Destroy Them Gradually

Displacement as Atrocity

By Andrew R. Basso

SERIES: Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights

Rutgers University Press

Perpetrators of mass atrocities have used displacement to transport victims to killing sites or extermination camps to transfer victims to sites of forced labor and attrition, to ethnically homogenize regions by moving victims out of their homes and lands, and to destroy populations by depriving them of vital daily needs. Displacement has been treated as a corollary practice to crimes committed, not a central aspect of their perpetration. Destroying Them Gradually examines four cases that illuminate why perpetrators have destroyed populations using displacement policies: Germany’s genocide of the Herero (1904–1908); Ottoman genocides of Christian minorities (1914–1925); expulsions of Germans from East/Central Europe (1943–1952); and climate violence (twenty-first century). Because displacement has been typically framed as a secondary aspect of mass atrocities, existing scholarship overlooks how perpetrators use it as a means of executing destruction rather than a vehicle for moving people to a specific location to commit atrocities.

In this brilliant intervention, Andrew Basso demonstrates that displacement constitutes its own understudied method of mass violence. Basso reveals the role of displacement in historical atrocities and, as we nosedive into intense climate change, how it is rapidly becoming perhaps the most prevalent form of mass destruction. Anyone concerned with the future of mass violence should read this timely contribution. Benjamin Meiches, Benjamin Meiches, associate professor of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at the University o

‘Destroy Them Gradually focuses our attention on spatial techniques of displacement and their prominent role in group destruction. Basso offers a compelling argument for taking displacement seriously as a crime and demonstrates the new and profound insights one gains when giving fuller attention to questions of when, where, and why this method of atrocity is deployed.’ Andrew Woolford, author of This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada a

ANDREW R. BASSO is an adjunct faculty member with the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy and Wilfrid Laurier University. He researches transitional justice, human
rights, and political violence in local and global contexts. He is the coauthor of From Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home (Rutgers University Press, 2022).

Introduction

Part I: Displacement Atrocity Crimes
Chapter 1 Extirpation: Understanding Annihilatory Forced Displacement
Chapter 2 Exposure: A Theory of Displacement Atrocity Crimes

Part II: German South-West Africa
Chapter 3 Trepidation: Colonized Namibia and Violent Horizons (1652-1904)
Chapter 4 Extermination: Germany’s Genocide of the Herero (1904-1908)
Chapter 5 Inescapability: The Nama Genocide (1905-1908)

Part III: The Ottoman Empire and Turkey
Chapter 6 Collapse: The Nadir of the Ottoman Empire (1839-1915)
Chapter 7 Excision: The Ottoman Genocide of Christian Minorities (1914-1925)
Chapter 8 Neurosis: The Hamidian Massacres (1894-1897)

Part IV: Central and East Europe
Chapter 9 Metamorphosis: A World Made New (9th Century-1945)
Chapter 10 Catharsis: The Expulsion of the Germans (1944-1950)
Chapter 11 Desolation: The Holocaust (1933-1945)

Part V: Climate Violence and Conclusions
Chapter 12 Tragedy: Logics of Displacement in the 21st Century
Chapter 13 Farce: To Destroy Them Gradually?
Chapter 14 Praxis: Seeking Justice and Disrupting Pathways

Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

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