators of collective violence, which has received little scholarly attention until now. I examine briefly how Osama bin Laden, as a key instigator of terrorism over the last decade, has used religious nationalism to rally support for his cause. Finally, I examine how the leaders of both sides—bin Laden and President George W. Bush—have used the notion of “good versus evil” to frame the present conflict and why such labeling may be effective in rallying support for violent solutions.

*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David R. Mandel, Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3050, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3P5, Canada [e-mail: [email protected]].

© 2002 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues

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Instigators of Collective Violence Collective violence is usually described as having three types of agents— perpetrators, victims, and bystanders (Hilberg, 1995; Staub, 1989). Most social psychological research on the topic of evil has tended to focus on how people become socialized into a system of violence and come to function as perpetrators (e.g., Baumeister, 1997; Darley, 1992; Miller, 1999; Staub, 1989). I have argued recently, however, that a fourth type of agent—the instigator—is in dire need of scholarly attention (see Mandel, in press). The function of instigators is not to carry out the acts of violence themselves but to tune and transmit the messages that will effectively motivate others to cause harm and to provide perpetrators with the requisite resources for accomplishing their tasks. Compared with perpetrators, instigators tend to have greater social influence and a wider range of power. Whereas perpetrators may have access to weaponry or other forms of low-grade power (Toffler, 1990), the power of instigators often derives from control of wealth (medium-grade power) and information (high-grade power), which usually provides the requisite conditions for control of weaponry. Indeed, the power that the perpetrators derive in a system of collective violence is usually granted directly or indirectly by the instigating elite, who also have the power to disable perpetrators if they so choose and even redefine them as the enemy, thus rendering them potential victims. An important feature of instigators is that they act as catalysts of collective violence, often by conveying a vision for a better life or by identifying a perceived source of threat in times of social unrest. As Staub (1989) has noted, the social perception by group members that they have faced difficult life conditions increases the likelihood of collective violence as a solution to perceived problems. Unfortunately, it is difficult to predict in advance which perceptions of difficult life conditions will spawn violence and when such violence might be likely to erupt. Social and political analysts should to pay much closer attention to the messages of figures who have the potential to influence mass opinion for, at present, we tend to underestimate their ability to catalyze change and consolidate power in the process. More generally, acute discontinuities in world history are seldom predicted with any degree of accuracy. Given their special role in catalyzing social change, instigators tend to be perceived as agents that are less interchangeable than perpetrators. Hence, counterfactual replays of history that undo wars, genocides, or terrorist acts by negating preceding human actions may be more likely to focus on a single instigator than a multitude of perpetrators. For example, the chance that the Holocaust would have been averted if any one of its perpetrators had not existed appears to be dramatically lower than if Hitler had not existed (Himmelfarb, 1984). Put differently, the social influence of instigators and perpetrators is strongly asymmetric: Instigators shape the thinking and guide the behavior of perpetrators, but perpetrators have relatively little influence on the motives or plans of instigators.

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At present, the main instigator of terrorism by Islamic militants is Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden is believed to be linked to the September 11 attacks and the current military attacks in Afghanistan are aimed at destroying his terrorist network, al-Qaida (“the base”), which funds and trains terrorists. On February 23, 1998, bin Laden and his associates, under the banner of the World Islamic Front, issued a statement that accused the United States and its allies of crimes against God and Muslims: “All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims” (Federation of American Scientists, 2001). The statement—apparently sanctioned by God—calls for a holy war (jihad) against the United States and its allies: On that basis, and in compliance with God’s order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it. . . . We—with God’s help—call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan’s U.S. troops and the devil’s supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson. (Federation of American Scientists, 2001)

That bin Laden envisions himself as an instigator of collective violence was made clear in a Time interview on December 23, 1998. When asked whether he was responsible for the bomb attacks on two American embassies in Africa, bin Laden stated in his reply, “Our job is to instigate and, by grace of God, we did that, and certain people responded to this instigation” (PBS Frontline, 2001). According to bin Laden, “hostility toward America is a religious duty, and we hope to be rewarded for it by God.” (PBS Frontline, 2001). The reframing of calls for violence as “duties” or “moral obligations” is a popular technique of instigators to legitimize collective violence. By linking the perpetration of terrorism to a religious duty, bin Laden uses God as the ultimate authority. In effect, bin Laden has claimed that if you fail to try to kill Americans, you have failed in your duty to God. Such messages can instill powerful feelings of moral obligation to an ideal or cause. For instance, Arendt (1965), in her famous report of the Adolf Eichmann trial, examined how a strong sense of obedience to Hitler and his ideals served as an important source of Eichmann’s diligence in overseeing the transport of Jews to death camps during the Holocaust—so much so that Eichmann was willing to violate orders by his superior, Heinrich Himmler, toward the end of the Holocaust to stop transporting Jews to the death camps in order to follow what he believed was the wish of the Führer (on the topic of obedience to authority as a basis for perpetration, cf. Mandel, 1998).

