 Good afternoon, and welcome to the fifth annual genocide studies conference at the Naval War College. Our theme for this year is the psychology of genocide. I am Dr. Hyatt Alvi, I'm an associate professor at the college, and I am the organizer of this conference. It is our great fortune to have with us today some of the most esteemed scholars in interdisciplinary fields to discuss the psychology of genocide. Their bios are available in as well as the conference program in the chat box of this session. I encourage you to please read their bios and the itinerary for today is also included in the program. So if you go to the chat box in Zoom right now, you will find the link to all the bios of the panelists and the itinerary for this conference. Before we begin, I need to go over a few administrative items. So to begin with is our kind of standard disclaimer, which is to note that everything presented today represents the speaker's own personal views. We have two panels today, and a Q and Q and a session will follow each panel. You will be able to type your questions in the Q and a menu on the panel below. You will take. Sorry, we will take a short break in between the two panels. This conference is being recorded. However, our keynote speaker General Romeo DeLair prefers not to be recorded. Therefore, we will stop recording during his keynote address and resume recording after he is finished. There will be no Q and a with General DeLair. I have a personal ambition of mine to invite General DeLair to the genocide studies conference. I consider it a great honor that he has accepted the invitation, and he will deliver the keynote address today. This conference could not happen without the generous support of the Naval War College Foundation. I wish to acknowledge and thank the Naval War College Events Department, especially Sharla Fiori, who has worked tirelessly for this conference. Also, the graphics department, public affairs office, and the IT and audio visual departments have worked very hard to make this happen. Thank you all very much. Now it is my pleasure to introduce the Provost of the Naval War College, Dr. Steven Mariano, who will say a few words and introduce our honored guest speaker General DeLair. Provost Mariano, over to you. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. I mentioned what an honor it is to have General DeLair. Well, it's an honor for me as well to be opening this conference, which is the fifth annual genocide conference. And my compliments to you, Hyatt, for being the driving force behind this and to over 60 participants I now see online at this great event. On behalf of Admiral Chatfield, the President of the Naval War College, I'd like to welcome everyone today. Unfortunately, she can't be here. She's off doing some travel. And she wanted me to personally tell you Hyatt that she regrets not being able to participate, but is a full supporter of this, this annual event. The theme of this year's conference is the psychology of genocide and both from the perpetrator and the victims perspectives. We have an outstanding lineup of scholars that you're going to soon meet who will be discussing and analyzing the psychology of genocide. And genocide is still with us today, whether it's happening as we speak in Ukraine if you've been following the news about some, some mass graves being uncovered or Myanmar or other places. There's clearly a relevance to this topic in our ongoing activities in the world today. I'm looking for the US military to address the subject of genocide and it takes the military intervention to stop genocide. In fact, as I was looking through, I just moved here. I've been the provost for a couple of months and I've got all my boxes of books, and I've been unpacking my books. And I find things like a mass atrocity response operation handbook, and a guiding principles for stabilization and reconstruction. And of course, what I'm sure will be talked about a little bit seminal work on the responsibility to protect that in some ways was brought to us by the events in Rwanda, and of course, our speaker today, and a very historic moment that is still affecting us all. So, this conference is important and is aligned with the objectives of the Naval War College and I just want to add one more set of anecdotes here up here in Newport we routinely host a congressional delegations from the United States Congress that come to look at our curriculum and our programs. And they always ask us why we're teaching certain topics, and just in the last two visits I've had to answer questions about our curriculum in the context of similar subjects as this one, and say this is important to us. It's important to our programs. It's important that we continue to be part of the dialogue and the debate, the research on this topic and others topics related. So, there is interest in this topic, not just here at the Naval War College but in the government of the United States. And it's up to all of us to continue that work and advance knowledge on these areas. And again, thank you to Provost Mariano for an outstanding introduction and his reflections as well. And I know he has a busy schedule so he might have to run off as well. So, thank you. We will resume now with panel one. I will not read anyone's bios you have the bios available in the program link that's provided in the chat. Please do read the bios. We will begin with panel one with Dr. Leanne Perry, and then we'll go to Dr. Raquel Perez, and then Dr. Don Thimi so Dr. Perry whenever you're ready. Okay, so hello everyone. I'm Dr. Leanne Perry. I am with the College of Leadership and Ethics here at the Naval War College. Prior to joining the war college a year ago. My career was focused mainly on the research of violent criminals worked with the FBI's behavioral analysis unit. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, better known as NCIS. And also with Facebook's global security intel team looking at dangerous organizations like violent extremist groups, jihadist cartels, etc. So, today I'm going to talk with you all about some of the social psychological concepts related to perpetrators of genocide and mass violence more broadly. And for the purpose of today's talk when I refer to perpetrators, what I mean is the rank and file actors so not the orchestrators are the instigators of the mass violence but but the groups that are following in there in their footsteps. Okay, so the main question we'll think through together for this next 20 minutes or so is this. How do ordinary people come to commit these extraordinary acts of violence. So as human beings we often think that there's these extraordinary acts that must have caused, or that must have this extraordinary cause right, and this might be true on some occasions but sometimes the causes can actually be quite ordinary. So, while, you know, there are also individual level factors that are at play in these extraordinary acts of violence for this particular discussion what we'll focus on is using group dynamics and social psychological factors to better understand these individuals behaviors. And one key piece in understanding this behavior is a psychological construction of the other. Okay, and what this refers to is thinking about people in terms of an us and to them, an in group and an out group. We're trying to think about the world in an in an us them way from the time we're pretty young think about things like clicks at school, being in sports when you're in middle school or high school, things like that so it's kind of priming us to start thinking in that way of having this in group and this out group. Another case of mass violence is that the other right somebody in the out group is seen to pose such a threat to the in group that they need to be eliminated. The other poses this threat, whether it's real or perceived. And so, because we're already wired with this us versus them thinking regimes and people in power can play off of this to exacerbate it for destructive purposes. We begin to define who we are by who we are not right so the in group out group thinking can have some evolutionary benefit to it right let's think about with infants. So they tend to favor people who have a voice they recognize or look like them, but it can be taken to a point of being destructive even though it has this evolutionary benefit piece to it. Right. There is a point where it becomes destructive. And when we get to this level of threat perception by the in group members, all sense of individuality gets overtaken by this collective or social group by this in group. And the person's identity ends up getting redefined as the group identity. Now, we all have multiple identities based on multiple things. Some of those being religion, race, gender, what sports team we root for what career field we're in. But in situations of this type of violence genocidal violence of mass violence. A group in power begins to say it's this one identity that matters this one in group identity that that is the end all be all. Having this us versus them mentality. It's necessary for these mass acts of violence but it's not sufficient other elements do need to be in place for this to move toward violence against the out group. So social psychologists billowits and bull heart discuss how to main dimensions of stereotypes, and these two dimensions being warmth and competence, determine typical reactions to a given group. And they identify two specific forms of prejudice related to genocide that come from this. They identify envy as prejudice, which is against groups that are perceived as high incompetence, but low in warmth. And you can think of an example here is as wealthy individuals and a dehumanizing prejudice which would be against groups that are perceived as low in both competence and warmth and an example here would be homeless individuals. And so you'll note that both of these stereotypes involve the low warmth piece. Okay, so these two forms of stereotypes they appear in almost all genocides, but in that in different stages. Okay, so the envious prejudice tends to show up more on the front end in the earlier stages where the dehumanizing prejudice comes in as as the these levels of violence escalate. And they're also disseminated, often through things like propaganda or other forms of hate speech. So I'm going to go into each of those two different types of prejudice now. So we'll start off with the envious prejudice. And this is the type of prejudice that's characterized as I said by the high competence, but low warmth. And so there's social science professor named Peter Glick and he has suggested that envious prejudice is the basic ideology underlying scapegoating and skateboarding that occurs when the out went out groups that are seen as powerful and influential are blamed by others for problems that are occurring in society. And under conditions of stress, this can be political stress, economic stress, any other type of societal uncertainty, these are things that General DeLair was speaking about when he was talking, basically anything that threatens people's psychological security, instills some type of fear as General DeLair was talking about. These ideologies gained popularity that depict the out group as strong and capable, and also as holding negative intentions toward the in group that's very important. This negative intentions piece would be that low warmth dimension of the stereotype. And this way of thinking enables people to be able to put that blame and that responsibility for their own group stressors their own fears their own uncertainties at the time on to an out group. Right, and the instigators of genocide are able to use this type of prejudice to them bolster their own power and organize the in group against that stereotype to out group. So as you see we keep coming back to that original in group out group us versus them thinking. So let's kind of pivot here we'll go over to the dehumanizing prejudice now. And we tend to see this type as I said in later stages of genocide, and this focuses on perceptions of the victim group as having both low confidence and low warmth. And this depiction is meant to elicit our discussed our contempt for the other. And that is then further amplified by dehumanizing images of animals that are associated with Phil associated with transmission of infectious diseases this was another thing that General DeLair was was pointing to in in his discussion. And this discussed motivates and a further rejection of the other of the out group. And what it also does is it reduces the potential for people to want to help and empathize with that other group. So we see this with the Nazis and how they depicted the Jews, as the genocide advanced Jews were no longer depicted as the strong cunning villains. Instead, the Nazis disseminated dehumanizing images of Jews with things like rats cockroaches snakes etc. So dehumanization makes that act of violence, less aversive to the person doing it, it makes them feel like it's less morally reprehensible. It's one of the mechanisms of what's called moral disengagement, through which human beings managed to maintain this positive image of themselves, and of their group, despite the fact that all of these horrendous things are committing these harmful actions against other people. And we'll talk more about moral disengagement, a couple slides from now to. So there's also been some neuroscience research around dehumanization. And it helps to point to some of the underlying mechanisms of this particular stereotype. So some of the areas of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex, the amygdala and the insula, no need to remember those three have been shown to be related to this dehumanization process and to perceptions related to that. So researchers LaSonna Harris and Susan Fisk, they had participants view pictures of different social groups, and they monitored the activation in these different regions of their brains. And what they found was that when participants viewed pictures of members of social groups that were stereotyped as low in worth and competence. Remember what we've been discussing as this dehumanization prejudice group. Their medial prefrontal cortex was less activated than when they viewed pictures of members of other types of stereotype groups. So, for example, the envious prejudice group that we talked about earlier. And this is important, because that region of the brain is related to our ability to understand mental states of others, and to how we perceive other people. So the region of the brain that helps us better understand these mental states of other people and aids us in how we perceive others was less activated when viewing pictures of groups, we tend to see as cold and incompetent. The researchers found that viewing pictures of these dehumanized groups who were perceived as cold and incompetent actually activated a different region of their brain, the amygdala and the insula. And these regions of the brain are responsible for processing information about disgust and regulating avoidant behavior goes back to what we were just talking about with with the dehumanizing way of talking about people as being, you know, vermin cockroaches right things that elicit this disgust. So these findings are interesting to consider. In terms of what's happening within our brains that we're likely not even aware of, when we're exposed to outgroups who make who elicit these feelings inside us. I noted a couple of slides back that dehumanization is one of the mechanisms of moral disengagement by which people are able to manage to preserve this positive image of both themselves and their group, despite the fact that they're doing harm to others and they're committing these these atrocious acts. And so I want to bring our attention now to some other types of moral disengagement, as described by a famous social psychologist named Albert Bandura, as well as a concept that social psychologist James Walter discusses in his research on genocidal behavior, which is moral reorientation so starting off with the moral reorientation piece. Dr waller notes that for most individuals, they don't just turn off their morality, when they're doing these, these bad acts, right these violent acts, they still see themselves as fundamentally moral people, instead, they reorient their morality, they find a way to present their acts as moral. And for example, they convince themselves that, you know, these people in this other group aren't worthy of my moral commitment. Right, so they reorient their morality. And this also links to victim blaming, you know people have committed these terrible acts, they build cognitive structures to keep themselves from facing what they've really done. And one of those structures is blaming the victims. Dr waller he gives this interesting example. He says, quote, I think back to the testimony of a Holocaust perpetrator who was asked on his trial by the prosecutor. How did you come to think it was right to kill Jews. And his response was incredible. He said, it's not that I thought it was right to kill them. I thought it was wrong. If I didn't kill them. There would be a different level of moral reorientation and saying it's not just okay to kill. If I don't kill them. I'm doing something wrong, unquote. So group leaders can use this, this moral reorientation piece as a way to convince others within their in group that it's okay to commit these acts of atrocity against other human beings. So we talked about that dehumanization piece, but apart from from that which we've discussed our bandora social psychologist he described several other mechanisms of moral disengagement that also can be applied to genocide. And you can see those here on the slide. So the justification of atrocities, for example, that occurred among the Hutu perpetrators who were convinced that they had to kill two Tsis so that the Hutus themselves would not be extinguished. Right so that's how they justify it to themselves morally sanitizing language includes for example, use of phrases like final solution, instead of mass murder of Jews and gas chambers during the Holocaust displacement of responsibility. And we see that, for example, it occurred when Nazi perpetrators claimed that they had merely carried out orders, right they put the responsibility to blame on someone else they just carried