THE EVILS OF FACTIONALISM

History is filled with examples of factionalism becoming obsessions; and of such obsessions subsequeently turning into horror.  Of course we are all aware that this barbarism has persisted into the twenty first century.  I will therefore cite only a few, varied but conspicuous exsamples of what has been described by me during the last couple of days.

A particularly poignant example of ethnic cruelty was the harsh treatment received by the Armenians at the hands of the Turks.  We are told that, in the 1890s, the Ottoman Turks massacred nearly two hundred thousand Armenians.  And a couple of decades later, during World War I, on the basis of accusations that the Armenian people favored the Allies, the Turks are said to have again turned upon them, expelling them from lands they had dwelt upon for over two thousand years; and in the process of this forced relocation, causing perhaps another two million Armenian persons to perish.

Germany of former days represented another particularly harsh example of ethnic awareness and hostility.  From its inception, German national consciousness has been described as an identity of race.  As early as 1815, Ernst Moritz Arndt, a German author of particularly nationalist bent, expressed pride in the fact that the Germans were not "basterdized by alien peoples, [and had] not become mongrels...."  This desire for ethnic purity bred in its leadership a mistaken obsession against the blending of nationalities; and, eventually, to Hitler and the Holocaust.  Thus, the German citizenry, being fundamentally as ethical and kindly as the rest of civilized humanity, were unwittingly confounded into becoming hostile and violent hosts to ethnic hatred.  To this day, many don't really know what happened, or how it happened; and many still do not believe it happened, or even could have happened.  But it did happen--and at its base we discover but an extreme example of the evils of ethnic factionalism and its potential for disaster.

Nazi Germany is of course the classic instance wherein group "A" beheld group "B" as not only inferior, but to be, moreover, deserving of hatred, hostility, and, in the end, mass murder.  The wicked leadership of the commanding German faction of that period determined that it needed additional space to expand and multiply.  And so, between 1933 and 1941, as the Nazi faction stretched into various parts of Europe, ten million innocent people, including two million children, were deliberately murdered.  In 1943, half a million Jews were dragged out of Warsaw, and brought to concentration camps to be executed.  At one such camp, located at Maidenak, Poland, a million and a half human beings were eventually put to death.  And by the time World War II was over, between five and six million Jews had been slain--all in the name of a factionalist obsession known as the Third Reich. 

Not many years later, the Serbs proceeded along a path in Yugoslaviawhich was quite similar to that just described.  "Dthnic cleansing" was the label attached to the acts of one faction in dealing death and destruction to the members of another.  This was Naziism with a new vocabulary.

Related, symptomatically, to these goings-on in Yugoslavia, and constituting a phenomenon which appears all too frequently in various parts of our worldof nation-states, is that oft-witnessed tragedy which takes place whan nation "A," having been under the prior domination or control of nation "B," is now liberated and permitted to commence self-rule.  Suddenly, within the confines of nation "A," long-simmering hatreds between two or more ethnic groups--who had, perhaps grudgingly, but peacefully nonetheless--resided together and maintained tranquil relations while nation "B" was at the helm, erupts into violence, warfare, and occasionally genocide.  A particular example of this is the Hutu versus Tutsi attrocities that took place in Rwanda in 1994, after liberation by Belgium, wherein half a million human beings were cruelly slaughtered.  Had there been no "nation A" (i.e., Rwanda) having been ruled by "nation B" (i.e., Belgium) for years past; and had there consequently been no newly liberated "nation A," which came to constitute a crucible containing opposing factions, and comprising a particular bounded place within which ethnic groups were compelled to compete for ascendancy; might the tension that exploded into violence in the 1980s, and into eventual genocide in the 1990s, have never reached this "pressure cooker" syndrome within Rwanda's national boundaries?  Might not these stresses have long ago naturally diminished and dissolved, as people's unimpeded mobility served to produce movement and redistribution on the part of the people and groups who resided there?

In Angola as well, independence created an overwhelming degree of competition for power among a number of factions.  The ensuing warfare lasted fourteen years, and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

During the 1970s and 1980s, in northern Africa, preservation of their factional ruling interests prompted a number of governments to restrict potential famine relief to particular groups within their respective domains.  This too led to numerous instances of needless suffering and death among many innocent people.

To conclude, 1985 ought be remembered as a banner year for factionalist terror--on the part of a vast array of participants, including Palestinian groups, the Irtish Republican Army, Basque separatists in Spain, Sikhs in India, and death squyads in Latin America.

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The oft-raised question arises once more.  How can civilized members of certain civilized groups be so violent and cruel to their fellow human beings?  One answer seems to lie in an ingredient which appears to be a necessary component of all factionalism:  conformity.  Behaviorists tell us that most people would rather conform than lose the companionship, respect, and rewards offered by the immediate group to which they feel they belong, or to which they aspire to be members.  We are all consequently accustomed to measure our behavior, our acts, and even our thoughts, against community standards.  And we are uncomfortable, and even ashamed, when our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors deviate from established community norms.

Regarding our political beliefs and practices as well, most of us dare not stray far from what our faction has developed and prescribed for us.  True there will be differences of opinion among us all, and variations in popularity regarding particular office-holders and their policies (in societies where such liberties are permitted).  But we can be assured that in most instances, within everyone's particular personal community--be it local or national, on this or that side of the globe--these opinions, policies, and practices will usually nevertheless lie within a somewhat narrow framework of established customs and norms, with social and other penalties built in which discourage substantial departure therefrom.

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