Eruption of Violence

“Today’s victim can become tomorrow’s perpetrator”- tells if a person becomes a victim of today’s aggression or violence, he/she will become an aggressor in the future (Kreidie and Monroe, 6). Moreover, I assume the authors try to demonstrate in the article “The Dilemmas of Political Identity and Ethnic Violence” introducing the story of Saud, who has become a victim of the massacres in the Sabra Shatila in 1982, yearns for a war to be appeared again so that she can fight against and take revenge. The situation makes me remind what Norman defines human psychology saying “violence breeds violence” and “the outcome of one war becomes the cause for the next war” (208). He mainly identifies violence as historical practice that happened in the past but the result persists through violence. Violence won’t be ended with victims, it will occur again when the victims will become perpetrators and take part in violence.  

During the Labanese civil war, people were divided into different groups based on social identity and social domination.  They did not hesitate to kill people from the same country they belong, Lebanon, and not because felt guilty about killing and taking part in massacre since they believed in “the tremendous power in identity” (18) which made them to think separately from others. If they do not join in fighting, their existence and identity will be lost since “they see themselves as victims or subordinates of an unjust distribution of power and resources of a dominant group” (28). However, they do not support that conflicts should be continued. In this case, they have to be involved as they “were pushed into action by “the other” (19). “The other” refers the authority that makes ordinary people to be violent in such situations. On the other hand, Gray observes through his article “The Enduring Appeals of Battle” psychological features that a soldier has during fighting in a war. According to him, a soldier get attracted to be involved in wars for three reasons-delights in seeing, delight in comradeship and delight in destruction (29).

In the article “The Dilemma of Obedience”, Milgram mentions defining psychological behavior for “obedient” subjects who mostly are ordinary people from professional classes (604). Moreover, obedient groups of people feel a commitment to the authority as a result though they do not want to continue conflicts, they do.  More than that, perpetrators know if they do not take actions, their existence would be destroyed. That is the reason makes them to obey the orders of authority. Is their action justified?  Is the violence justified which was created from the social, political and economic frustration? According to Marxist’s theory, “society is structured into classes which are in conflict for power and resources” (Kreidie, Monroe, 14). Moreover, he did say, “force is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one” (Marx, 70). It is justifiable to have violence to move along with history.

Mainly Kreidie and Monroe want to clarify that to save group identity ethnic violence is created is called ethnic violence. If there would be no ‘social comparison’ no ‘social domination’ of power and group differences, I assume there would not have any violence between ethnic groups. I wonder if there is no violence, then will there be any move in history? Is ethnic violence needed to save social identity of a group?