out the orders it wasn't their responsibility. And then distortion of harmful consequences of the in groups actions, and that refers to things like, you know, minimizing the number of deaths that occurred that they caused, or even completely denying that a genocide occurred. Right. If you distort the consequences of what your actions were then your actions, you know, probably weren't that bad. So we just discussed some ways in which individuals and groups are able to justify for themselves and to others why they did what they did. And these can be used by orchestrators of genocide to convince groups to participate in these violent acts, right. And this is a psychological tool that these instigators and orchestrators can use to their advantage is to focus attention on stressful societal conditions, and this kind of this goes back to when General Blair was talking about how he's seeing this kind of fear in in people throughout the world. Right so this stressful societal condition, this feeling of uncertainty and fear. So individual societal factors they don't operate in a vacuum. We all probably know that to a certain extent they interact with each other on many levels. And one element where we see this type of interaction it's in times of uncertainty and loss of control. People don't generally like uncertainty. I'm going to venture I guess most of you on this call myself included. Like uncertainty don't like chaos it's just generally uncomfortable right it elicits stress it elicits fear, and research has found that people in unstable societal circumstances are more likely to be attracted to ideologies that offer a way to restore some sense of stability and control. And the instigators of these genocidal policies, all for what may appear to be remedies for this uncertainty. When people feel they've lost control over their lives, they tend to prefer simple solutions over complex ones, it's just the way human beings are wired, and they're willing to turn over control for getting to these solutions to people they see as strong leaders, and these leaders use that to their advantage, and they present options for trying to regain control and shifting the power back to the end group. We've discussed the psychological construction of the other into this us versus them which that integral piece that dehumanization of the other, which is necessary in addition to the us versus then thinking the role of uncertainty and loss of control, and the ways that individuals can build these cognitive structures to keep themselves believing that they're actually acting in accordance with their morals they justify it to themselves other people. One of the things I want to talk about today is how obedience and conformity fit into this puzzle. So, under what conditions will ordinary people come to follow orders to commit extraordinary ads. And most of us probably know of Stanley Milgram and his studies on obedience, but some may not and so he conducted these famous studies in the 60s and 70s, focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. He aimed to determine how far people were willing to go in obeying instructions if it involved harming another person who was seen as an innocent person. So his what his original study that did was a pair two people together. One was a participant blind to what was happening. And one person was a Confederate so the Confederate knew what the study was about was working with Milgram, but the participant did not know that they thought the Confederate was just another participant with them. And then they draw straws to determine who's going to take two different roles the role of a teacher and the role of a learner, but this was rigged of course so the Confederate always comes out as the learner. This was done in in a laboratory setting. There was also another person in the room dressed in a lab coat, who was acting as the experimenter. So the Confederate person in on the study is strapped to the chair in his role as the learner, and he's got electrodes strapped to him. And after he learns a list of word pairs that are given to him, the participant right in this role of the teacher tests him by naming one word and asking what the paired word was. So the participants told to administer an electric shock every time the Confederate makes a mistake and gets the word wrong, and that each time it happens they have to increase the level of shock that they give. The 30 switches total on the shock board they're marked 15 volt from 15 volts which says slight shock, all the way up to 450 volts, which is marked as dangerous severe shock. So the participant can see this. So the Confederate gives mainly wrong answers on purpose. If the participant then refuses to give a shock. The experimenter the one dressed in the lab coat gives him a series of orders to prompt him to continue I'm saying him because this was all men involved as subjects in the study. What the findings were were that two thirds 65% of the participants actually continue to the highest level the 450 volts that danger severe shock level. And all participants 100% continue to 300 volts at least 300 volts. The findings indicated that people were likely to follow orders given by an authority figure right the person in a lab coat, even to the extent of harming another human being. And if we think about this in terms of, you know, individual explanations for the behavior we would think, okay it might be something unique to that particular person that led them to do that and follow the orders but in this study. Everyone obeyed up until the 300 volt mark right and that the person who was sitting there getting shocked the Confederate was screaming was yelling was obviously in pain. So another explanation might be that the situation that these individuals were in influence them to behave in the way that they did. And when you think about it, you know, obedience to authority it's ingrained in us from when we're young, well through when we're brought up people tend to obey other people if they recognize them as authority figures, whether it be in terms of legal authority figures or moral authority figures. So some examples police officers firefighters, your parents of religious leaders bosses that you have right. So this is kind of ingrained in us as human beings, as we're socialized. And keep in mind to in this study and no one study the elements we've discussed today throughout this presentation weren't even in place. Right there was no dehumanizing. There was no effort to create now through. There was no societal or individual uncertainty or stressor that the person was contending with. Right this level of obedience happened, even without those pieces in place. So, milkman did some follow up variations on the study where he kept everything the same, except the specific situation or condition that the parties, the participant was placed in. In the interest of time today I just want to highlight one it's in bold here. So there was a social support condition. And in this condition there were two additional participants, both Confederates both who knew what was going on that were also acting as teachers alongside the main participant. But these two additional people these two new Confederates refused to obey the commands of the person in the lab code. Okay, so Confederate one stops at 150 volts Confederate two stops at 210 volts, right they just refused to go on even after the additional prompts. So in this such in this condition this social support condition with the presence of these other people in the room refusing to obey, right they were seen to disobey the authority figure. So the level of obedience in shocking up to that maximum voltage dropped to 10% and if you remember it was 65% in the original study. So this points to that to the influence that social support and peers, refusing to obey orders to commit harmful acts can actually have on a person. So everything we talked about today, these are all psychological processes that can be applied across people across situations they're not unique to violent or extraordinary acts they're underlying social psychological processes. And so keeping in this in mind I want to share this quote with you from sociologist Zygmunt Bowman. So the most frightening news brought about by the Holocaust and by what we learned of its perpetrators was not the likelihood that this could be done to us, but the idea that we could do it, unquote. And so with that in mind I'd like to leave you with with two final questions to ponder when you leave here today. So how can we counter us versus them thinking, and how do we structure our societies, family schools, etc. to redefine the world as more inclusive, as opposed to restricted to a select group of people. So basically that in group out group phenomenon. So Dr James Waller who I brought up earlier in the presentation to social psychologist he's a keen state university and he's also a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies. So he noted he had an interesting quote that I want to share he said, quote, we should be less concerned about the bad apples individual dispositions, and more concerned about the bad barrels structural situations unquote. So, in order to focus on those barrels that Dr Waller refers to, we need to be thinking about these types of structural questions. Right. So it's important that we study the individual factors, the individual dispositions the bad apples that's definitely important. That plays a role too. But we can't neglect the structural questions and the structural features as Dr Waller calls them the barrels. And so I thank you for your time. And I look forward to your questions in the Q amp a fantastic. Terry, thank you so much. Next up, and just a reminder, the Q amp a will be after all the panelists and panel one have spoken, and then we'll open up to Q amp a you can write your type your questions and the Q amp a key or box on the bottom of zoom. Dr Raquel. Yes, you are next. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining in. First, just all of the conversations that we've been discussing and going through today. Tie in so well with what I'm going to be presenting. We already have heard that there are really no borders, and that's the angle that I'm going to be presenting. I'm going to talk about myself before we kind of dive in. So I actually have a PhD and masters in conflict analysis and resolution, and though most of my work focuses on conflict from the micro to the macro, especially within organization systems processes in communities. I've also ventured out into very much of a tech space. Now, I don't know how familiar you are with the term, but there is a new concept that's being presented, which is called peace tech. So, peace tech actually focuses on using technology in order to help us either alleviate deescalate understand, or inform of where conflicts are beginning processing in our different spaces. So, when we take a look at peace tech and these different elements, it's important to understand that it's a merging technology. Right. So, if we use any piece of technology to help deescalate if we use a piece of technology to help build awareness if we use a piece of technology as an alert system, that becomes the arena in which we then operate. So with peace tech, it kind of helps us move into different elements of technology. So I will be talking about VR. And so before I dive into the actual project and VR and what that means and looks like, I let me go ahead and kind of unpack what that is. So, we blanket them under a house called XR, which is extended reality. Now, augmented reality is something very similar to if you're shopping at IKEA you use your phone to see if this fits in the size. Some of you may have children in your family, maybe even some adults that will then use augmented reality to play games such as Pokemon Go. So VR is actually when we place a headset and it brings us into an immersive space. Okay, so everything around you. It can either be through 360 film video so it's going to be like a live kind of show that we would watch on TV. And the same would be for for the immersive would be more of a digitally created space. Okay, this is going to be very important as we kind of move forward. So MR is basically the two mixed together for a different type of experience. So that being said, let's talk a little bit about the project. So I have a VR project called storytelling for social change voices of genocide. And just for a little bit of a timeline on that project. I actually began probably in 2018 2019, where I wanted to create a VR experience that would help connect and tell stories of genocide. After much research, much connecting with individuals in the, the industry, I actually was able to partner with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and DC. And say, Hey, we have this whole repository, you could definitely access to the information there. So in the design and development of this, I was able to secure grant funding and build out an actual VR project. Now, because there are stories of genocide. There are a lot of elements that I had to take into account. This wasn't something that it wasn't a video game that I was creating this. I understood the weight of that as I was moving forward. So one thing that I want to definitely know is that we've already had and I have these pieces here. We already had some discussions about dehumanizing and Dr. Perry did a great job about that. The reason why this layer of media as far as external, these extended realities were so important is the more and more I interacted with students as a faculty member at Florida International University, the more and more I realized that there was a disconnect between aware awareness and experience. See, as we watch TV as we watch movies as we're exposed to more things on social media. We sent it, we sense to create this false narrative that if I've seen it, I understand the experience. And that's not necessarily true. If we look at the recent natural disasters. Unfortunately, we were impacted by a hurricane. So though many people saw the hurricane and elements of it on TV. It's completely different than actually living through a hurricane. So when we decide to tell these stories and these narratives. It's important to understand that we need to tell some to build awareness, but not create the false narrative that I'm an expert in that experience. Unfortunately, that is a lot of what media does, as Dr. Perry says this also builds in the concept of dehumanizing right if we take a look at something on TV, enough on a movie enough through scrolling throughout social media it's not important enough for us anymore, because we're desensitized and the individuals experiencing that it's not real for us. So we didn't want to create an experience that detached people from, from the actual events happening in events in those time moments and places. One of the earlier on events that I had for my students was we were we went to a museum, the Holocaust Memorial here in South Florida. And it was interesting to me that the students were were in shock when they got to meet Holocaust survivors, and they were like this was so unreal for me, because I've only read about them in stories and school or in shows, never really understanding that they're real people. So this became my task. How do I tell a story effectively, giving honor and respect to those and their experiences to not sound like the experts. And at the same time, have the user connect with what's taking place. So we first have to dive into a little bit of the design process of the experience design process, and that takes us over here first. So there's the user interface which is our UI and user experience. And so we're going to really focus more on the user experience side. You see, this is the traditional model of how user experiences are built out. But this was going to be different here, because even though I have to keep the user experience in mind, I had to keep the actual stories of the individuals intact in a way that could be honored. So I approached this as there were actually two users in every single one of these elements. It was the person that was putting on the VR set. And then there was the person that I was honoring their story. So I had to constantly think of how do I do this in a way that is respectful to that end and allows the user to connect. Then as I proceeded, how can the user then engage with the actual individual in that experience. Right. And what were my overall objectives and how was this going to be used. So for the engagement component, I opted to go the route of focusing on listening. So I wanted the user to be able to go into the experience, the VR experience, and be able to listen to the user story, be able to stop and not be distracted by a lot of items around them. So I started my research and following along into so many different other VR experiences specifically that focused on genocide and Holocaust. One thing that was interesting when I spoke to the developers was that sometimes the user would get lost in all of the imagery. They would be taken back by the picture they would be taken back by those pieces and almost miss out on the reasoning. What I wanted to do was have the user connect to the individual experience through listening. So that became those kind of pieces. My objective was to build active listening skills, compassion and empathy, and understanding in the process, not to a place where the user felt that they were they were the expert in these genocide narratives, but one that focused on, I now have a greater understanding for what to place as a human being and usability. So this made sure that as I was building out this project that it was transferable it is something that would be able to be shared, and that users would have an easy time accessing the actual interactive virtual round. And this brought me into three different psychological considerations. So for the user experience I focused on stories. I started first and in great this is a plan of a larger rollout this is the beta of the actual project. And so my, my first focus was actually Holocaust survivors for the simple fact that the resource was so readily available and ready for us to connect with. So my plan and hope is that we will be able to capture more narratives and connect with more stories so