ABSTRACT
Perhaps the best way to understand genocide is to perceive it as a form of state criminality. One of the more common myths about genocide is that it just happens.3 This myth is often perpetuated by the media and politicians who often hold the notion that ethnic conflicts and hatreds sometimes erupt spontaneously into genocide. Genocide, from this perspective, is seen as the result of long-standing ethnic, racial, or religious hatreds that build up until they periodically explode into genocidal violence. As the sociologist James Ron asserts, “Conventionalist wisdom views nationalist violence as a burst of uncontrolled brutality, not a rule-bound endeavor.”4 But this is a misleading and false perception
that only serves to reinforce the incorrect notion that genocide is unpredictable and therefore inevitable and unstoppable. After all, if it just happens, how can we be expected to prevent it? The reality, however, is quite a bit different. Genocide, it turns out, is an example of a crime that is both rational and planned. It is rational in the sense that it is perceived as a reasonable strategy intended to accomplish certain goals, and planned because it requires advance preparation. In this sense, the destruction of a population is a means to an end. There is method, then, to the madness. Both the scale and intent of this crime demand a level of organization and planning that absolutely precludes any other interpretation, especially one depicting the crime as being spontaneous. Who then or what is responsible for planning and implementing genocide? The answer is simple. In almost every case of genocide, the responsibility lies with the state, and genocide is therefore, first and foremost, a form of state criminality.