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Instigators as Propagators of Nationalism Like other instigators of collective violence, bin Laden has garnered support by using nationalism—in this case, religious nationalism—to incite hatred against a “common enemy.” On the one hand, nationalism creates an egotistic sense of ingroup cohesion by emphasizing the shared greatness of a people. According to bin Laden, only Muslims—indeed only Muslims that follow his call to violence— are worthy in God’s eyes. The message conveyed is that only compliant Muslims are worthy of moral treatment. As several theorists (e.g., Bandura, 1999; Staub, 1990) have argued, moral exclusion or disengagement is an important precursor of collective violence. On the other hand, nationalism can exacerbate feelings of threat by pointing to the nation’s precariousness, feelings of hatred by pointing to those deemed responsible for its hardships and failures, and feelings of insult due to the belief that one’s nation has not received the respect it deserves. As Isaiah Berlin noted long ago, nationalism is often motivated by some form of collective humiliation (Berlin, 1991; see also Staub, 1989). Chirot (1994) has documented that, in case after case, 20th-century tyrannies have been characterized by a combination of perceived national superiority coupled with perceived national threat and/or a collective sense of insult from the outside world. The Nazi image of a German master race threatened by an international Jewish plague illustrates the point. For bin Laden, the U.S. military presence on Islamic holy land is an act of U.S. “Crusader” aggression. He has repeatedly mentioned the importance of destroying the myth of the American superpower. For instance, in the aforementioned Time interview, bin Laden stated, “I am confident that Muslims will be able to end the legend of the so-called superpower that is America” (PBS Frontline, 2001). Nationalism plays upon a fundamental aspect of human social cognition: the tendency to categorize individuals into groups. Even when the basis of social categorization is trivial, people tend to discriminate in favor of ingroup members and against outgroup members (Tajfel, 1981). Nationalism is particularly effective at creating a strong sense of us versus them because nations (unlike states) tend to be defined in terms of features that are of high personal and social importance, such as ethnicity, race, religion, ideology, and language (Azzi, 1998). Consequently, the nation may be perceived, and may in fact behave, not merely as an aggregate but as a cohesive entity (Campbell, 1958). In bin Laden’s case, the ingroup is “the Islamic nation or God’s children” (i.e., Muslims) and the outgroup, “God’s enemies” (i.e., non-Muslims, but especially Jews and powerful Christians, like the Americans). In his August 23, 1996, “Declaration of War Against the Americans Who Occupy the Land of the Two Holy Mosques,” bin Laden called for “a guerilla war, where the sons of the nation, and not the military forces, take part in it.” Bin Laden’s use of language is also aimed at dehumanizing the citizens of the United States and its allied countries by labeling them as “infidels” or “devil’s supporters” (PBS Frontline, 2001). This use of

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labeling is reminiscent of Hitler’s labeling of Jews as vermin, bacilli, and “kikes.” As I examine in the next section, the response by the Bush administration has also tended to vilify the other side, albeit with more qualification than bin Laden has been willing to grant. Vilification and the Attribution of Evil The escalation of the conflict triggered by the September 11 attacks—the “war on terrorism,” as it is being called—owes much to the attribution of evil by both sides. The Bush administration has repeatedly couched the present conflict as one between the forces of good and evil, much as bin Laden has done. For instance, in his address to the nation on September 11, Bush repeatedly referred to evil: “Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror,” “Today, our nation saw evil,” “The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts.” In the same address, Bush quoted Psalm 23: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me” (White House Office of the Press Secretary, 2001b). The day after the terrorist attacks, Bush stated, “This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil. But good will prevail” (White House Office of the Press Secretary, 2001c). On September 26, in another press release, Bush reiterated, “We must never forget this will be a long struggle, that there are evil people in the world who hate America. And we won’t relent” (White House Office of the Press Secretary, 2001d). At present, then, the leaders of both sides of this conflict have presented it in simplistic terms as a “struggle of good versus evil.” This totalistic portrayal, emphasizing an “us” and “them,” can heighten social identification and outgroup derogation and steer people toward supporting an escalation of violence. Consistent with this view, supporters of the Persian Gulf war had, on average, significantly lower integrative complexity scores than opponents (Mandel, Axelrod, & Lehman, 1993). What is the function of vilifying the opposition in a conflict? Where, in fact, do perceptions of evil come from? And what do people mean by the term evil? In the medieval ages in Europe, evil was associated primarily with the religious belief that because God was all-powerful and all-good, evil must be the result of the Devil’s workings. This conclusion, as Zimbardo (1995) pointed out, provided the intellectual scaffolding for the Inquisition of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. Because it was believed that the Devil worked through lesser intermediaries, “the hunt for evil focused on those marginalized people who looked or acted differently from ordinary people” (p. 126). The victims of such attempts to purge evil suffered greatly, and many lost their lives simply because they were believed to be “heretics.” We now know that the greatest acts of evil during that period were caused not by those ostensible heretics but by those who believed with certainty that they were acting in accordance with the word of God and were, therefore, on the side of righteousness and against the side of evil.