that we can then begin to tell those individual stories as well. So for the user experience, we didn't want them to feel overwhelmed by that imagery but rather connect to the stories that they were hearing. So this led us into what environments. Are we going to be hearing these stories, and this was extremely challenging, because in virtual reality, I could create any type of environment, but every piece was crucial. I experienced a lot of concentration camp walkthroughs, which were stunning and amazing and visually unreal, and it transported me there into those spaces. But again that imagery would sometimes become overwhelming and I would lose sight of what the narrator was showing and demonstrating along the way. And so when I decided to go into a natural environment. I was very specific that I couldn't do natural environments, let's say, of a forest per se, because there were a lot of victims of the Holocaust that when they went to right to hide and flee, they ran into forests. So even that level of sensitivity in this development was crucial. So when we were taking a look at what these spaces can be like, we experienced so many different options, and we ultimately landed on an open space and we'll show a demonstration of that in just a moment. Now, the impact of this was, was interesting because we needed to figure out how the user would connect with these stories in that time and space. There were VR experiences that had hiccups along the way, which they were definitely the pioneers in this for me so I do appreciate that, but there were some VR experiences for example, that would have you be a prisoner in a concentration camp, digging a grave for corpses around you. Understanding that they wanted to give the user this impact of this is what it was like. It wasn't thinking of the other user, which is that survivor, and what that could do as far as traumatizing an individual the user, and within that story and process as well. So what we decided to do was to have the user lead a recorded message for the survivor or for the story being presented, so that this was a way that they could connect and interact with one another. So as we went through each one of these spaces, it was crucial and important that we brought the user along again not to make them the expert, but to build that understanding and connection through that auditory space. So now I'm going to show you a clip from the actual interaction. Oh yes, Russian songs, beautiful, everything, every language there was they sang. Sure. One song they had that was about the soldier saying goodbye, and it was for us not the soldier, but anybody saying goodbye because we were constantly saying goodbye to each other. And he doesn't think they'll ever get together again. And so this is what was sung also. So as you see, in the experience is designed to be in that moment and to hear that powerful story. That these were humans that went through this process. It wasn't something that was focused on. It wasn't something that was focused on on just the physical impacts but that these were human beings and bringing to that place at the end the user then gets to connect with the orb and actually leave a message this message then goes into a sound cloud, where we then have the connection and are running it through for that for the data and and for the key words that show empathy, compassion, and gratitude for sharing that story. So again, our hope is that this connects individuals to the humanistic aspect of a genocide to make them understand these are not just, you know, boundaries, right, these are not just state national boundaries that these impact people's lives on a daily basis. So I am looking forward to any of your questions I know that this is a lot. Technology is a little bit different, but it's important for us, especially as we go forward and the work in conflict and genocide that we take a look at how our technology and these different spaces can lend and support us in our efforts. Dr Perez, very, very profound. Thank you. Please. I'm sharing now. Yeah, thank you. Yes, you, you definitely blew my mind that was amazing. So again, Q&A will be right after Dr Don see me who is next. So Don went Don see me whenever you're ready. Good afternoon, everyone. Just before I start I want to once again remind you that these are my own personal comments. And these are not anyway reflective necessarily the United States government Department of Defense United States Navy and Naval War College. So you know as you've you've heard from all the great comments over the last hour and a half. What I want to try to bring us towards today is thinking about what we can't know and then trying to figure out with sort of some reverse thinking what that might be. And we can never really know what others are thinking, and just as important, absent the immersive experience that those decision makers had, we can never really truly fully understand or appreciate the thoughts that person or a group of people made at the time the decision was made. Now, nonetheless, accepting that risk I want to explore three different things today with you if you'll give me the honor of your time and your attention. Realizing that in many ways the people who are victims of these acts, you know aren't here to share their history with us. And so we have to really think hard about that. So these three things are the relationships between perpetrators victims. These are the standards and the actuators of violence. Our roles as citizens historians and educators, and then the intent, the will and the actuation of fighting back in myriad forms. And I want to preface this with two personal examples. The first is from 1996 when I took a older gentleman I gave him a guided tour of the Auschwitz booking out complex. He jumped into Normandy in 1944. You know so he was a pretty rugged paratrooper kind of guy. At the end of a long cold snowy day as we're trying to warm up, you know and get ready for the drive back to Krakow. He turned to look at me he said, So why didn't they fight back. The second comes from my father in law, who recently died at the age of 92. He survived beatings by the Hitler youth he survived being shot at by the Waffen SS. He survived an orphanage where he's one of two survivors, the Nazis rolled in a few hours after he ran away and killed every man woman and child. But he then spent the rest of the war hiding potatoes along routes where the prisoners marched to and from the concentration camps, stealing coal from Nazi trains you know throwing it off the side so the people can have a little heat or be able to cook a little bit of food. He fought back as best as a small Polish boy could in the face of oppressive and highly effective tears both a victim and a bystander. He was anything but passive, and he fought back as best he could even as multiple family members were imprisoned and killed in Poland. Now what you see here is a relative's personal house face or sometimes called a Kencott from Nazi occupied Poland, and that's one kind of wall that makes divisions between you know perpetrators bystanders victims and witnesses. But it's just as important in its own way as the physical wall that you see depicted next to it and the reason I use this picture is not because I know anybody in this picture but I want you to see how big these walls were. I want you to understand that when you hear someone talk about the walls that were put up. There's at least two kinds of walls, there's the walls you've heard about of stereotyping and scapegoating. Okay, but there's also bureaucratic administrative walls and there's also physical walls and combined all together. These make things pretty hard and so if you pick up Hilberg or young growths or Daniel Goldhagen, you'll see where all of them have wrestled with this and tried to figure this out. Iris Chang did the same in her work. Okay, with excruciating detail in the violent interactions in the Asian theater of operations during World War Two. Adam Reiske and others have covered the difficult nuances of occupied in Vichy France in World War Two, and then of course in Armenia. The actions of the Turkish government and their soldiers is chronicled perhaps the best and by the cans the burning tigers. But each of these scholars and countless other historians and educators have willingly shouldered the burden of trying in some way to convey the lessons encountered from these and many other events to our children and to our future citizen leaders. Now, in each of these four examples one in Asia one of the Ottoman Empire and two in Europe the roles responsibilities authorities and missions of governments armed forces and not aligned civilian actors are covered usually with a focus on perpetrators and victims. What is important to us is the psychology of the mostly man who committed these actions. Interpretations and opinions differ what emerges is that this is an organizational yet profoundly human action set. And the results of this are far from uniform is indicated for by one example from police battalion 101 such of Browning's work. You know, arriving at Josephus from be one guy early one morning, July 12 1942 at a point when Barbara Rosa seemed to be going pretty well for Hitler. Major von Trapp, who was the battalion commander, said that if there was anyone who felt themselves unable to participate in the task for the day, they could step out of ranks. One person did the company commander begin to yell at him, major trap cut him off, at which point another 10 to 12 men stepped forward and they were told to report to major trap, turn their weapons and wait for other assignments. Now, if we take a look at this a lack of time for reflection combined with the pressure of conformity and then reinforced with copious amounts of alcohol. Nonetheless meant that the rest of the battalion proceeded with their grisly task. The perpetrators were not uniform in their backgrounds their beliefs or their actions. The actions here is in man king vishi France in our media resulted in a series of killings for which the word genocide was created to cover the enormity of the killing. And so we have another thing that I like to call the responsibility to educate. This ground has been well if I'm easily trod by battalions of scholars researchers and museum docents over the past century. As witnesses of these acts of the early to mid 20th century leave us. It's up to us as citizens historians and educators to attempt in some feeble manner to portray not only the actions of the disinfection company, the trigger police and the machete wheelers, but also those whom Hilberg group is victims and bystanders and to try to answer that trooper's question. What is the psychology of those caught up in the chaos of war with concomitant crimes against humanity and genocide is they tried to survive in a radically altered new life situation. These are individual actions that are often decided in mere moments whether smuggling food and coal, making a quick choice to hide someone your attic your basement or your barn, or deciding to court favor with the oppressors to include you know denouncing supporters in any places. These actions are all fiercely individual, and they are consequence laden. And there is this consequence laden indeed is any decision of human being will ever make. They are literally life and death, and not just for the targeted population. Young women who took up with the Nazis in France you after the war were humiliated in Poland the penalty for helping a Jew was death sentence for your entire family. My point is that the stakes varied, and they had to be made under duress the likes of which most of us can barely imagine. And this makes the psychology of Hilberg victims and bystanders harder to contemplate and perhaps grasp the glimpses of understanding through the maelstrom of malice that envelop Europe during World War Two, China during Japan's invasion and Armenia during the actions of the Turkish government in World War One. This provides people in Auschwitz and use of Garolinski's fighting Auschwitz provides some excellent primary source of references to the people who were in the most well known of that camp, but a camp of more than 2200 total camps in the the Nazi concentration camp system. They provide a great insight into the lives of the victims and what was a hybrid camp, both a work camp and an extermination camp. I can tell you that listening to my mother in law, who is herself the survivor of three different concentration camps. The survival instinct is strong. And it drives people subjected to this industrialized oppression to both heights of altruism and depths of despair and every other point along the spectrum of possible human reactions, emotions and actions. I can tell the full story, because while there are survivors of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau, Mothausen and Belgiets. The vast majority died there, leaving only remnants of their experiences didn't be told by others who shared their experiences, but had a different outcome. The psychology to endure, persevere and find some small triumph, even if only in seeing another sunrise is different than anything that we ourselves can know, rather the challenge for us the by standing participants of the present is as faithfully as possible to recount those experiences. And to seek lessons inside them without appropriating or exploiting them. We cannot and we should not pretend that we understand. The result of all this is what I have come to call historical empathy, in allowing for what we cannot know, and therefore suspending the easy judgments on those who in the main are no longer here to account their own personal points of remembrance. Another way to express the difficulty and recounting these experiences is to look at the reception of the escapees from Treblinka, who made it back to the Warsaw ghetto who in the main were not believed. We have the dubious luxury of knowing what the outcome was but to the crowded starving, lice written and confused inmates at the ghetto. They were confronting systemic eliminationist processes the world had never seen before. So we would do well to recall the warning of Peter Vidal Nuke. You were a leader in the Warsaw Judenrat and a survivor who left the umschlag parts a few days ago somehow survived and managed to walk 50 miles back to the ghetto, just to warn you, what would you say. The same goes for Chinese leaders outside man king, French and Jewish leaders in southern France, or Armenian leaders in Yerevan. There's no doubting the look of horror and the dirt and possibly the blood on the speaker, but how does one accept process, integrate and then make decisions about this new information. How difficult it is then for us in the present to attempt to recapture, comprehend and distill that information for a new generation of citizens, students, scholars and policymakers. Now with regards to bystanders a loose grouping at best, but one that works as well as can be expected in this chaos. It's a fluid group. Browning, Goldhagen, Gross, Hilberg and many others all have different perspectives on this. What we can say is that whether one drives the train from Drancy or watches Turkish troops marching east towards Armenia, or reads the New York Times in July, November of 1944. All of these people are in some manner bystanders. Depending on where one was at what time of the evolution of any of these four action zones of genocide, one's individual perceptions and decisions and what actions to take or not take will differ. Under the right set of colliding conditions bystanders who become active participants or choose to remain passive itself a decision. Each had to make life and death decisions. That not only might affect the fate of the directly persecuted but might also directly affect the fate of those who chose to get involved, whether in smuggling weapons, hiding people, passing messages or pretending not to notice panicked people scurrying to hide or escape. Everyone brings with them to that moment of faithful decision, a lifetime of experience, bias and prejudice. There are in fact many instances of righteous people taking action, whether in China, France, the Ottoman Empire or occupied Poland. There are also instances all too many regrettably of individuals or group of individuals who in some manner became health villain to the designs of malice, the SS, the Ottomans or the Imperial Japanese army in China. And one facet of this convoluted history is the recollections perceptions and exposed fact of justifications of those bystanders participants and potential he'll feel again after the war. No one wants to stand up and admit complicity and culpability after the winds of fortune shift, and once actions are exposed to the harsh reality of accountability, and all too often a brutal victor's justice. So today in France and Poland, these are emotional dynamite conversations to have just recently in a review of the book, the state against the Jews. One person interviewed in France about the fate of the French Jews and the French collaborationist regime opined well, they could have resisted. Well, yes in 1945 that probably seems to be a logical statement. It's probably a logical statement for someone who's looking at it today, but if you were to put yourself in the dark days in November 1942, probably not so much. So while Hilberg is useful. Gross reminds us that the bystanders appellation is more complex than a single bucket or a data point. The Goldhagen grosses work is based on a lot of research and in the case of gross it's actually a lifetime of work. Most of it say or the betrayers of Poland were certainly there. And their motives are as individual as each bystander who became a perpetrator of betrayal during the war and perhaps a victim of some form of justice after the war. But to buttress the arguments of gross and let me be clear, I do not entirely agree with all of them. The Kelsey program after the war only adds fuel to the fire to the degree of complicit Polish anti-Semitism, stoked by myriad historical, cultural and sociological factors. To be fair, in Soviet occupied post war Poland the Soviet state in fact arrest 15 perpetrators from the from Yadwabne. Okay, and perhaps the most important statement that comes out of all of grosses research is when he was talking to one of the witnesses. This is what I call