Quotes from Daniel Chirot

Yet, as should become obvious, genocidal events have been common enough to suggest that they cannot be explained as some kind of deviant behavior. On the contrary, given the right circumstances, normal human beings are all too ready to kill by category.

Conflict can become genocidal when powerful groups think that the most efficient means to get what they want is to eliminate those in the way. It can become equally or more murderous when the motive is revenge, and descend to the worst levels of slaughter when there is great fear that the survival of the enemy group might endanger the survival of one's own group.

The most intractable cause of genocidal killings emerges when competing groups—ethnic, religious, class, or ideological—feel that the very presence of the other, of the enemy, so sullies the environment that normal life is not possible as long as they exist.

The important point to understand here is that it is unnecessary, and even misleading, to think of those who engage in large-scale killing of civilians as somehow abnormal. Given the right circumstances, it is not too difficult to turn a significant proportion of humans into mass murderers. The disgust one may feel, the identification with the victims, the sense of unfairness can all be overcome and have routinely been overcome with training and experience.