ABSTRACT
Physical elimination of an out-group presupposes a qualitative escalation that leads from a psychological estrangement from ‘the other’ to the decision to remove them and act on that mandate. Such an escalation has occurred only on a number of occasions in the past century; it is neither predetermined nor the most likely scenario because of the extreme ramifications and stark transgressions that it requires. But the existence of such a longnurtured ‘potential for elimination’, particularly if supported by continuous and recent aggravating developments, constitutes an open-ended scenario that hosts a number of future possible outcomes, including physical elimination at the most brutal end of the spectrum. When this escalation did take place, it highlighted in retrospect the crucial significance of its rhetorical, ideological, and psychological precedents. It was for this reason that the 1951 ‘United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’ underlined the crucial connection between intent and subsequent action, even if the experience of dealing with genocides has demonstrated how difficult it is to diagnose the ‘potential for elimination’ in its earlier stages (Chalk & Jonassohn 1990; Chalk 1994; Brugnola, Fein, & Spirer 1999). The sad privilege of having accumulated a considerable empirical capital of genocidal instances (and of continuing to do so) has sharpened our awareness of causal links and contributing factors or processes. It has helped dispel the illusion that aggressive and intolerant ideological discourses, linguistic violence, and cultural prejudices are relatively innocuous when compared to the event of violence itself (Bosmajian 1983). It has also demonstrated how a crime of such magnitude as mass elimination needs to be first entertained as abstract desire before been considered as a feasible, justifiable, or inevitable course of action by the perpetrators.
