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Mass Violence

Mass violence is violence directed by one or more individuals (sometimes organized groups or a nation) toward multiple other individuals (random or national, ethnic, religious, or other identifiable groups). The term has been applied, for example, to terrorist events, wartime genocide, disgruntled employees opening fire on other employees, and targeted or rampage school violence. Across history, mass violence attacks have occurred between or toward ethnic groups—nationally (e.g., Whites and African Americans in the United States; conflicts among the Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa in Rwanda) or in specific locations (e.g., inner-city gang wars). Kings, nations, or groups have waged holy wars or genocide on specific religious groups (e.g., the Crusades; Serbian attempts at “ethnic cleansing;” the Nazis' efforts to exterminate the Jews of Europe). Actions have been committed in retaliation for actual or perceived offenses. For example, war is sometimes described as justified when it is waged to “avenge wrongs” and/or has “rightful intentions.” Some mass violent events have been committed or attempted by troubled individuals (e.g., bullied and/or traumatized, psychotic, suffering complicated grief).

Mass violent events may undermine a targeted group's ongoing sense of safety, emotional well-being, and psychological and physical health. Such events influence the ways that individuals, groups, and nations function in the world. For example, when transportation systems are involved in mass violence attacks (e.g., airlines after the 9/11 terrorist attacks; Japanese and British subways), travel-related fears and restrictions result. Ongoing threat and brutality may become a part of a national or group psyche.

Types of Mass Violence

Two types of mass violence, genocide and terrorism, are described in this entry. School shootings are discussed in a separate entry.

Genocide

In ancient documents (including biblical), genocide was often designed both to eradicate enemy ethnicities, and to incorporate and exploit some of their members—usually children and women. Aggressors have sometimes both psychologically and physically disparaged the target group with techniques of humiliation, torture, rape, selling into slavery, murder, or even cannibalism. In addition to directed genocide, other results of invasion may reduce a population and a way of life. For example, although war and genocide were important in the destruction of certain tribes, the reduction of the U.S. Native American population from more than 5 million (1492) to 250,000 (1900) resulted from a combination of the disease and alcoholism introduced by settlers, warfare and genocide, geographic uprooting and relocation, and destruction of normal ways of life.

According to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (United Nations, 1948, Article 2)

Rape has also been prosecuted as both a war crime and an act of genocide. In situations of war, identifying the victim sometimes becomes an issue of debate. Additionally, questions arise related to intention. For example, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin intended to destroy hotbeds of resistance, but did he intend to eliminate the Ukrainian people? The term genocid e was formulated as a legal definition. Some historians point out that the term massacre has been used since the European Middle Ages to refer to collective action that destroys defenseless individuals. Genocide is composed of one or more massacres. From a social science perspective, the objective may be either to destroy a community to subjugate the remaining population (e.g., killing and torture to set an example or creating a climate of terror, such as Rwandan Hutu opponents of the government) or to eradicate a population (e.g., Rwandan Tutsis).

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