I thought this was a pretty good article to find on CNN. We all like to think that we could never be victims of GROUPTHINK.
THINK again. :-))
Randy
They Killed Their Neighbors
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/25/sbm.perpetrators/index.html
"We all divide the world into 'us' and 'them,' " said psychologist Ervin Staub, author of "The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence."
"Some people are like 'us' because of nationality, religion, race, etc. Those that are not like 'us' are 'them.' "
"Group identity intensifies during difficult times," Staub said.
Jean-Bosco Bizimana, a Rwandan Hutu, slaughtered his Tutsi neighbors 14 years ago. Leaders of the genocide exploited the history of hatred between the Hutus and Tutsis to pit them against each other. But before the genocide, the two groups had overcome their hostility to live peacefully together.
"We were manipulated," Bizimana said. "The government pushed us to kill. Before that, we intermarried, we helped each other in daily life and we shared everything. We ourselves can't even believe what happened."
Bizimana's wife said her husband, "would go around with the mob, and to show them he was part of it, he would kill."
Perpetrators don't want to be seen as weak, and in a mob mentality, individual guilt seems to disappear.
"People will do almost anything in a group and will do anything not to be rejected," said psychologist Philip Zimbardo, a professor emeritus at Stanford and famous for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, which divided student volunteers into "prisoners" and "guards" and showed how easily people could be induced to commit sadistic acts.
"They give up a sense of personal accountability and diffuse responsibility to the leader."
and
The propaganda machine portrays the victim group as less than human. In Rwanda, the Hutus called their Tutsi neighbors 'cockroaches.' In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge said their victims were "worms." To the Nazis, Jews were "vermin."
Dehumanization is the most powerful psychological tool used in all mass murder and genocides, Zimbardo said. "Dehumanization blurs your vision. You look at these people and you do not see them as human."
Instead, the enemy is treated as a germ -- as something to eradicate, or else face the threat of infection.
"Purification is at the heart of genocide," said Harvard's Lifton. "In that purification ... [the killers] are healing."
It's a CONSPIRACY, a very simple, effective on that requires no secret information. It is an attitude; a meme. :
"It's a conspiracy, a silent secret plan to set up a situation whereby the victims, who are unsuspecting, are brought into a conflict with a large number of people, many of whom are also unsuspecting," Kiernan said.