Why do victims of massacres go to their deaths?

In the mass murders, by the time the Einsatzgruppen had you facing the pit, they had already moved you through a long cordon where you were beaten or shot for doing anything but running forward. Before that, you were shot for making any move towards self-preservation in your ghetto. Before that, you were selected and shot or worked to death if you looked strong enough to be a problem. At each of these steps the survivors thought they might have experienced the worst that would happen. This problem cannot be solved by wishing harder to be brave.

The simple answer is: they didn't.

In Rwanda the killing apparatus was set in motion so quickly that people didn't have time to react and offer organized resistance to their neighbors. Only in Bisesero was there meaningful fighting.

In Chile enemies of the state were rounded up in the days following the coup and tortured to death.

In Argentina people were disappeared.

In Spain there were arrests, assassinations and reprisal killings.

At Katyn, how were the Poles to know they'd be shot one by one?

At Beslan, the attackers preemptively shot anyone perceived as a threat.

If your situation is 100% totally hopeless, it's probably preferable to most people to take the clean shot than to try to escape and have a potentially much worse death.

Will add this related tangent in. We're so far removed from human death, forget that we are just a bunch of organs inside a bag. If you ever see autopsy or gore footage, it's surreal. Idk I used to look at em to remind myself/ground me of what I am.

The other thing is how many people there are, that idea of visualizing everyone as a huge ball of meat compared to the Earth. But just to point out about being special when there are billions.

> Still, at that point there is nothing worse than doing what you’re told for the last ninety seconds of your life and making things easy for the death squad

This line was the point that invalidated the thesis for me. There are tons of things that are worse than accepting your death.

Maybe fighting back will cause harm to others. Maybe you will be tortured as punishment. Maybe you are in such pain that you want death altogether.

Death is obviously never a good option, but it doesn't take much imagination to think of far worse ones.

Usually, massacres result in guerrilla warfare, carried out by others.

Read "Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla", by Carlos Marighella, who was one.[1] And, of course, Mao.[2] Those are the two classic works. Mao is more about the politics, while Marighella is focused on guns and tactics.

[1] https://files.libcom.org/files/MarighellaManual.pdf

[2] https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/FMFRP%2012-18...

There’s a spectacular moment in Django Unchained where Leonardo DiCaprio (a generational plantation master) asks something like “why don’t they fight back?”

If you understand both the answer to that question and the fear underlying its asking, you understand a lot about how atrocity is sustained.

> Still, at that point there is nothing worse than doing what you’re told for the last ninety seconds of your life and making things easy for the death squad.

My brother has not heard of tortures without end. Compared to that, a bully to the back of your head sounds like a blessing.

Because they no longer have real agency. They are no longer sane persons and the arguments a sane person makes do not apply to them.

Why do (usually) wives stay in an abusive marriage? Because they are very ill and they do not think adequately about their situation. No true agency.

Especially for those who believe in an afterlife, why would you fight while siting on the edge of a mass grave (a hopeless situation) when you think you have something better waiting for you?

Not really sure what point this is making.

If you’ve spend years struggling to survive, starving and wasting away in a walled ghetto, and now you’re standing by a pit, facing armed soldiers intent on killing you… would you really have the will to run? Would you, weakened by hunger, even feel like you could run? Would you get very far if you tried? Would you want to fight to keep on living if life felt that hopeless?

Not always, the breakout or self-liberation of Jasenovac camp comes to mind. As wikipedia states, of the 1,073 who tried to escape, only around 80 survived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ante_Bakoti%C4%87

the answer is despair generally. To fight, people need hope.

When you're unarmed and surrounded by 15 men with guns who tell you that you're going to be executed you know that you're going to die. Sure you could maybe attack one of them and injure them before they shoot you, but what will that accomplish?

Some people would rather morn the fact that they'll never see their loved ones again or spend those short moments in prayer or reflection. Especially in cases where acts of horrific violence aren't in their nature.

Most of the massacres alluded to here used some variety of misinformation, secrecy, or euphemism to keep the calm and quell any heroics. Think "relocation" or "re-education". Even in the cases where they knew their fates, the settings were likely too swift or chaotic for any chance of successful resistance and there are countless stories of these attempts.

Frankly, this reeks of victim-blaming and shows a real lack of imagination for what has gone on in the world that you don't know about.

I object strongly to the characterization of the passivity of brutalized victims as "shameful".