bystanderness in this person said quote, everyone who was in the town on that day in July 10 1941, less than three weeks after Barbarossa commenced and in possession of a sense of sight, smell or hearing, either participated in or witnessed the tormented deaths of the Jews of Yadwabne. The involvement this witnessing took place in thousands of roundups killings deportations property expropriations, not only in Poland, but across France, China, Armenia and many many other places to numerous to list here. For example in Turkey the temporary law of deportation and confiscation brought another aspect of bystander ism that has to be considered. Whether it's vishi Ottoman or the ruling occupiers such as the Japanese in China or the Nazis in Poland issues laws that have enforcement mechanisms to back up those words with oppressive action it's another layer of complexity with which each witnessing bystander must deal. We all struggle with parsing the difference between cooperation and collaboration. Those decisions had to be made every day. Every bystander is not just a benign bump on a log, by their very presence they are participants faced with challenges and forced to make decisions as to what actions to take or to not take. This extends over time, perhaps symbolically culminating in the betrayal of Anne Frank's family in August of 1944. After the allies were already well assured on the way to liberating Paris and the rest of Europe. At the same time, even as the uprising and Warsaw raged an ally tanks approach for land from both East and West, the Luge ghettos 69,000 inhabitants as prisoners were put in trains sent to Auschwitz and killed. So against all this against all hope, what makes people fight back, either individually, or an organized groups and movements for some it's almost cultural in their DNA. While gross and others are correct to note that their worst muscle needs in Poland there were also literally thousands of documented bystander witnesses who became not willing helpers of the Nazis, but willing helpers complicit in some ways to the polls whether Jews are not on the run to survive. The same is true with all of our other examples. I can tell you after nearly a decade of living in Europe, most of it in Poland and married into a family of Polish immigrants. It's hard for me to think of a culture more predisposed to resistance to every possible form of authority, whether a huge Catholic masses, peasant uprising or 1001 acts in between on the spectrum of complete total refusal to yield to foreign oppressors. The French underground, the actions of missionaries and diplomats in Turkey, the actions of expatriates and others in China during World War Two all underscore aspect of the human condition to fight back, even if only in fatalism and desperation. So I'd like to conclude then with two examples which to this audience are probably well known but I think they bear repeating. One resistance movement Auschwitz and the Warsaw ghetto uprising show that the human spirit, even in the face of the most complex industrialized and bureaucratically structured mass execution of any targeted population and the recorded it may bend. It may break, but somehow itself organizes and fights back even in the midst of literally life and death furious debates about one's duty to one's God communism nationalism. Those words so often lightly bantered about or perhaps even mildly despised patriotism and valor. So this example comes to us from Milo Oceanastia Mila 18, the command bunker in one of the final fighting positions of the Jewish ghetto uprising in March of 1943. After vigorous, really vigorous debate about the implicit responsibilities of Amida and no small amount of altruism and outside assistance from the polls separated by decree and by walls. Small groups of imprisoned Polish use decided that a fighting death was their preferred actionable choice. There were no illusions about their personal outcome, and they decided to set an example for those who would survive by whatever means by putting paid to the lies that somehow the you'd not and other Jews were complicit in their own execution by the Nazi regime. 28 days or revolt ended by their example indoors forever. And in so doing that I only set an example for members of their faith, but for others as well, witnessed a year later when all of Warsaw is to be convulsed in another 63 days as the entire city attack the Nazis and fought to the bitter end. So this example comes from what you've got a linsky called fighting Auschwitz. There was a vibrant organized resistance inside of Auschwitz almost from the very beginning of its existence as a prison camp for Polish political prisoners, preached intellectuals and other potential leaders in April of 1940. Initially a camp just for the southern regions of occupied and so called general government Poland. Auschwitz quickly became a camp with prisoners from all over Poland and then Europe. In November of 1940, less than a year after the war started, if you told Pilecki purposely walked into a round up in Warsaw so that he would be sent Auschwitz, where he planned to organize a resistance movement inside the camp. Prisoners there executed internal spies. They cultivated typhus infected lice, and they placed them in the coats of Nazi guards in the camps, in effect targeted assassinations that spread fear amongst the guard population. The resistance inside Auschwitz by the prisoners in the Sunday Commando doomed to die resulted in the blowing up of gas chamber and crematorium number four on October 7 1944. The remains of which can still be seen today. So I'll leave you with this. Just because a war is over, it doesn't mean that state sponsored oppressive terror ends. When the law jumped ship and illegally emigrated to the United States, the Soviets and Poland locked up his half brother in the gulag for 10 years. When he returned with my wife, during Stainville in a martial law in the 1980s, his name was still on a list held by the Polish Soviet directed security police. That's courage. It's an unbending will a drive to not only do the right thing but to bear witness and to transfer that witness first to his daughter Willie. A decade later to his son Daniel. We who by the purpose of immigration or the fate of birth inherent that spirit of unceasing resistance, or to our fellow citizens into our children to carry it forward in a meaningful manner. The rules have set for centuries of partition and occupation. So long as that spirit prevails, despite all the risk that it entails. Yes, your pulse can use the yellow, which oh by the way, just happens to be a refrain and the Ukrainian national anthem as well. Thank you very much for the privilege of your time and your attention. Dr. see me that was very powerful. And I love the way that I know that the three panelists were stringing pearls with each other because those pearls or those themes common themes created the common thread and enhanced it so thank you. We will now turn to Q&A. And I believe we have one question I'll read it. And we'll see how the panelists want to respond. So the first question is of the people that were under brain study. So I guess this is to Dr. Perry. Do you think there is a difference, or there are differences of education level or IQ as compared to those with minimal education. Could it be possible for strength that part of the brain to alter responses during the study. Okay, I will. I'll try that one out. That's an interesting question to ask so as context for that particular study the subjects were students at Princeton University. So that probably wouldn't have been a good thing to study in that particular group, but I, my, my initial reaction is I don't think that would have anything that would have an effect that's just my opinion though, because different areas of the brain and different processes in the brain are related to intelligence than are related to the things we were talking about. Now there's there's some debate in the neuroscience community over whether it's a part of the brain, or whether it's brain waves or or how strong neuroplasticity like the flexibility of anyone of one person's given brain is whether which of those things or something else control or most influence IQ and intelligence, but I took best of my knowledge I haven't heard of the areas that we talked about in the brain today, being one of those things that's under debate and so I'm not sure there would be there would be much interaction again just my opinion, and I'm not a neuroscientist so I could be wrong there. But that would definitely be an interesting piece to study and I know there was another question on there, what did I forget, what was the second half of that. I'll read it. Second part of it was, could it be possible to strength. I think they need strengthen that part of the brain to alter responses during the study. Yeah, sure, that's a great question and so I don't, I don't know about those particular regions of the brain but one thing I do know and in other research that's being conducted in an unrelated area and the area of mindfulness and attention studies there are neuroscience studies that are showing that neuroplasticity that flexibility within the brain to to allow for you know growth or reshaping of different parts of the brain has been found when there have been certain levels of practice or learning of specific tasks and materials so in that case it's related to attention like paying attention. So I'm wondering and thinking maybe that would apply then to these other areas of the brain again I don't know for sure but that would be my thought is that if this neuroplasticity is you know is effective in the other lobes I'm thinking like the amygdala prefrontal cortex things like that for other areas like attention that it may also hold in this case too I just don't know for sure I'm sorry. No that's great thank you. So that was it in the Q&A written questions but I would like to go on and ask Dr. Thimi and Dr. Perez. I saw and heard a very strong link between the two of you regarding storytelling and memory and the importance of that and so can you share Dr. Thimi now that you have mentioned your in-laws mother-in-law and father-in-law how whatever you are comfortable sharing with us how are you continuing the memory in your lineage in the future generations. Well I guess the first thing I would say is it's really really really tricky so I've probably spent 50 days of my life in Auschwitz giving guided tours doing family research you know whatever you know and I went there once with a guy who was an actual Auschwitz survivor and he stood in front of a particular spot in Birkenau and said this is the building in which I was in prison. That may be true the records indicate that that was always in the women's camp. Okay that's not to say on one day that there wasn't a shift in policy or somebody was moved here and there but the records don't match his memory. Okay that doesn't mean he's wrong all right doesn't mean the records are wrong it means you know even as frequently precise as the Nazis were in trying to document their work and their crimes and everything associated with you know there can be gaps in that right. So the first thing is you have to be really really careful. The second thing is you have to try to be as true to the story as possible and give it as much validity as possible. And my mother-in-law who's now 90 and going blind you know has been trying for several years now to write down her memoirs. And some of the other family members have gone through it and said there's a great Polish word which basically means nonsense. And so now there's this big family debate going about well I don't seem to remember that way. And yet, you know you can't tell her that her memory is wrong just she saw it from a different perspective. So I think the best way to answer your question is is to give everyone whether it's your own family members or anybody else to give them every opportunity to to encounter. And so I'm waiting to immerse themselves, you know, and as much of this as they can take. I've taken my family to Auschwitz twice. You know, and I do the same thing with graduate students when I took then First Lady Clinton there told her the same thing. You know there is no proper response everybody has a very unique response when they encounter this. There's no right or wrong response. At one point, you know, on one of the times I took my family there you my two older children turned to me and said okay dad we're done. Okay, we're done you know let's walk out. That doesn't make them bad it doesn't make them good, but it makes them keenly aware of themselves as a human repository of that story, and then how do they want to carry that forward. And it's, it's not easy. And so, trying to instill a sense of respect, especially in our family it's really hard you know my wife is the daughter of Polish immigrants I'm half German. That leads to some interesting discussions. And you know the other half of me is Scottish so there's a temporary goes with all that. But yeah you basically you do the best you can, but you have to expose them to as much as they can take and then let them make their own decisions, and then try to help them grapple with what they think they understand how to carry that forward if that makes sense. Thank you. And Dr Perez what kind of feedback, have you gotten from both sides. It all depends and that's a great question I will say, just to piggyback off those pieces, the store the biggest pieces that the stories can't stop being told. And I think a lot of times there's this fear of, you know, how accurate or how you know these elements and so let's just not tell the story. That can't be an option. And I think to your point going into your question now. We're going to have to start figuring out new ways to tell this story. So, and that's where this this merging of peace tech and using it to continue this, this narrative into different spaces and places that historically we haven't kind of ventured into. So, the population that has predominantly experienced this has been on college students and K through 12. And it always seems to be the same piece. First, I debrief them before they go into the experience and a lot more so actually in how their body is going to respond in sitting still and listening believe it or not. And I'm like, you're going to feel uncomfortable for a second, you're going to, you're going to want to wonder what do I do with my hands like, are they supposed to be scrolling or typing or doing something here. And no, I want you to sit and listen. So the first story, they're kind of a little jumpy we debrief, and then they go back into another story. And by the second or third story is where you really begin to see the layering and where they begin to compare the story to story and say like I had no idea, you know, from this population here we even have one story of an American soldier who was captured. And they get to tell their story and so in that comparison, we're seeing that empathetic voice that compassion and that these are real people. These are the different avatars that we created. These are, it's not, you know, a show or movie this is something that happened in real time, and we're experiencing it in a different way. So the feedback that it's the feedback has been consistent in that they're this level of compassion and like that must have been horrible that was so sad. And in K through 12 specifically I always have that level of gratitude, because the teachers usually go back and have them do an assignment like a reflection, and to carry that on, even more so. So I think it's one of those pieces that I didn't I didn't anticipate the amount of connection that they would feel so I it's one of those elements that it needed to be done and I'm excited to see how else this can grow and evolve in each iteration. So it sounds like a success story, please continue with that project it's very important. Before we go to break, let me just ask the panelists do you have any questions for each other. Okay, I'm seeing no. I'm seeing head shaking no. So, we will take a 10 minute break now. And I want to thank you again to the three panelists you did a fantastic job. And I will see you after the break. 