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Why Genocide?
The Armenians and Jewish Experiences in Perspective
Florence Mazian (Author)
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Genocide is a new name for an old crime. Why Genocide? by sociologist Florence Mazian looks at two modern-day genocides to discover the social dynamics making them possible and to isolate factors increasing their likeli-hood. Using the Turkish genocide of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 and the Nazi Holocaust of Jews during World War II as examples, the author develops a theory which considers factors operative in both genocides—i.e., the creation of a group of ""outsiders"" within a society, social strife, powerful leadership with territorial ambitions, a propaganda war, a system of destructtion, and the failure of social controls.
Why Genocide? is unique in that it provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of genocide. Turkey and Germany lost major wars and territories for which the Armenians and Jews respectively were scapegoated and vic timized. Both countries had leaders who were obsessed with the idea of genocide and who were determined to exterminate the Armenians and the Jews. Ideologies supportive of genocide proliferated— Pan-Turanism in Turkey and Nazism in Germany; these ideas pervaded the religious, academic, and intellectual circles and served as propaganda motivating the masses to support extermination of the victim group. As atrocities escalated against Armenians and Jews, the world looked the other way. Murder was initiated by the governments; citizens provided no significant resistance. Finally, multidimensional levels of social control which might counteract genocide had eroded or failed to be effective.
This book will be welcomed not only by sociologists and students of social problems, collective behavior,
and genocide, but by historians, political scientists, and those concerned with nationalism and its current manifestations.
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