Chris Hedges: The Act of Killing

[marmar]

from truthdig:


The Act of Killing

Posted on Sep 23, 2013
By Chris Hedges


I have spent time with mass killers, warlords and death squad leaders as a reporter in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Some are psychopaths who relish acts of sadism, torture and murder. But others, maybe most, see killing as a job, a profession, good for their careers and status. They enjoy playing God. They revel in the hypermasculine world of force where theft and rape are perks. They proudly refine the techniques of murder to snuff out one life after another, largely numb to the terror and cruelty they inflict. And, when they are not killing, they can sometimes be disarmingly charming and gracious. Some are decent fathers and sentimental with their wives and mistresses. They can dote on their pets.

It is not the demonized, easily digestible caricature of a mass murderer that most disturbs us. It is the human being.

Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary “The Act of Killing,” which took eight years to make, is an important exploration of the complex psychology of mass murderers. The film has the profundity of Gitta Sereny’s book “Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience,” for which she carried out extensive interviews with Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka, one of the Nazi extermination camps. Oppenheimer, too, presents candid confessions, interviewing some of the most ruthless murderers in Indonesia. One of these is responsible for perhaps 1,000 killings, a man named Anwar Congo, who was a death squad leader in Medan, the capital of the Indonesian province North Sumatra. The documentary also shows the killers performing bizarre re-enactments of murders.

Indonesia’s military, with U.S. support, launched in 1965 a yearlong campaign to ostensibly exterminate communist leaders, functionaries, party members and sympathizers in that country. By its end, the bloodbath—much of it carried out by rogue death squads and paramilitary gangs—had decimated the labor union movement along with the intellectual and artistic class, opposition parties, university student leaders, journalists, ethnic Chinese and many who just happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time. By some estimates, more than a million people were slaughtered. Many of the bodies were dumped into rivers, hastily buried or left on roadsides. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_act_of_killing_20130923/

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Brings to mind "the banality of evil" and...

Hannah Ahrendt's controversial concept of the bland working stiffs who consider mass murder as just another job.

Plenty of evidence, and a few decent studies, shows that most of us, given the right circumstances, could fit right into a murderous regime.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Thank you for posting this.

I always appreciate my weekly fix of Hedges.

[Doctor_J]

3. This sounds familiar

decimated the labor union movement along with the intellectual and artistic class, opposition parties, university student leaders, journalists,

Exactly the people reviled 24/7 by Hate Radio and Fox "News" and, thus, every republican in the US. I wonder where they'll leave our bodies...

I'd like to say I am surprised that we're taking it as timidly as the Indonesians, East Timorese, and Rwandans. I think the right wing hate & propaganda apparatus here is much more advanced here.

[toby jo]

4. So true, Doc. They get the upstart 1-time humpers, who they hide from until they go away. We get

the evil leached politely into our political conversation until it grows dirty little fangs in places children and light will no longer go.

Killy us softly.

Hope lies in a better definition of humanity - that's our task.

Thanks for the link, Marmar.