Steven K. Baum

A chilling examination of how genocide divides us into perpetrators, rescuers and bystanders.

Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Rescuers

The Psychology of Genocide

In this book, Baum carefully guides the reader through the social mind and explains how the formation of social beliefs can be used as a narrative to determine reality. He offers a new perspective regarding how antisemitic legends and folk beliefs form the basis of our ongoing social narrative.

Antisemitism Explained

Steven Leonard Jacobs

Neil J. Kressel

Florette Cohen

In Antisemitism in North America, leading scholars offer a wide variety of perspectives on why the Jews in North America have sometimes faced considerable bigotry but have, in general, found a home far more hospitable than the ones they left behind in Europe.

New World, Old Hate

Antisemitism in North America

Genocide has tragically claimed the lives of over 262 million victims in the last century. Jews, Armenians, Cambodians, Darfurians, Kosovons, Rwandans, the list seems endless. Clinical psychologist Steven K. Baum sets out to examine the psychological patterns to these atrocities. Building on trait theory as well as social psychology he reanalyzes key conformity studies (including the famous experiments of Ash, Millgram and Zimbardo) to bring forth an understanding of identity and emotional development during genocide. Baum presents a model that demonstrates how people's actions during genocide actually mirror their behaviour in everyday life: there are those who destruct (perpetrators), those who help (rescuers) and those who remain uninvolved, positioning themselves between the two extremes (bystanders). Combining eyewitness accounts with Baum's own analysis, this book reveals the common mental and emotional traits among perpetrators, bystanders and rescuers and how a war between personal and social identity accounts for these divisions.

Steven K. Baum

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