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One critical feature of everyday notions of evil is that the actor intends to bring about the events that lead to the victims’ loss (Darley, 1992). The more planning and foresight that is required and applied in order to bring about a set of events that will entail victimization, the more likely the actors are to be deemed evil. Acts that unintentionally bring about victimization may be tragic, but they are unlikely to be seen as evil by most people. Thus, if a bus driver were to kill his passengers because he suffered a brain hemorrhage that caused him to lose control of the steering wheel, I suspect that most would see it as tragic but not evil. If the crash had instead been due to drunk driving but the driver had no intention to cause harm, then I suspect most would find the event tragic and the driver legally and morally culpable, but still not evil. However, if the driver decided to take his own life and take down some others with him, then we would be getting closer to the type of acts that exemplify evil to many people. Attributions of evil also tend to apply to a subset of cases of wrongdoing in which the magnitude of the intentional acts have, as Darley (1992) put it, “a quality of egregious excess, such as a murder gratuitously committed in the course of a crime” (p. 201). The notion of excessive wrongdoing underlying the meaning of evil can be specified more precisely in terms of two distinct connotations. First, an act of wrongdoing may be perceived as excessive in an absolute manner. Generally speaking, the greater the suffering and loss that is caused to a victim or group of victims, the more likely the attribution of evil is to follow. The sheer magnitude of calamity that the September 11 attacks represent to Americans is enough to prompt the description of these events as evil. There is a second sense, however, in which an act of wrongdoing may be perceived as excessive in a relative manner. In this sense, the victims’ suffering and loss seems disproportionately greater than the perpetrators’ satisfaction or gain. As the perceived magnitude of this discrepancy increases, such that the victims’ collective suffering and loss outweigh the perpetrators’ collective benefit, the more likely it is that the acts or actors in question will be construed as evil. Baumeister (1997; Baumeister & Campbell, 1999) referred to the perceived discrepancy between perpetrators’ gains and victims’ losses as the magnitude gap. Attributions of evil, Baumeister has argued, are much more likely to be made by victims than perpetrators. Accordingly, the question of how perpetrators could bring themselves to perform enormously evil acts is often inappropriate, because perpetrators often fail to see them as either enormous or evil. When both parties involved in a conflict have the ability to retaliate, the asymmetry in construals can lead to escalating violence. For instance, in his 1998 Time interview, bin Laden stated in response to the question “What can the U.S. expect from you now?” that “the Americans should expect reactions from the Muslim world that are proportionate to the injustice they inflict” (PBS Frontline, 2001). The “war on terrorism” currently being waged is similarly designed to, as Bush put it, “hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts” (White House

