Mass Hate
The Global Rise of Genocide and Terror
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Mass Hate explores why the brutality of humankind erupted and flowed more expansively in the twentieth century than ever before. Psychologist Neil Kressel recommends specific steps to help stem this bloody global tide of slaughter, terror and genocide. In his investigation, Kressel focuses on the horrifying butchery in Rwanda, the terrifying tactics of rape and torture of women in Bosnia, the systematic murder of Jews and others during the Holocaust. He examines history, psychology, and political science for explanations of what propels a citizen to raise a machete against innocent neighbors, and, in a moving conclusion, suggests practical ways for humankind to eradicate the causes of mass hate. Now included in the preface is a discussion of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, on New York and the Pentagon.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In an illuminating psychosocial inquiry into the roots of mass hatred, Kressel, who chairs the psychology department at William Paterson College of New Jersey, focuses on four examples of the eruption of murderous bigotry. In Germany, the Nazi genocide of the Jews was abetted by millions of patriotic accomplices who gave their enthusiastic support to Hitler, though aware of his willingness to launch a new war and of his hatred of Jews. In the former Yugoslavia, the drive to build a Greater Serbia--born of grandiose nationalism and memories of WWII atrocities against Serbs--in 1992 led Bosnian Serb soldiers to rape, torture and murder thousands of Muslim and Croat women. The 1993 bombing of Manhattan's World Trade Center by Muslim terrorists drew strength from a fundamentalist ideology that demonizes the West. In Rwanda in 1994, Hutu extremists slaughtered half a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu, motivated by a class-based hatred that, according to Kressel, evolved well before the arrival of colonizing Europeans. Kressel explores how powerful leaders, playing upon an us-against-them mentality, can transform law-abiding people into perpetrators of atrocities. The best bulwark against mass hate, he stresses, is a democratic political culture based on free media and human rights.