10 minutes. Thank you. Welcome back everyone. We will now carry on with panel to consist of Dr. Ben Kearnan and Dr. Ansar Haroon. We will begin with Dr. Ben Kearnan whenever you're ready. Well, thank you very much for the invitation to participate in this discussion. I would like to take the psychology of genocide as related very closely to the causation of genocide. And I just like to step back for a minute and talk, talk about two types of causes of genocide there are the long term causes, such as war, poverty, political instability, economic depression. There are two kinds of factors that occur in history which allow genocide perpetrators or genocidal groups to recruit supporters and come to power and conduct campaigns of genocide. These are what I call the long term causes of genocide, historic events that allow genocidal movements to recruit supporters and come to power. Then a second category is the intermediate, sorry, the immediate causes of genocide, very different from the long term causes. The immediate causes of genocide are the actual decisions made by leaders of genocidal movements to conduct campaigns of genocide, having come to power or while they are in the process of striving for power. They make decisions to carry out genocidal policies. Now that's a very different kind of causation than the long term causes that have enabled them to recruit supporters and come to power. So I want to focus on these immediate causes of genocide, what I call the mindset of genocide perpetrators. And I want to emphasize that I'm dealing with a different level of perpetratorship than those people discussed by Leah and Perry in her important paper about the more ground level participants in genocide. Here I'm talking about the leaders of genocidal movements who make the decisions to implement policies that they have come up with to get their supporters to follow their orders and carry out genocidal policies. What I want to look into are the mindsets of these genocide perpetrators at the top level of movements and what motivates them to conduct these policies, to give their orders to carry out genocidal policies. Now there are a number of components of this genocidal mindset in my view. And when these components become clear, either in meetings or minutes of meetings or in speeches or in diaries of these genocide movement leaders, they are, if you like, signs of the possibility of future genocide taking place. So they are, in fact, useful for predicting and even present a preventing genocide. And these are the components that I believe those kinds of motivating factors that drive leading genocide perpetrators to give orders to their followers to conduct genocide. I'll just outline them briefly and then I'll go through them one by one, giving examples from a number of different cases. I note that Thimi and his interesting paper gave examples from China, France, Poland and Armenia. I'm going to give examples from the Roman destruction of Carthage, the Euro-American settler genocide of the Pequots here in Connecticut, where I'm speaking from the Russian, imperial Russian 19th century extermination of the Circassians in the mid 19th century, and then the Nazi case and the Cambodian case. The first part of the genocidal mindset that I want to discuss is racism or religious prejudice or targeting, not necessarily the same as prejudice, and I'll explain why in a minute. And to take an example that's well documented from the ancient Roman destruction of Carthage, I want to quote you from a speech made by Cato the Elder when he would regularly stand up in the Roman Senate and argue Carthage must be destroyed, the lender is Carthage. But what was his motivation here in urging that policy on the Roman Senate and polity? He would say when one of his last Senate speeches, who are the ones who have often violated the treaty? Who are the ones who have waged war most cruelly? Who are the ones who have ravaged Italy? The Carthaginians. Who are the ones who demand forgiveness? The Carthaginians. He focused constantly on emphasizing the Carthaginians, not necessarily as an inferior race, but as an enemy, targeting the Carthaginians at large. A similar policy was used by European, Euro-American settlers in the 17th century in Connecticut when they targeted the Pequots, the Pequot Indians during the Pequot War. The policy was adopted briefly, but definitely that no more shall any Pequots use that name, the Pequot race, the Pequot people shall no longer exist. And this was a policy that was not long after overturned, but in the meantime, huge numbers of large proportion of the Pequot Indian population was exterminated. In the case of the Imperial Russian mid-19th century extermination of the Circassians, well described in a recent issue of Yad Vashem's studies by Yehuda Bauer, he quotes two Russian generals putting their policy. One of them said, we need the Circassians' land, but have no need for the Circassians. And the other one said, annihilating the Circassians is a name in itself. So you can see the targeting of an ethnic group very clearly there. I don't think we need to go into much detail to describe the Nazi regime and Hitler's targeting of the Jews, the Romani or Gypsies in the way that the Nazi regime carried out the Holocaust and the genocide of Romani people in Europe and against other groups as well. But it's very clear that racial or religious prejudice and targeting was definitely involved there as well. Now, in the case of Cambodia, the Pol Pot regime had a very similar policy. If you just bear with me for a minute, I want to quote from the radio of the Phnom Penh regime of Pol Pot, which broadcast in May 1978, each one of us must kill 30 Vietnamese. So far, we have succeeded. Using these figures, one Cambodian soldier is equal to 30 Vietnamese soldiers. We should have two million troops for 60 million Vietnamese. At that time, the population of Vietnam was about 55 million. However, two million troops would be more than enough to fight the Vietnamese because Vietnam has only 50 million inhabitants. So this was broadcast on the radio. It went on. We do not need eight million people. The population of Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge took over. We needed only two million troops to crush the 50 million Vietnamese and we still would have six million people left. Not only is this radio broadcast show an intent to crush or kill all 50 million Vietnamese, but to sacrifice two million Cambodians in the effort to do that. There are other details of the genocidal programs of the Pol Pot regime against ethnic Vietnamese. One who were in Cambodia at the time, the minority population of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia who wiped out in 1977 and 78, almost to the last. A couple of dozen ethnic Vietnamese may have survived, maybe fewer. It was considered necessary by the Khmer Rouge to kill even the children and babies because they would quote, grow up Vietnamese. And so this was a genocide that was found to have occurred. And the deputy to Pol Pot, Nguyen Sia and the head of state of the Pol Pot regime, Cieu Sinh Phong were both convicted of the genocide against the ethnic Vietnamese and both lost their appeals in the extraordinary chambers in the course of Cambodia, the UN sponsored tribunal recently. And so the conviction stand and another genocide conducted by the Pol Pot regime against the charm Muslim minority in Cambodia, Nguyen Sia was found guilty and convicted of that. So the ethnic prejudice or racist prejudice and targeting ethnic groups was an integral part of the Khmer Rouge rule. Not only that, but that racism was extended, if you like, or introverted against the Khmer majority population to which the leaders of the Khmer Rouge themselves belong. And they targeted the population of the eastern zone of Cambodia who were nearly all of Khmer ethnicity. And they called them Khmer bodies with Vietnamese minds, Khluen Khmer, Khuoc Ba Luan, being Vietnamese. They were accused of being contaminated by the Vietnamese supposed Vietnamese way of thinking so that racism became interpolated into the Cambodian ethnic group itself. So it's very clear that in all five of these cases I mentioned, and many others which I discuss in my book Blood and Soul, a World History of Genocide that racism or religious prejudice or targeting of ethnic groups is an integral part of genocide in nearly every case. Second is plans for territorial expansionism. Obviously in the case of the Roman destruction of Carthage, the conquest of Carthage was an imperial Roman expansionist military exercise, which was successful in 146 BC. It was urged upon the Senate by Cato, and although there were some opponents of the Scipio-Nasica in particular would always get up and say the opposite to Cato, but eventually the Roman Senate dispatched military mission which destroyed Carthage. The same territorial expansion was evident in the destruction of the Pequots in Connecticut, and the land of the Pequots was seized and was taken for white settler colonialism. In the case of Imperial Russia and the conquest of the Circassians land, the statement I read before by the Russian general, we need the Circassians land, but not the Circassians at all. It's very clear that this is about a territorial expansion. I don't think again I need to explain why we can describe Hitler as an expansionist regime, Hitler's regime as an expansionist regime. He obviously was one of the major cases of that in the 20th century, if not in history. Less well known is the fact that the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia was also an aggressive territorial military power, which not only attacked Vietnam across the border, but also attacked Thailand and even Laos. All three of Cambodia's neighbors came under military attack by the Pol Pot regime's army. And although the regime did claim territory in Thailand that historically, as long ago as the 16th century, had been part of the Angkorian Empire, the Khmer Empire, and still included a large Khmer speaking minority within the borders of Thailand, the Khmer Rouge decided I think probably under Chinese pressure to diminish their military aggression against Thailand and concentrate on attacking Vietnam, refusing in 1976, again in 77, and again in 78 to negotiate with the Vietnamese and continuing their attacks. And again, these were based on a claim to the Mekong Delta, a large part of South Vietnam, which many Cambodians call Lower Cambodia or Khmer Chia Crown. And many Khmer Rouge leaders in public and in private made the assertion that Khmer Chia Crown, the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, belonged to Cambodia, and these attacks were in part an assertion of that alleged right that Cambodia had. So again, we're talking about a plan for territorial expansion which fits all the cases of genocide that I've discussed. So we've talked about racism or religious predators, territorial expansionism. The third factor that I want to mention is what I call a cult of antiquity that is looking back at the past and glorifying the ancient past of an ethnic group. And seeing it as a model, if not to be copied exactly, perhaps to be surpassed, but definitely to be glorified. And this, again, does seem to be present in these cases that I'm discussing today. Cato himself talked about wrote history and talked about Roman history. He proudly recounted his claim that his own forebears were descended from hardy ancient Spartans. He had a respect for ancient Roman history before his own time. The settlers who took up arms against the Pequots in 17th century Connecticut actually used the precedent from the Bible of the destruction of Amalek as the justification for their destruction of the Pequots, just as the ancient biblical city of Amalek had been destroyed. So the Pequots must be destroyed as well. So again, you're looking at the justification of a glorious past as an excuse or a verification of genocide. I think in the case of the Circassians, the imperial Russian ideology, which has been in some ways reinfigurated by Vladimir Putin and his attacks on Ukraine, looking back to the imperial Russian past. I think that's clear what we are seeing now to some extent. And I think that existed in the case of the Circassians as well, looking back to the Kiev Rus and the long history of the Russian people. Hitler too looked back at the ancient Germans bravery in their confronting the Roman legions, the hero Arminius or Hermann, as he came to be known in German, and his destruction of ancient Roman legions was a favorite theme of Hitler. And in the case of Cambodia, the Pol Pot regime, as I mentioned, they glorified Angkor Wat as they would say things like if our people can build Angkor, we can do anything. And they did think that they could surpass that democratic compagny as they call their state would be greater than Angkor, but it was certainly a model that they that they looked up to a time of antiquity that needed to be restored. So this cult of antiquity is the third factor that I see as a motivating factor for genocide perpetrators in their mindset. And also in the mindset is the fourth factor I want to mention, which is an agrarian ideology. And I want to make the point that this is, I'm talking about mindsets. I'm not talking about practice here. I'm talking about what drives the psychology of genocide perpetrators, the agrarian ideology, the belief, not necessarily the practice that farming and agriculture are a superior way of life. Not necessarily that they practice it themselves, but the ideology of it is, is, is what drives a lot of them. So it's, it's, it's very clear from Cato in his, in his writings that he talked about the farmer as the best citizen of Rome. He talked about merchants as murderers. He said, if you want me to praise money lenders, I might as well talk about murder, murderers. He was very dismissive of urban life in his writings, even though he participated in it. I'm talking about the ideology here. He talked about agricultural life as the purest form of human existence. Again, the Pequots were, even though they did cultivate corn, they were also hunters and gatherers. And they were looked down upon by the American settlers in, in Connecticut in the 17th century is they weren't using the land as, as effectively as real farmers did, and they didn't have private property and ownership of the land and so on. I think with the Circassians, we've got the imperial Russian view that we need their land. We want to settle on it and so on. This is, this agrarian ideology is there as well. In Hitler's regime and the Nazi regime, it's, it's quite clear that urban areas were, in Hitler's own writings, urban areas were considered corrupt and centers of vice and that the German peasant was, was seen ideologically as the, the center of German goodness and superiority. And, and again, in the case of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, as we know, they immediately evacuated the cities of Cambodia into the countryside and put everybody to farm labor, unpaid, of course, not, not peasant labor, but unpaid forced labor in the countryside. They claim to be not, although they claim to be communist and were led by Pol Pot as Secretary General of the Communist Party of Cambodia, they did say things like, there is some kind of worker class, but we haven't focused on it yet, quote unquote. They, they talked mostly about the peasantry, although they put them to work as unpaid laborers and abolished peasant family life, peasant religion, Buddhism and peasant land ownership in practice. But ideologically, they considered themselves to be implementing a regime that would benefit the peasants and not the city people, and they didn't trust the city population whom they forcibly evacuated the countryside into conditions of slave labor. So I think all of these four features, racism or religious prejudice and targeting plans for territorial expansion, the cult of antiquity and the agrarian ideology, a strong features in nearly every case. Now there are exceptions which I think can still overlap with some of the more classic cases where all of these cases, all of these features fit. One exception is Stalinist, which can be seen as presiding over genocide, particularly in the Ukraine, but other cases as well. The Stalinist regime was definitely not an agrarianist ideological regime. It was very pro-urban. It gathered resources from the countryside by force in order to increase industrial life in the cities. It was, it was definitely not what you would call an agrarianist ideology or regime. And in fact, a lot more, the major case of genocide of the Ukrainian people under Stalin was definitely anti-peasant. It was taking resources away from the Ukrainian rural population, even at the cost of millions of dying of starvation, three to six million, I believe the figures are there in the 1930s. And it is quite clear that this was mostly used to industrialise the cities, these resources for which so many Ukrainian farmers don't live there. So Stalinism cannot be seen as fitting this pattern, I think, the same with the cult of antiquity. It's not really there in Stalinism either. On the other hand, other Stalinist regimes descended from perhaps from the Soviet Union or related to it or modelling themselves on it, at least claiming to get closer to the pattern that I've described. For instance Maoism, the Chinese regime of Mao with its great proletarian cultural revolution in the 1960s was definitely not as pro-urban and anti-rural as the Stalinist regime under Joseph Stalin himself had been in the Soviet Union. It saw the dispatch of hundreds of thousands of millions of people into the countryside, at least ideologically it was pro-rural, learn from the peasantry was one of the slogans. And so there's a Stalinist regime here under Mao, which was drifting away from and at the cost of millions of deaths. And if we take to a further remote, further remove, regime partly descended from Maoism, that is the Polkot regime in Cambodia, which was very close to China under Mao and after his death. As I've seen, as I've shown, they evacuated the cities altogether. They went much further than Mao's Cultural Revolution, to which it's not clear that they were loyal at all ideologically, but they went much further evacuating the cities and taking a very anti-urban, what might be called a very anti-Stalinist position while retaining features of Stalinism in other cases. So even the exceptions like Stalinism can overlap in different cases with the features that I've outlined, the four features of the mindset of perpetrators of genocide. And I want to again just conclude with emphasizing that this is about the mindset. This is not about the practice of genocide. Hitler wasn't a peasant, but he did see ideologically. In some sense that the German peasant was perhaps a more reliable German than the intellectuals or the city people. And to just give two examples of that, in the case of Darfur, the people who committed most of the killings of the victim groups in Darfur were not farmers. They were pastoralists on horses and camels. The ideology was there, but not the practice in the case of Darfur. But nevertheless, I think that Darfur was a case of genocide that has much in common with the other cases that I've mentioned already. What mattered was the psychology. What mattered was the mindset of the perpetrators. And that's quite important in the immediate causes of genocide, the decision making of the leaders of the regimes and movements that set in motion the genocide. Despite their having come to power through being able to recruit with the help of long term disaster structural forces such as war, poverty, economic instability and political crisis. I'll leave it there. