The psychology of sadistic terrorism

By Harry Davidson, Ph.D.

(FinalCall.com) - Psychological studies suggest that some people have a need to divide people into groups. It follows that these people are more prone to abuse, brutalize, harm and even kill those who are perceived as different. Race and religion are among the more prominent ways of grouping people. History indicates a systemic American need to brutalize others.

Graphic: Harold Muhammad MGN Online

Opposition to the United States occupation of Iraq increased when the photos of Iraqi prisoners being physically and sexually abused and humiliated surfaced during the week of May 2, 2004. The Army has been reported as quietly conducting more than 30 criminal investigations into misconduct by Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past 16 months. Included are 10 deaths, 10 cases of abuse and two homicides.

Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy called the scandal “a catastrophic crisis of credibility for our nation.” His assumption is that America has moral humanitarian credibility to jeopardize. Some of us remember the “My Lai Massacre.” On the morning of March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War, a group of “thugs” entered the South Vietnamese hamlet and killed hundreds of civilians—primarily old men, women, children and babies. The estimated number killed varies from 347 to 504. In addition, they tortured and raped the villagers. It was later uncovered that the U.S. military routinely sadistically brutalized and “terrorized” Vietnamese civilians.

Ironically, Colin Powell, then a young major in the U.S. Army, was assigned to investigate the massacre. In what many saw as a “whitewashing,” Mr. Powell wrote: “In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.”

We are told that most Americans know that the “thugs” who sadistically brutalized the Iraqis are in the minority. What about the group of “thugs” who stole this country from the Native Americans and continue their reign of terror over them to this day? It was a group of “thugs” that kidnapped Africans, placed them in bondage, raped the women and savagely beat Black men, women and children. America’s credibility has long since been lost. Worldwide human rights groups have consistently accused the U.S. government of ignoring the human rights of U.S. citizens.

In December of 1948, the United Nations held a convention on genocide that established the definition of genocide as the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

Genocide pertains to the killing of members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and/or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group, whether committed in times of peace or of war. It is a crime under international law.

Constitutional rulers, public officials or private individuals may be held responsible. After the 1948 proclamation by the United Nations General Assembly, there were two follow-up conferences in 1978 and 1983.

Paul Robeson and William Patterson brought charges before the United Nations in 1951. Black, Asian and Latino civil rights advocates held a Washington news conference in February 1999 to speak out against police misconduct and to urge then- president Bill Clinton to take action against the rampant police misconduct and racist attacks against Blacks and minorities that is sweeping America and the world.

In 2001, Dr. Conrad Worrill, national chairman of the National Black United Front, presented the United Nations with an indictment against the U.S. government that included 134 pages of evidence citing individual cases of hangings, death penalty executions, murder and injustice. The courts of the United States have consistently denied charges of racism.

It was Colin Powell who conveyed the Clinton administration’s refusal to participate in the 2001 United Nations Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance in South Africa. Human rights advocates had hoped that the conference would force the U.S. to come to grips with the fact that there are problems that need to be addressed in the United States.

The military prison guards sodomized Iraqis with broomsticks, just like the New York Police Departmant sodomized Abner Louima. In the U.S., prison guards were videotaped terrorizing Black prisoners with guard dogs, just like the Iraqis were terrorized. We can never forget the brutalizing of Rodney King. Then, there is the infamous police murder of Amadou Diallo, shot 19 times while entering his home in Bronx, New York.

Xenophobia, the unwarranted fear or contempt for strangers or foreigners, was recently addressed by Dr. Jade Diamond, a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) biologist who concluded that, during the Paleolithic (caveman) era, hunters and gatherers encountered members of different groups who either ventured into their territory, or whose territory they ventured into. They soon learned to distinguish strangers and either ran from them or killed them.

According to Dr. Diamond, as their brains evolved, their future generations learned to automatically classify people as either “one of them” or “one of us.” Whereas, it may have initially been an act of self-protection, many developed a sadistic appetite for harming, maiming, terrorizing or killing people who are perceived as different.

(Dr. Harry Davidson is the co-chair of the Legislative Education Committee for the Association of Black Psychologists.)

Opinions expressed or written are solely that of their respective authors.