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Dr. Mark Levene: The discrepancy between an actual threat and what the perpetrator claims to be a threat--is at the very heart of what one might call the genocide conundrum. Yet, paradoxically, this is the very reason that the perpetrator's claims cannot simply be dismissed out of hand, but require very careful examination and evaluation or insight into the perpetrator's mindset.
The repeated tendency by perpetrators to conjure up or imagine enemies, or to make of real ones something much more terrifying and dangerous than they actually are, represents a clearly cultural and/or psychological dimension to the genocide phenomenon.
Nazi ranting and raving about Jewish world conspiracy as just cause for their actions would suggest that worst cases of genocidal behavior are not simply deeply irrational but completely mad. Indeed, the persistence and prevalence of genocide since the destruction of Nazism--running to an average of almost one case a year since 1945--must lead one to further ponder what motor continues to drive this seemingly irresistible lunacy?
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