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Office of the Press Secretary, 2001a), and although the continuing threat posed by bin Laden is real and very serious, there is also a sense in which the United States is seeking “equitable retribution.” The magnitude gap experienced by surviving victims of collective violence may violate their belief that the world is a just place (Lerner, 1980). Consistent with this notion, Alford (1997) found that many of his participants who were asked to define evil did so in terms of their own personal sense of impending doom or terror rather than in terms of a violation of a moral principle. Magnitude gaps underlying attributions of evil may also instill feelings of public humiliation and trigger moral outrage directed at the perpetrators or scapegoats. When the victims are a powerful country with high self-regard, like the United States, the aggression may be likely to trigger retaliation aimed at nationalistic self-repair. This thesis is consistent with Baumeister, Smart, and Boden’s (1996) research showing that the propensity for violence is greatest not among people with low self-esteem, but rather those with a threatened sense of high self-esteem. More generally, the magnitude gap, which underlies the attribution of evil, is an example of how groups with opposing interests can have strongly divergent construals of the same stimulus, much as in Hastorf and Cantril’s (1954) famous study of how Dartmouth and Princeton football fans construed the same game in highly discrepant—and, in both cases, self-serving—ways. Conclusion Attributions of evil are a natural response to intentional attack, especially when it is construed as unprovoked. But citizens and leaders alike ought to be cognizant of the behavioral effects that such construals may have. We are in the midst of an international conflict that has the potential to escalate, and we need to be on guard against vilification, totalistic thinking, and hubristic responses that prompt further violence at the same time that we guard ourselves against terrorism, because both pose a real threat to our security and chances for prosperity. References Alford, C. F. (1997). The political psychology of evil. Political Psychology, 18, 1–17. Arendt, H. (1965). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil (Rev. ed.). New York: Viking Compass. Azzi, A. E. (1998). From competitive interests, perceived injustice, and identity needs to collective action: Psychological mechanisms in ethnic nationalism. In C. Dandeker (Ed.), Nationalism and violence (pp. 73–138). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 193–209. Baumeister, R. F. (1997). Evil: Inside human violence and cruelty. New York: Freeman. Baumeister, R. F., & Campbell, W. K. (1999). The intrinsic appeal of evil: Sadism, sensation thrills, and threatened egotism. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 210–221. Baumeister, R. F., Smart, L., & Boden, J. M. (1996). Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem. Psychological Review, 103, 5–33.

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Berlin, I. (1991). The bent twig: On the rise of nationalism. In H. Hardy (Ed.), The crooked timber of humanity: Chapters in the history of ideas (pp. 238–261). London: Fontana Press. Campbell, D. T. (1958). Common fate, similarity, and other indices of the status of aggregate of persons as social entities. Behavioral Science, 3, 14–25. Chirot, D. (1994). Modern tyrants: The power and prevalence of evil in our age. New York: Free. Darley, J. M. (1992). Social organization for the production of evil. Psychological Inquiry, 3, 199–218. Federation of American Scientists (Trans.). (2001). Jihad against Jews and Crusaders: World Islamic Front statement. Available: from http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm [Original Arabic text version available: http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/fatw2. htm]. Hastorf, A., & Cantril, H. (1954). They saw a game: A case study. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49, 129–134. Hilberg, R. (1995). Perpetrators, victims, bystanders: The Jewish catastrophe 1933–1945. London: Martin Secker & Warburg. Himmelfarb, M. (1984). No Hitler, no Holocaust. Commentary, 76, 37–43. Lerner, M. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum. Mandel, D. R. (1998). The obedience alibi: Milgram’s account of the Holocaust reconsidered. Analyse & Kritik: Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaften, 20, 74–94. Mandel, D. R. (in press). Instigators of genocide: Examining Hitler from a social psychological perspective. In L. Newman & R. Erber (Eds.), What social psychology can tell us about the Holocaust: Understanding the perpetrators of genocide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mandel, D. R., Axelrod, L. J., & Lehman, D. R. (1993). Integrative complexity in reasoning about the Persian Gulf war and the accountability to skeptical audience hypothesis. Journal of Social Issues, 49, 201–215. Miller, A. G. (Ed.). (1999). Special issue: Perspectives on evil and violence. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3). PBS Frontline. (2001). Osama bin Laden v. the U.S.: Edicts and statements. Available: http://www.pbs. org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/edicts.html Staub, E. (1989). The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence. New York: Cambridge University Press. Staub, E. (1990). Moral exclusion, personal goal theory and extreme destructiveness. Journal of Social Issues, 46, 47–65. Tajfel, H. (1981). Human groups and social categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Toffler, A. (1990). Power shift: Knowledge, wealth, and violence at the edge of the 21st century. New York: Bantam. White House Office of the Press Secretary. (2001a, September 11). Remarks by the President upon arrival at Barksdale Air Force base. Available: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 2001/09/print/20010911-1.html White House Office of the Press Secretary. (2001b, September 11). Statement by the President in his address to the nation. Available: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/print/ 20010911-16.html White House Office of the Press Secretary. (2001c, September 12). Remarks by the President in photo opportunity with national security team. Available: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 2001/09/print/20010912-4.html White House Office of the Press Secretary. (2001d, September 26). President thanks CIA: Remarks by the President to employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. Available: http://www. whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/print/20010926-3.html Zimbardo, P. G. (1995). The psychology of evil: A situationist perspective on recruiting good people to engage in anti-social acts. Research in Social Psychology, 11, 125–133.

DAVID R. MANDEL is an Associate Professor of Psychology at University of Victoria. His research focuses on the psychology of collective violence and on topics in decision science such as choice, judgment, and rationality.

Evil and the Instigation of Collective Violence

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