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you, Dr. Kiernan, very profound and thought provoking. Next, we have Dr. Ansar Harun. And I just want to preface his talk by mentioning to the audience that Dr. Harun is a retired forensic psychiatrist. And his talk is going to have some intricate details about Freudian theories and philosophies regarding the psychology of genocide. And I don't want anyone to feel offended by some of the terminology. So please don't take this as a derogatory presentation. It is the language of Freud and it's the, it's the semantics that's used in psychiatry to explain and so take it as an educational and informational presentation. Over to you, Dr. Harun. Are you there, Dr. Harun? He's in San Diego. There is a time difference. He was here. Hold on. Let me see if I can prompt him to get on. Okay. While we're looking for him, let me ask Dr. Kiernan a quick question and he can respond. You mentioned Putin and his mindset. What are some of the more, more kind of focused characteristics of what he is doing, Putin is doing in Ukraine that are indicators for us? Because I was even asked early on this year, is this a genocide or not what he's doing in Ukraine? And that changed from the beginning of the campaign to clearly what I see as genocidal intention on the part of Putin now. So do you want to address some of that and give us an idea of that mindset? Well, I'm not an expert on the latest findings of the mass graves and the targeting of certain groups. Obviously there have been crimes such as aggression and war crimes committed by the Russian forces in Ukraine. And I would also say it's likely that crimes against humanity of which one is extermination. That is a crime against humanity, which involves the targeting of political and social groups as well as ethnic, national, racial or religious groups. But it doesn't require the proof of the intent on the part of the perpetrator to destroy the group as such, which is very difficult to prove and it is required to prove genocide. But in the case of extermination as a crime against humanity, it's not required to prove extermination. And I think the case that the Russian troops and Putin's forces and maybe Putin himself are responsible for the commission of crimes against humanity, including genocide. I'm not ruling out that genocide has also happened. It's much more difficult to prove, but the evidence that it might have happened is supported by some of the annihilatory rhetoric that comes from Moscow from the regime itself and has for some time. And I think that rhetoric includes that the claim that Ukraine is not a separate country. It doesn't have a right to exist in that this idea goes back to Imperial Russia that I mentioned in the case of the Circassians in the mid 19th century under Imperial Russia and the genocide that was committed then. The idea that the Ukrainians and the Russians are really part of similar, if not the same state, the same political culture. And Ukraine doesn't have, according to this claim, that can be derived, that derives from Imperial Russian claims, that Ukraine doesn't have the right to be its own country and culture and language and polity. And I think that could be buttressing the force that is being used illegally, contrary to international law, and increasing the severity of the war crimes and crimes against humanity and possible genocide that has been occurring in Ukraine. Thank you, Dr. Kiranen. I'm sure we can talk even more about that during Q&A. We do have Dr. Ansar Harun ready to go. So whenever you're ready, the floor is yours. Okay, how do I get my slides? Hey, Art. Do you want me to do them at my end? Sure, yes, because I didn't realize I thought you would be, you know how to do it, but I don't. Okay, no problem. Charla, I need to share a screen. So yeah, here we go. Do you all see it? Fantastic. Okay, good. And Dr. Harun, just tell me when you want me to advance the slide. Just say next slide. Okay. Sure. The first slide is, sure, can you just position the slide a little bit? So, I think that's great. Actually, I cannot change the positioning. Oh, okay. So that looks pretty good. Let's go to the next slide then. Okay, so that's actually, we can't see much of the material. Is there a way to... Yeah, I think, let me try to walk you on how to share your slides. Okay. Because that'll be easier. So on the bottom of your screen, do you see a green button that says share screen? Yes, I do. Shall I click? Yes, click on that. I did. I've clicked on that. Do you see your slides? I can see... Or your desktop? Yes, I can see various... I can see screen, whiteboard, iPhone, launch meeting, what's new... Okay, so Dr. Harun, on the bottom right of that window, it should say share. So click on share. Shall I click on that? Yes. Oh, now I've got a zoom sign in. Okay, now where are your slides? You need to put your slides up. Oh, so how do I... You need to open your file. Open my files. For the slides. Hang on. I'm not sure how to... Bear with us, everyone. Sorry, everyone. That's okay. You know what? I will... Okay, come out of this, go to the top and say stop sharing slides. The green... Okay. Is that... No, no, that's not it. Go all the way to the top of your screen where there's a green area. It says new share. Does that mean... Oh, stop share? Yeah, stop share. Stop share. And what I'll do is I'll share your slides at my end and then I'll talk through what's on the screen, okay? Sure. So this is the first slide. It says the psychology of hate. Dr. Ansar Haroon, MD, retired. And I'm going to go to the next slide. It says, why study hate? Reasons from... Yeah, reasons from literature. The rest is fine. Okay, go ahead. So hello audience and thank you so much for inviting me. So I'm actually a forensic psychiatrist. I think I'm probably the only forensic psychiatrist and maybe the only psychiatrist on the panel. So I share your interest in hate and genocide. And we can of course study this from different angles. So I'm going to focus specifically on my own expertise, which is as a psychiatrist. Within psychiatry, I'm a forensic psychiatrist, which means that I've been dealing with hate or at least hateful behavior for most of my life. So I work in the courthouse and my job was every day to evaluate perpetrators of extreme misconduct, usually violent misconduct. So I'm going to analyze that and explain that to the judge of the jury. And as you can imagine, much of violent misconduct involves or is related somehow, or is only correlation or in some way, the hate. And to my great surprise, hate is a, well, I don't know if it's a feeling or cognition, very little studied in psychiatry. I've been in psychology, especially by social psychologists, political psychologists. But to my great surprise, it's not really part of a study of most psychiatrists. I'm surprised because you know to the question why study hate. I enjoy literature and the very first literary canon in the Western imagination is that of Homer, the Iliad and that starts with a discussion of hate. If you're interested in it, I teach ethics and you know we can debate whether hate is good or bad. The conventional view is probably that hate is bad, but we can make a case that some hate, righteous hate, right to sound is actually good. In my field of psychiatry hate can lead to extreme misconduct. And once I was an epidemiologist, and there may or may not be an epidemiology of hate, but you could argue there's an epidemiology of the consequences of hate. Now shootings for example are probably related, probably causally to hate. So there are many, many reasons to study hate, and I'm delighted to be in an audience of people like you, I'm sure know more about hate than I do. Next slide please. What are the definitions of hate. I can read, you know, if we don't get it right. Okay. So first of all, you know the slide has to do. Oh thank you. It's definitions of hate. And you'd think that hate whatever it is, it's probably an emotion, surely psychiatric taxonomies or disease like DSM or ICD will have something to do with hate. And actually they don't. DSM has discussions of other emotions, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, stress disorders, you know so many disorders hate is lacking so there is no strict medical definition of hate. I talked about hate in legal settings like the courthouse. There is no legal definition of hate. There is a legal definition of hate crime, but not of hate. But there are folksy definitions of hate from folk psychology, which we all know about. So I put it to you, the options include is hate and attitude. Is that an action or a behavior. Is that an emotion. So, probably most people think that hate is an emotion, feeling state. But the alternative is that it's not an emotion, it's a cognition. So if it is primarily felt experience that would argue for an emotion. But if it's actually thought through. I think I reflect what I want to hate, then that suggests it's a cognition. Whatever it is, let's assume that it is an emotion. It is unique amongst the emotions in that it is the only emotion that has an object. Psychiatrist ideal with many emotional disorders ideal people are depressed or anxious or stress, and so on. None of those have an object. There's no object to the depression. There is no object to the anxiety. There is no object to the stress. But if I diagnose hate is an object. That is hated. The second, though the next thing to discuss is the voluntariness of hate. How we move from psychiatry psychology to perhaps philosophy is hate and no fault condition. Or is it a fault condition. If I'm a hater. Did I just end up this way. I mean is this how I am nature and nature genes environment, however I ended up. Or did I create that condition in myself. Philosophy is until about five years ago divided many, many such construct constructs into voluntary or involuntary. And now the new one would be non voluntary. So I would love to discuss that as one of my pet areas of inquiry, but I don't have time, but I just want to bring to your attention something for us all to discuss at a future conference is hate voluntary involuntary or non voluntary. And I wanted to come in the definition of hate, because we don't have a definition of hate. One reason we don't is that can't agree on a definition. And I put it to you that there are many, many constructs, either emotions or cognitions that are actually imposters of hate. It's like the hate, and actually they're not hate. There's something resembling hate. So if I'm a psychiatrist or I want to treat depression. I have to know the definition of depression. I have to separate it from things that resemble depression, like anxiety. And of course, many of my patients have a mixed picture to maybe depressed and anxious, but a good psychiatrist separate the two. Not a good psychiatrist if I confuse depression and anxiety, because they have a different neurobiology they have different symptoms and science, and they actually have different treatments. So again, if I'm a psychiatrist studying hate, I should study hate per se, and not the imposters of hate. Next slide please. Thanks. So, you probably can't see all the slide but at the top left, the title is who or what do we hate. If I'm trying to be scientific, as opposed to folksy, I decided to do an epidemiological epidemiological survey. I went to my family. And first of all, I asked my kids, who or what you hate. So this is an end of three. And the answer is spinach. They hate spinach. And then I went to my wife. I only have one wife so that's an end of one. And the answer is she hates spiders. There are two objects of hate, spinach or spiders, which makes the question, is that hate? I mean, is that what we mean when we talk about hate, spinach, spiders. So one of the elements of hate involves dislike. So my children do actually dislike spinach, and my wife actually does dislike spiders. The second element involves some wish to harm. And my children do not want to harm spinach. And my wife actually doesn't want me to harm the spider. In fact, she always tells me to try and, you know, get rid of the spider without killing it, which causes me great pain because I have to then stoop and so on. Let's move from a badly designed experiment to let me review the literature. So I'm going to put out to you some objects of hate throughout human history. And I think you can't see them but they are on the slide. So I'm going to give you four examples of objects of hate. I should add that I'm going to use language that is insulting, derogatory, unkind, and vulgar. And on the slide, I have put all these things in quotations. So these are not kind words I'm going to use, but deliberately provocative insulting terms. So the millions of objects of hate in human history. Let me give you four. Let me propose to you, that surely we all hate the fatso. FATSO, the fatso. We all hate the pervert. We all hate the snob, the snooty snob. And we all hate the traitor. And at different times, all four of these have been bullied up. Thank you so much. So now you can see those four terms. So if you actually look at human history, people have actually hated fatso's perverts, snobs and traitors. And what I'm going to do to you is use my background in psychiatry. And I'm going to actually use a Freudian model. I should warn you I'm actually not a Freudian. I'm a forensic psychiatrist. So for the front of it, I'm of the many, many models of hate that we can use. I thought I'd use the Freudian model, or at least the model from Freudian development. Next slide please. So of course I have to share with you that there are many, many ways to think of human development. On the left of the slide, you have a common Indian way. The Sanskrit word is Purushastra. And the Sanskrit terms are, as you can see on the left, that's just to amuse you, I won't discuss those. Now, you're from the Indian literature. So let's move to the right of the slide. And if you are, as I suspect you are mostly more familiar with Western developmental theory. You've probably all heard of Sigmund Freud. And according to Sigmund Freud, who started psychoanalysis, there are four stages of human development. And all of us go through these four stages. You're an old phallic and illiterate. And good mental health is if you successfully negotiate all four of these, and the reverse bad mental health can be if you do not successfully negotiate any one of these stages. Next slide please. So, let's take each of these stages in turn. So according to Freud, the oral stage of human development has to do as the name implies, with oral gratifications. So, chronologically, we start off as infants or babies, we experience the world, the world for our mouth. Orally, that is the first pleasure we experience is the mother's breast. It's nice and pleasant because of course it's soft, cuddly, warm, and it gives us the pleasure of milk. And, you know, we want it all the time. Most of the time, of course, most human beings do get that oral pleasure. But of course, as we grow older, there are times when we're denied that oral gratification. You know, mother may be sleeping, mother may be tired, or whatever. And of course, we get angry, we get irritated, we have a temper tantrum, and normal healthy human development is successfully negotiating that. So, if we successfully negotiate the oral phase, we continue to enjoy the oral pleasures. Anything to do with your mouth or pleasures, but, you know, we negotiate when we don't get them. And in my psychiatric practice, when I see the alcoholic who is fixated on the bottom of wine, the bottom of beer, you know, if I was an analyst, I would say, oh, here we have someone stuck on the oral phase. And, you know, the treatment will revolve around that. But there are oral vices, oral crimes, if you like. Of course, I'm exaggerating them. Of course, Freudian thinking can be mocked. So in this talk, a little bit I'm just exaggerating, you know, the mockery of a Freudian position. So oral vices are when you misuse your oral pleasures. In other words, dirty foods, dirty sex. So what are dirty foods? Well, actually we live in a fairly enlightened society in the United States and probably don't have dirty foods. Well, if I say to my American friends, do you eat dog? They would probably say no, yuck. That's yucky, that's dirty. But there are, I'm sure if you ask an anthropologist, ask the world what you do eat dog. So in each culture, some foods are okay to eat, clean, okay, and some are not. So some foods are good, and some are bad or dirty. So in some Muslim countries, the ham sandwich is considered dirty. And if you eat it, yuck, eating something dirty, that's like an oral vice. So in India, you can have other, you can eat the wrong foods. So in India now, the Hindu right is associated with the lynchings of people, mostly Muslims who eat beef. So of course, beef is a cow, the cow is a sacred animal in India. There is one viewpoint peculiar to the Hindu right that anybody who kills a cow or eats beef is deserving of punishment. So eating the wrong food is translated or framed as killing a god. And that is a very serious crime worthy of a very serious punishment. And people who break that taboo have been lynched. So they are the victims of hate for either eating the wrong food or whatever. So let's move on to anal vices. So anal vices move from the oral gratification to fixation on dirt. So in foreign development, anal stages has to do with toilet training. Of course, all human beings are toilet trained. I don't think I've ever met an adult who didn't complete toilet training that according to foreign theory, there are people who get stuck at that stage. Being toilet trained, that often results in a conflict. You know, the parent says, hey, sit down, you know, poo. And the child says, you can't make me poo. That leads to stubbornness and power struggles and so on. So the anal vices have to do with dirt and struggles. When it comes to hate, we come more to the emphasis on dirt. And I think that in many Muslim countries, like in many Muslim countries, ham or pork products are considered dirty or dirty sex. So of course, there's been an evolution in our thinking of what sex is dirty or not. And I have to emphasize that, you know, I'm an American psychiatrist and I'm familiar with this evolution. I was born in America for my psychiatric training. At that point, homosexuality was a mental disorder. It was considered a disease. The APA didn't say it was dirty, but there's probably something dirty about it, certainly disease, you know, disease just dirt. And then in 1980, it was removed from the DSM. So now homosexuality, according to DSM is not a mental disorder. It's just in the imagination of some people. There's something dirty about all things anal. And anal sodomy invites the judgment that it is dirty, perverted, and those who practice it are victims of, you know, deserving of hate. So the phallic stage in foreign development, phallus, of course, is a, I guess a polite word for the cock or cock is a polite word for the phallus. So the