James Waller comes to Pierce for a three part seminar about how regular people become mass killers

Sofiya Lavochina
Staff Writer
James Waller has an been in Holocaust and Genocide Studies for a great part of his life.

Two of his books were published, the first edition of “Becoming Evil” released in 2002 and the second edition in 2007.

Waller started the seminar stating that its ordinary people that preform extraordinary evil.

“For some of you [Cain and Able] is a story you can take on as being true and for others it’s a story you would see as mythology but for all of us this story has influenced some of the world’s understanding of conflict,” Waller said.

Cain and Able make a animal sacrifice to God the God looked with favor upon Able’s sacrifice.

The first two men in biblical history were a part of the first death recorded. In the Jewish, Islam, and Christians religions this is the first time death makes and appearance in the world.

It could have been anything like a heart attack or accident but coincidently it was a killing.

“You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you,” Waller recited a quote.
In 20th century we’ve lost five times the amount of victims in a non war-related death than the 19th century.

Waller showed that 10 percent of deaths in today’s society are because of war-related incidents and 90 percent were civilians.

On April 24, 1915 Turks killed Armenians. The president makes a statement that is two paragraphs long.

“The statement talks about the atrocities inflicted against the Armenians. Words like mass murder, human rights abuses, the violations, and horrendous deeds are mentioned. Everything except the actual word ‘genocide’ is used,” Waller said.

If the president calls the event ‘genocide,’ Turkey will remove its diplomats from the United States and more importantly Turkey will push out U.S. military bases, which are important for the country because of the work they’re doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another memorable mass murder event that Waller mentioned was the Russia verses Ukraine debacle.

Stalin created a man-made famine in the Ukraine because he was fed up with Ukrainian nationalism.

During the famine the Ukrainians waited until their children died of hunger and then cut off their legs to boil and eat as a source of protein.

Mass killings have a huge impact on people. Six million people just don’t all die at the same time; they are murdered one by one.

“Ninety-seven percent of children in Rwanda in 1994 saw someone get murdered,” Waller concluded.