The Psychology Of The Pogrom

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 100, 21 January 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Psychology Of The Pogrom

I 1 HILOSOPHERS have enjoined us to try to understand people | J with whom we do not agree: nor should the marksman aim at I any object till he can see enough of it to establish its identity. JL Three main theories are put forward to account for pogroms, and each deserves attention,” says “The Lancet.” “The first rests on a now discarded theory of instinct and holds that with nations, just as with certain people, there is periodically a blood-lust, which must be satisfied, for otherwise the mind will be stifled by its own passions of hatred and will sicken. “In a word, an occasional ‘blood-letting’ is a good thing for the nerves. The supporters of this view regard war as serving the same good purpose, and therefore not to be discarded from the pharmacopoeia of political life. On this theory a pogrom may be the remedy that will avert the need for the more drastic treatment of war. The second view is that' the primary reason for pogroms is economic—that looting by a mob or a fine by government decree should rightly be regarded as a means of levelling down those who have been too successful.

“This is the excuse, if not the reason, for the plundering of able minorities by inefficient governments down the ages. King Henry II robbing the ■lews and the Sultan Abdul Hamid harrying the Armenians, though centuries apart, employed the same ineans to cover their own deficiencies. The third view rests on a wider foundation and we owe much of it to those who have been able to gain a deeper understanding of the mind through a study of its sufferings.

“The psycho-pathologists tell us that pogroms, war, certainly crimes passionelles, and perhaps many other crimes of violence, are not due to a simple increase of the impulse of aggression, which must find outlet, but arise from the interaction of an impulse to destroy something and at the same time to protect something.

“Man. whether individually or in the group, cannot easily tolerate violence unless it is put to the service of a more constructive purpose, for otherwise the action of guilt becomes oppressive. Wars in these latter days must be defended before the tribunal of conscience, and pogroms must be given a lofty purpose by those who organize or officially condone them.

“A survey of pogroms covering the last century reveals a fact that is probably of great importance in their aetiology. They occur most often in countries governed by an autocracy, and are rare in parliamentary or democratic countries .. .

“The connexion appears to depend on a double attitude of trusting affection and hostility with which man faces his government—a legacy from infancy lingering, but with potent force, in the subconscious mind. In the parliamentary countries the part of the emotional life which is concerned with politics is split into two; one part is directed to the Crown, the other to Ihe cabinet. When discontent arises the people through parliament can remove a ruler (prime minister) without dislodging or expressing disloyalty to authority as'sueh. (A corollary of this is that parliamentary criticism of the government cannot rightly be regarded as ‘fouling one’s own nest.’) The arrangement is flexible and adapts itself more or less quickly to the mood and wishes of the population.

“An autocracy has no such adaptability. Its leader, specially if he permits people.on his behalf to lay claim to omniscience and omnipotence, cannot without losing prestige—the foundation-stone of his peijestal—bend to his people's will or acknowledge a fault. He absorbs into himself, more than a constitutional monarch does, all the devotion which in a parliamentary country goes to both crown and cabinet: and with the concentration of devotion goes also a concentration of hostility.

“The more a ruler ‘co-ordinates' all forces through himself, the more risk he runs that some of those forces will be those of disaffection. He must find a scapegoat, so that the hostility may be diverted into a channel that can stream over his borders into a foreign land. If war is not convenient, then an enemy who can be destroyed or expelled must be found at home.

“Because there is no adequate device for dealing with the double attitude of affection and hostility by an internal adjustment of forces (the twoparty system in a parliamentary democracy was admirably adapted to this end), the totalitarian .States of Right and Left are driven to the expedient of pogroms and purges. Their safety as totalitarian States depends on it, for their equilibrium is unstable without it.”