phallic vices would be cocky, arrogant, snooty, elitist and so on. And of course, we all like to hate people who are cocky. And in the last election, you know, social scientists have of course discussed, you know, Trump won that particular election, and one theory has to do with the social science analysis that some Trump supporters believe that Haley Clinton's use of the word deplorable. I think that was the term she used. You know, that meant that she was cocky, arrogant, elitist, and they were going to punish her because you know they weren't part of that elitist group. So you punish someone or you hate someone, or whatever, for being cocky, arrogant. So that's, that's part of a phallus one. And again, continuing in this model, let's come to the Edipus vices. So Edipus, as you know, from Greek mythology, Edipus was a great hero who was destined to kill his father and marry his mother. In other words, he had no sexual boundaries. So if you go to India today, one group that is possibly the victimized or at least there's a conflict between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority. Of course, each side abuses the other, I'm sure they say very unkind things about the other. I'm sure there are many many unkind things that Muslims say about Hindus. But for the purpose of this particular Edipus vices, I will illustrate it with one particular insult that the Hindu right labels against the Muslim minority. This is probably unknown to many Western audiences that the Hindu right accuses the Muslims of marrying their cousins. And that is statistically epidemiologically true. It is medically true, epidemiologically true, that it is more likely that a Muslim will marry a cousin than a Hindu. I think it is not at least in California, I think it is not against the law to marry your cousin, but I think it's not custom to marry your cousin. But in India, generally speaking, Hindus don't bury their cousins, generally speaking, many Muslims do. So Hindus abuse the Muslims with this particular assault, you marry your cousins. And from that it goes to, you have no sexual boundaries, you'll sleep with anyone. Oh my God, you're so dirty, it goes from you to marry your cousins, to my God, you'll even sleep with your mother, which invites the insult again, but my turn I'm just using the insult to share with you. Motherfucker, which of course is a horrible, nasty, ugly term of abuse too. This gets to be very relevant for our discussion. You can sleep with your mother, oh my God, if you're a motherfucker, you can sleep with the enemy. You can sleep with the enemy literally, you can sleep with the enemy metaphorically, which means you're a traitor, you're a traitor, then you're definitely worthy of being hated, feared, and being exterminated. So what I've done with you is I've given you one model, a thousand models for starting hate, and of the thousand I've chosen, you know, my field of psychiatry and within psychiatry there's a thousand models, but I just chose one. I thought it would be of interest to you the psychoanalytic model. And so you can see the psychoanalytic for new stages of development, how hate can develop. So what I've shown you now is that you can hate, you have these uniform vices, the oral vices, the anal vices and so on, you have all types of vices, and you go to hate. How does that lead then to, I mean, okay, hating is one thing, how does that lead to genocide then. And now I'll be repeating myself, I heard some of the very lovely talks in the morning, and I'm just going to repeat but I'll just use my own language to repeat some of what I heard this morning. But pretty much it's the same thing. I'll just give you a slightly different version of it. So, as a psychiatrist, I will tell you that you're my patient, you know you're just a normal, high functioning human being. You experience pain, of course you do. My life is full of pain, suffering, stress. Nobody is stress free. So it's not a stress, I'll use the word psychic pain. So you have psychic pain. Naturally, you want to reduce the pain and to increase the opposite pressure, you want to have a life of joy, pressure and so on. I'm going to tell you how that happens. One of the reasons that you experience pain is that when you look at yourself, you see your imperfections. You see you have warts, ugliness, fantasies, ugly fantasies. I'm a psychiatrist so I've heard them all. Everybody has dark, dirty fantasies. I don't know if you want to sleep with or you want to sleep with. Oh my God, you're all perverse, ugly people who want to get drunk and do horrible nasty things that you'll never admit to. That is in your unconscious. You're probably not even consciously aware of it. Of course I'm so clever that if you come to my clinic and come on my couch, I will drag it out of you. But until then, it's in your unconscious. And by definition, if it's in your unconscious, you're not aware of it. So definition of conscious is that of what you're aware. So you're unconscious of it. But because it's in your unconscious, I'm a Freudian, I would say it's bothering you sniggling at you. And there are various things you can do. These problems, these wounds, these warts can actually express themselves in some symptom. You might become a neurotic or you might fail the test to have a bad marriage or whatever it is that means you. And one other way is that you can remove the uglyness in you. And it's called defense is you know you defend from that pain by, and there's 100 defenses that you use one particular defense of externalization. You create the other. You are nice, clean, pure, wonderful. But you need an ugly model, the other, who is the opposite. You are clean and he's dirty. The opposite of that. So first you create the other. So in every society, they create the other. The Jew creates the Gentile, the Muslim creates the coffee or the, you know, the, we're Americans so we have citizens, we have aliens. I mean, even aliens is having some respectable immigration terms just means you, you're on a US citizen. That is how to start a derogatory term. I mean, if I use the word alien to my kids, they think aliens mean people who don't have no citizenship but will come from out of space. They're weirdos. They're odd. They're the other. So first of all, you create the other. That's the first thing. And the second thing you do is now you have the other. All the vices in you which we discussed. You throw them on the other. So now the other has is not only other is the ugly other. How convenient. Now that you have an ugly other, it is suddenly easy. How do you feel about the other? Every time my kids watch a cartoon, there is the villain of the cartoon. He's always ugly, deformed. He doesn't look like us. I know in the video I look short dark and ugly but I'm actually poor and blonde and blue-eyed everybody wants to look handsome. But in the movies and our imagination we are handsome. And the other has to be portrayed as ugly and worthy of hate. So you must create psychologically the other. So it is easy to hate the other. So now we have someone who is easy to hate. Except that, oh my God, there's something stopping us from hating. So whatever religion you belong to. Damn it. There's probably something in your scripture that says don't hate. So because we're living in the United States, what the majority of religion is probably Christianity. I would call it from the Christian scriptures, which very clearly say, don't be a hater, turn the other cheek, love your enemies. And there are, of course, similar sentiments in a very few religions that teach you. So somehow now you've gone through all that psychological work to create the other, to feel good because now you can hate the other. But you're not supposed to. Your scripture or your priest or whoever tells you don't hate. Next slide please. So now the only way you can feel good is to make your hate righteous. So what a lovely English language term we have. Righteous. It's not quite right. So it's derived from right, but we don't say right anger. We say righteous anger. They've invented a new term. And the adjective righteous nearly always applies to things like righteous in the nation, righteous anger. It introduces a moral tone to otherwise unworthy activities like hating. So usually hating is bad. Righteous hate. That's good. In fact, the heroes that are sought here are those who experienced righteous indignation. When Jesus went to the temple and attacked the money lenders. Jesus otherwise a peace-loving person. Wow. That's when he is okay for him to be angry. Righteous anger, righteous indignation. They have so many people, socrates, Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King. We've all heard them. They got angry at times. They got angry not when somebody insulted them, but they got angry over moral principles, freedom. They got angry at slavery or something bad. That's why they are heroes. So to experience righteous anger. Or a convert your anger. Righteous anger. Nobody quite says righteous hate. They haven't quite got to that stage yet. That's what we really mean. That's what the hater wants. So with his tongue, he says, oh, I practiced righteous anger. Hitler would have said, I'm not ashamed of hating the other, the Jew. It is righteous hate. That's what he would have said. So now I just say to you, is it actually hate? Because there are other emotions that resemble hate. So when Marie Antoinette in 1789, that's when the French Revolution happened. I forget when she ate too much cake or whatever. So when the peasants were angry, if their sons didn't have bread, and Marie Antoinette is eating cake, they probably hated her. I mean, eventually they cut off her head. So I guess they hated her. They didn't have to cut off her head. But was it hate they experienced? Or anger. So as a psychiatrist, I think a scholarly psychiatric study of hate or the emotions that lead to genocide require more careful separation of hate from the imposters of hate. So let's start with anger there. Do you hate the other, or are you angry at the other? And there are enormous implications. So I'm putting it to you that hate is misused. It's become too broad a term. So there are pure examples of hate, which I hate. But there are many examples of things which I actually don't hate, but maybe something else. Because I'm a purist, I would have put to you since you were scholars in the field. Please help me identify those. So for Marie Antoinette, I put it to you. They didn't hate Marie Antoinette. They were angry at Marie Antoinette. How dare she eat cake when I don't have bread. Then the anal vices, the sodomists, the pervert. Do they hate the pervert? Or is it disgust? There are two different emotions. I won't get into it, but we were going to have several talks. I know one speaker did talk about the neuroscience of what parts of the brain. So I put it to you that anger and disgust are actually probably going to have different parts of the brain that are stimulated or activated. So disgust has enormous evolutionary biology value. Disgust developed to help us survive. The reason that you and I feel disgust at feces is that our great-great-grandparents of course, those who were disgusted by Ducky's stuff like feces, avoided it, they got less disease and they survived. Those fools who didn't feel disgusted feces, played with feces and probably got sick. So disgust is a wonderful emotion that has enormous protective survival value. But it's not hate. But it is used as a mask for hate. So as we heard this morning, Nazi Germany. The Nazis portrayed the Jews as disgusting like rats. So were they hating the Jews or were they disgusted by the Jews? And the third one is a third emotion that I'm proposing is hate was a contempt. When people, what was it about Henry Clinton's use of the word deplorable, that got some people to vote against her, it's the word for crime. They experienced, I put it to contempt. It felt devalued. So it wasn't hate. I mean, they may have used unkind words about her, but it wasn't. If you really ask them, what bothers you about the elites? The emotion that bothers them is contempt. And it is contempt that is very, very damaging. I mean, as a psychiatrist, I'm telling you that you, you can probably handle anger. You'll be running management classes. So what emotion that is very, very difficult to get people to forget? It's contempt to be devalued. And the last one, the, um, the Deedipal vice, the Muslims, you know, they sleep with their mothers, their motherfuckers, they sleep with the enemy, their traitors. So many Hindu right wingers in India think that Muslims are disloyal to India. They're worthy of hate. Is it hate or is it fear? Because if you have a group, which is the fifth column, you probably do dislike them, but is it, I mean, it used to be passed out. Is it more hate or is it more fear? So I just wanted to share those postures of hate with you. Here, how am I doing for time? Because now I have controversy about dehumanization, but I'm not sure if I have time for that. I think about five minutes. So having more minutes, do I have left? Should I move on? Yeah, about five to eight minutes, if you can wrap it up. Okay. So then, um, I actually have a discussion because I always like to give you something, the latest research. So since you're not a psychiatrist, I'm sure you read the social science literature, which probably you're very familiar with. Let me tell you something from the psychiatric literature, because you may be less familiar with it. So you've heard this morning and I'm sure you, you're very well aware of what are the theories or what are the pathways to hate. And that is the role of dehumanization. So I don't have to teach it to you. Obviously you already know it. But in one word it is that the pathway to getting people to hate is to dehumanize the object that happened to the Nazis. So you know, you portray the Jews as vermin, as rats, because they're dehumanized. It is morally okay to kill rats. It's not morally okay to kill humans. So that is, so in the last few months, and because I teach at UCSD, a research came out of UCSD. So I'm sharing it with you. The dehumanization theory has been all in the question. So I won't get into that, but I just want to tell you that one of the, your controversies in this whole year of research is a challenge to the dehumanization theory. But I'll move on just giving you that. And next year's conference, we can talk about it more. I'll give you the reference later. So let's move on to the next slide. One second, I thought you were finished. That's why I stopped sharing. Hold on. One second. Okay. Next slide is here. Okay. Oh, so the one after this, this is the controversy one, which I won't discuss, but let's do the taxonomy. Yes, this is the site. Okay. So I just wanted to slightly contrast. The theoretical social science research perspective. And I suspect most of you have with my perspective, because I'm not a researcher. I am a clinician, I actually see hate for patients. And I talk to them. And I analyze their hate or their hateful emotions or the hateful conditions for the hateful behavior, and then explain that to the judge of the jury. So most of you, the audience that I come from, it's slightly different angles. And you're probably less familiar with my perspective because that's not what you do for a living. So I just wanted to share with you that for me, hate or hateful behavior is too broad a term. So psychiatrists have a taxonomy. Actually, we have two taxonomy. So in case you don't know, I just want to remind you or share with you, we divide hateful behavior. So the common final pathway is the behavior and act that is hateful. So psychiatrically, I analyze that into, is it instrumental or is it expressive? And for psychiatrists, it's necessary for social scientists, for psychiatrists that has enormous implications. So instrumental would be what the hateful act is done, not because there's any emotion behind it, but the hateful act is merely an instrument to get an object. So I want to rob the bank. I go to the bank teller and I say to her, give me the money or I'll harm you. So I don't hate her. It's not if anything I wanted to do it without, without harming her by my act. Coming in with a gun, threatening her, maybe slapping her, maybe a little bit hurting her but not fully. It's all instrumental. It's aimed only in the bad behavior. The hateful behavior is an instrument for my, whatever I want, get the money. And that is contrasted with expressive behavior, which is that, you know, there's an emotion. I hate the victim or I'm angry at her or wherever. So this is often seen in rape. So expressive rape might be, you know, if I'm the nasty group of rapists, if I beat her up because I hate her or I enjoy it, that is expressive rape. But if I just cut her and say, cutting you, say, you know, I mean business, the business is that I'm going to rape you. And once you're accepted to be raped, and I won't hurt you anymore, that would be an example of instrumental violence or instrumental hateful behavior. And the second taxonomy is affective versus predatory. So simply affective is hot, emotionally driven, and predatory is cold. And they have different neurobiologies. As a psychiatrist, of course, I study neurobiology, different neuroscience, different treatments. So we as a psychiatrist, if you have a problem with affective violence, I can treat you. I mean, there are medications that can reduce your urges for affective violence. If your violence or hateful behavior is predatory, I don't have any, these I don't have from a logical view. You know those implications. So if you're in social science, you'll know the stuff, I just want to open your eyes. I don't have time to get into details, but just to watch your appetite for this, you know, the psychiatry of age, if you like. Okay, let's move on so I can, then I think come to the end. Next slide please. You can come to the slide that says blame because I just wanted to talk about that. I guess the slide, if you can move it to the left, it'll be nice. Okay. So this slide is about blame. So, as I told you, there are a million posters of hate, disgust, anger, contempt, disgust and so on. One of them is blame, which we didn't discuss previously. So if you're, if you want to commit a genocide, are you doing it because you hate them? Or because you blame them? Two