Study Questions for Porpora, How Holocausts Happen

 

Monday, April 23

Porpora, How Holocausts Happen, to p. 38

Wednesday, April 25

Porpora, How Holocausts Happen, Chapter 3

Friday, April 27

Porpora, How Holocausts Happen, Chapter 4

Monday, April 30

Handouts

Wednesday, May 2

Porpora, How Holocausts Happen, Chapter 5

Friday, May 4

Porpora, How Holocausts Happen, Chapter 6

Monday, May 7

Porpora, How Holocausts Happen, Chapter 7; 2nd paper due

 

 

1.      Before reading this book, what was your attitude towards U.S. involvement in Latin America, and what sort of knowledge did you have about it?

2.      (Chapters 2 and 3)  What are the psychological and social factors that account for the fact that the most of the German people did nothing to stop the Holocaust?  Make sure you understand his account of the role of:

                           i.         Obedience to authority

                         ii.         Pluralistic ignorance

                        iii.         Diffusion of responsibility

                       iv.         Commitment to moral principles

                         v.         Halo effect

                       vi.       Propaganda

                      vii.      Proximity of victims

                    viii.      Anti-intellectualism

                       ix.      Ethnic and racial prejudice

                         x.      Selfishness (voting your pocketbook)

                       xi.      Nation worship

                      xii.      Anti-Communism (anti-Marxism)

 

Which of these factors are also present in the American people?

3.      (Chapter 4)  What has been going on in Central America that deserves comparison to the Holocaust, in Porpora's view?

a.       What are the two faces of genocide? 

b.      How is mass hunger caused by the social structure and not by nature?

c.       By what reasoning does he try to show that the United States bears a significant share of the responsibility for death and destruction in Central America?

4.      (Chapter 5)  How does he argue that the killing in Central America amounts to genocide?  How does this require some modification of the standard definition of genocide?  In what ways was what happened a ‘Holocaust-like event’?

5.      (Chapter 6)  What political and cultural factors does Porpora cite to explain why the US public accepted its government’s Central America policies?  What role does he assign to relativism in this?

6.      (Chapter 7)  What grounds does Porpora offer for claiming that U.S. citizens have a moral responsibility to find out what our government is doing and try to prevent it from pursuing murderous policies?  What, concretely, would we do, if we accepted his claims?

7.      For all of the claims referred to above, consider how well the author has made his case.  Are there flaws in his reasoning?  Are his factual claims credible?  Do you share his value assumptions?