separate pathways. There may be an overlap. Maybe you hate them because you blame them. There may be an overlap. But theoretically, those are two different constructs. You can hate someone without blaming them and you can blame someone without hitting them. So one obvious thing would be that if the, the victim has agency, it opens the door to blame. If there is no agency, there's no blame. So if I, you know, if you and I have a car crash, you the driver, a human being there for your agency. Therefore, if you have agency, you have a power of indecision. And you decided to cut it in front of me and we had a car crash. I blame you. If you don't take responsibility now, I hate you. If the car crash was because of it was raining and the road is skinny, and I crashed into an object. Well, I blame the rain, but I don't hate the rain. So obviously the presence, or absence of agency determines that. But there are other factors and they include a variety of cognitive biases. So there's a million cognitive biases that of course psychiatrists know about or psychologists know about. I forget whether social scientists, nobody will know that I, I know that I studied them at school and so on. But I just thought I'd bring your attention because it's relevant to, to hate and to genocide. One particular bias or one particular cognitive error, the fundamental attribution error. And that has to do with the very natural tendency that you have the same behavior, but I'm judging your behavior. So if you're a part of my tribe, my group, the in-group, my conclusion is that your error is based on some unfortunate circumstance. You're late for work. You'll be very late for work. Personnel is late for work. He's belongs to my tribe or my in-group or whatever. Why was he late for work? Probably not his fault. I know he's having a hard time. His mother died last week or his car wouldn't start or there was a traffic jam. External problems. But when the other guy is late for work, he's not my tribe. He belongs to the other tribe or the out-group. Why is he late for work? He's a jerk. He's lazy. He's disorganized. Why can't he get an arm clock? Shout, it's not one. So it's a criminal. It's a criminal. How do you persecut with that standard of law? So in the attribution of blame, of course, responsibility is over in life, watching the jury to sign blancs that are so funny that my job is a medical expert who is Docker to get the facts. I wasn't supposed to slay the jury on the side. attorneys, skillfully used, of course I could see, all these tricks, race, religion, social class, all things that have to do with identifying the different dentists, either you're one of us, in group or not one of us, out group, which lets the jury deciding he has to be blamed or he's not to be blamed. Obviously enormous implications for aging a group, aging in genocide. So in medieval Europe, one group of the moneylenders, why are they moneylenders? Is it their fault? Yes, it's their fault. They have a horrible religion, they have horrible priests, or they don't believe in the right God, or they're primitive or they're anti-social, they hate us. And the other explanation, it's not their fault. No other jobs are open to them. We don't let them go to land, they can't become farmers, they can't go to agriculture, there are very few fields that they can do. They can become doctors or bankers, so they say, hey, somebody became bankers. So this assignment of blame has to do with this political cognitive bias, mental bias, we're thinking, this one is called a fundamental attribution error. There's a hundred more of them, which of course we can study in each one, may or may not impact. So I think that ends my talk, and I think that would have been the time that you said that this is the summary of what we discussed, discussed the forward advice, is to hate here and so on. So thank you, Harry. Dr. Haroon, thank you so much. You gave us a lot to think about and digest and process. So thank you. We now will go maybe about 10 minutes into Q&A. I don't see any written Q&A questions in the Q&A box, but I can invite any of the panelists to ask questions to each other or to the last two panelists, or the audience, if you want to ask a question, please put it in the Q&A box, type in your question. So I will throw out a couple of things, okay? So Dr. Haroon, have you, in your own contemplation, come up with a definition for the word hate? Well, even the first one I have not, I mean, there are many definitions you can use. So, I mean, a purist or a rigorous scientist, which unfortunately I'm not, would be free of all biases. So depending on where I am, if I'm in a legal case, I might come up with a definition that is applicable to that particular, that legal case, but very, very roughly. I mean, the folks, it's like pornography, I forget, which just is said that nobody can define the term but we all know what it is. So even my five-year-olds know what hate is. They hate spinach, they know what it is, although they're actually slightly misusing the term. Two elements, which I think are to be present first of all, a feeling state, having to do with negativity, dislike, and then somehow, because you can dislike spinach, but probably a purist would say that, that's not hating it, and then a wish to harm. So somehow that, they're gonna obviously play around with those things. Yeah. It invites the, can there be good hate? So that, you know, so what if you have hateful? So- So things like, for example, I can hate cancer. You can hate cancer. Right. But do you, well, I guess you do want to exterminate cancer, so they actually allow you to go to, unlike spinach that I don't want to exterminate, cancer actually meets both criteria. It begs the question, can you hate something that doesn't have agency? That's a good point. Probably cancer doesn't, but my definition all human beings do. And again, if you'll forgive me for coming in as a forensic psychiatrist, one of my commonest evaluations is that of insanity. So as you all know from the movies, even though it's statistically rare, when the movies is very common, the criminal defendants, everybody thinks that one way to get out of murder or some horrible crime is to plead insanity. So if you lack agency, and you commit a hateful act, are you worthy of hate? So before that, are you worthy of blame? So many people would say that you can blame. I mean, you can blame an earthquake or causing a flood and the flood causes a car accident. You can blame it in a way that is causal, but not a way that is emotional. You know, we don't get angry at earthquakes. But we do get angry at people who didn't service their car and as a result of failing to service their car, the brakes failed and then a car accident which killed my kid, you get angry at them. So anger is directly people who have agency. So as you said, you could probably hate cancer. But they might say a little tricky. Right. The desire to punish. Nobody wants to punish the cancerous bugs. Thank you. Dr. Kiernan, I want to ask you if you were able to extract anything from Dr. Haroun's presentation and apply it to some of the examples you gave us. Well, thanks for that because I was about to weigh in on some of the helpful observations that I heard from Dr. Ansaharoun's talk. I particularly like the discrimination between hate and anger, disgust, contempt, and fear. I think they're all very, very, very, very, important distinctions to be made in history and political science and analysis of the motivations behind genocide perpetrators and their thinking. But I also appreciated the distinction between if I've got this right, expressive and what was the counterpoint to expressive, instrumental. Yeah, instrumental and expressive forms because I think that helps me understand some of the psychology behind different cases of genocide. I'm thinking of the article by Yehuda Bauer that I mentioned in Yad Vashem's studies. I think it's number 49 last year where he talked about the Circassian genocide by Imperial Russia in the mid-19th century and he said it didn't seem to have any racial prejudice involved. And as, but he did quote the Russian generals saying annihilation of the Circassians is one of our own or a central aim. I can't remember the exact quote, but I read it to you and... Dr. Kiernan, you are frozen. But now, yes. Oh, okay. So I was talking about Dr. Yehuda Bauer's discussion of the Circassian genocide and saying that there wasn't any racial prejudice. I think that's the term he used. I hope I'm not wrong about that. But I think what he meant was that the Russian generals who were intent on annihilating the Circassians didn't regard the Circassians as inferior. They did see them as a separate race and they intended to exterminate them, annihilate them as they put it, but they didn't see them in a prejudicial way. It was instrumental, as Dr. Harun mentioned. It wasn't expressing. They didn't see them as necessarily hateful. They wanted their land and they were going to annihilate them. And I think that's the difference between what I was describing as racial or religious prejudice or racial or religious targeting. It's clear that they were targeted as an ethnic group in that case, the Circassians, but there wasn't necessarily any prejudice against them except that they were unlucky enough to be in the way of the expanding imperial Russia and their land was going to be taken from them and they were going to be killed in order to seize their land. And they were subjected to genocide. But I think Yehuda Bauer was onto something when he said this wasn't like Hitler's hatred of the Jews or his description of the Jews as inhuman or Slavs as subhuman. The description that you get from the Russian, imperial Russian description of the Circassians is that they were separate and were being targeted for extermination, but there wasn't much emotion involved. It was not expressive but instrumental. And I think that's an important distinction. And I think it's one that's made in the genocide convention itself, the international law doesn't talk about the actual motive of genocide. It doesn't require proof of what the motive might be, whether it's racial hatred or economic jealousy and seizure of wealth or territorial expansion or whatever. It just says there must be an intent to destroy the group as such, which is the case in both Nazi Germany against the Jews and in imperial Russia against the Circassians. Whether it's instrumental or expressive is not relevant to the law, but it is very relevant to the psychology of genocide, although it can happen either way. So thanks for that insight. Yeah, thank you. Anyone else wanna chime in? Yes, go ahead, Dr. Harun. Well, just a response to that. Thank you for that lovely response. But I'm sometimes asked why in India, as some of you may know about 10 years ago, there was some religious rights in the state of Gujarat and the victims of hatred there were treated, especially brutally, where pregnant mothers, fetuses were cut open and then put to the soil. And these were often people who had been living together for centuries. So I'm asked as a forensic psychiatrist, why did that happen in India? And if there is hatred, contrasting what happened in Germany where much of the killing, of course, I'm sure there was specific hatred, but it was very cold, it was gas chambers. People sat there, scientists sat together and worked out chemical formulae. So it was cold, calculated scientific thinking of the quality of how do we kill 1,000 rats? It took it from modes of killing or anger, if you like. So what is Nazi Germany and what is happening in Gujarat? Both require, but that distinction between instrumental and expressive. So Gujarat and India would be a good example of fury, rage, I mean, that you go to a pregnant woman because you're only gonna decrease the population by one or two by doing that. It requires enormous psychological investment to cut open a pregnant woman, take out the fetus and butcher the fetus. I mean, it takes a toll on the killer. So you'll pay the very, very high price for achieving that emotional relief. In contrast, what the Nazis did was, it was not so cold to me. So what I wonder, Hitler or whatever he did, sitting in Berlin, happened far away in Auschwitz. They didn't pay that emotional price, but they actually did reduce. So it was, they were very successful in exterminating what they were said was, firm in the grass, they did reduce the population of their desires. So you're right, what a wonderful contrast. Yeah, I would say that what happened in Gujarat, I think it was about 1,000 people were killed, is that right, in 2001 maybe? Yeah, and I would describe that as a genocidal massacre. And that Muslims in India are still under threat of a genocide too, as in China too, I think the Uighurs. But also I would add that in the Nazi case, there were both phenomena assisting. There was the cold calculated scientific mass murder for which the Nazis are well known, but there's also what's called the Holocaust by bullets, which was going on on the frontier, began very early in Poland in 1939 with the invasion of Poland and spread across the Soviet Union, including Ukraine. And there were very many individual massacres by Wehrmacht troops as well as by the SS, particularly by the SS. And I think they resemble more what you described in Gujarat than Auschwitz. I think there was a spectrum of killing by the Nazis that killed almost, I think in fact, I'm not sure of the numbers, but possibly as many were killed in face-to-face massacres by Nazi forces as were killed in gas chambers. I do have a question in the Q&A, so I'll read that, bear with me for a second. Over the past decade, I've heard politicians say things like, quote, that's not who we are, unquote. This could be another way of saying who we are not, which earlier in the session was used to explain how to distinguish enemies of the state, et cetera. Given the increase of violence in the country, such as the street riots in the summer of 2020 and crime in general over the past two to three years and groups being referred by political leaders as domestic terrorists and neo-Nazis, is a trend developing in the country which could be silencing and ostracizing opposing groups to gain political control? And I think they mean subjugating those opposing groups. I think this was directed back to me. Okay, go ahead. I'm going to assume. I'm no one who early on had talked about the who we are not piece. I think it can be used across groups. So I worked for a bit at Facebook doing, led their intel team on looking at dangerous organizations. And so we saw this when we would try to gather intel from some of the more extreme social media sites that language like that was being used on both sides of the political extreme aisle. And when I say both sides, political aisle, I want to make this very clear. I'm only talking about on the fringes, on the extremes, right? And so that kind of language can work to kind of ignite these different in-group, out-group pieces that we've been talking about. That's kind of the thread that's woven through all of the different presenters today that in-group, out-group, us versus them, that othering. And so I do think the more that kind of language is used, regardless of which side is using it, if the question posed in terms of politics, regardless of which side uses it on the extreme ends, I do see that as challenging. It was something we saw when we would analyze threats to Facebook entities when I was there, which was what I was responsible for. When we saw that type of heightened language, that's when we would end up having to work with other agencies in terms of benchmarking and things, because that's when the threat level tends to rise for the application of that threatened violence, right? Because people use threats of violence and there's not always an intent behind it to act. But that's where we would see kind of the element for Intel to raise the threat level a bit when we would start seeing this more proactive, othering, if you will. Thank you for that. And I think this is gonna have to be the last question that's been posted. So it says, doesn't it always start with racial tension turned to hate and some sort of fear of the minority group? Who would like to address that? No one? Can I say something about that? And the last question. I'm not sure it always starts with racial tension or fear of a minority group. I think it can be proactive in the sense that there's not a fear, but a deliberate targeting of a minority group where no fear is actually present, but a pretence of fear, a stoking of fear is going on. And I think to some extent that is precisely what's happening at the moment in the United States. I think there is a stoking of fear, of immigrants, of different minority groups. I think there's also, unfortunately, I think it's true that there is a deliberate attempt on the part of some small political fringe groups to rehabilitate Nazism. In the Charlottesville rally, people were chanting blood and soil, which is a Nazi slogan. And they were also chanting, Jews will not replace us. And this was the group of people that Donald Trump, when he was president, commented on that rally. And he said, there were good people on both sides. And this was Donald Trump, who was reported by Mark Milley, his military commander, as having said, that Hitler did a lot of good things and reported by another member of his cabinet as saying, why aren't my generals loyal to me like Hitler's generals were? Now, irrespective of Donald Trump's ignorance of the history of Hitler's generals, it seems to me that he is holding out Hitler's model behavior of his generals as a model for himself. I think we've got a situation where Nazism is being rehabilitated in some circles. And I think this is very serious. Anyone else, last few words? No, okay. I wanna thank all the panelists and of course, General DeLair, who had to leave and also our provost, Provost Mariano and the whole team that helped make this happen. And the panelists in particular, thank you. I'm applauding you. It was an outstanding fifth annual Genocide Studies Conference. Thank you for all your hard work and your presentations and answering questions. And I look forward to next year. Thank you all. Have a wonderful day and peace to everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Alvi.