Book: Extraordinary Evil

Overview
Barbara Coloroso’s Extraordinary Evil (2007) reframes genocide not as an eruption of incomprehensible barbarism but as an extension of everyday human dynamics that can be recognized, resisted, and prevented. Drawing on her background studying bullying and moral development, she shows how small acts of contempt and exclusion, when normalized and sanctioned by authority, can widen into campaigns of annihilation. The book blends history, social psychology, and practical ethics to argue that genocide is a human-made process with identifiable warning signs and that the antidotes, empathy, critical thinking, and moral courage, must be cultivated early and everywhere.

Case Studies
Coloroso traces a throughline across the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and the Rwandan genocide to demonstrate recurring patterns. In the Ottoman Empire, Armenians were isolated, vilified as traitors, and then deported and massacred under the cover of war; the subsequent century of denial is presented as the final stage of the crime. Nazi Germany reveals how legal codes, bureaucratic efficiency, and propaganda can industrialize dehumanization, with ordinary functionaries facilitating extraordinary evil. Rwanda exposes the combustible mix of colonial identity engineering, inflammatory media, and political polarization; in 100 days in 1994, roughly 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were murdered while much of the world watched. She also gestures to Darfur as a contemporary reminder that the cycle persists when signals are ignored and perpetrators face little consequence.

The Machinery of Genocide
Across these cases, the book identifies a sequence of steps that moves societies from prejudice to extermination: classification of “us” and “them,” symbolization and stereotyping, systematic dehumanization, organization and polarization, preparation, and mass killing, followed by denial. Coloroso emphasizes the banality of each step, name-calling, slurs, discriminatory rules, segregated spaces, coded media messages, before showing how they assemble into a machinery of destruction once backed by state power. Genocide does not require monsters; it recruits neighbors, clerks, teachers, and police through obedience to authority, conformity pressures, and careerist incentives, while granting moral cover through euphemism and legalism.

The Bystander Problem and Moral Courage
A central thread is the transformation of the schoolyard triad of bully, bullied, and bystander into the civic sphere. Genocidal regimes thrive on the passivity of bystanders who avert their eyes, rationalize, or prioritize safety and convenience over conscience. Coloroso highlights the countervailing figure of the upstander, the person who refuses to cooperate, shelters targets, disrupts propaganda, or speaks truth at personal cost. Stories of rescuers and resisters complicate the fatalism that often accompanies genocide studies, demonstrating that individual choices, multiplied, can slow or fracture a killing campaign. Silence and denial, by contrast, embolden perpetrators, erase victims, and seed future violence.

Prevention, Justice, and Education
Prevention begins long before militias mobilize. Coloroso advocates building communities, especially schools, that challenge demeaning language, resist scapegoating, and teach students to think critically, feel deeply, and act justly. Restorative practices that center accountability and repair, rather than humiliation and exclusion, are offered as foundations for humane civic life. On the international stage, she calls for early warning, protection of targeted groups, and credible consequences for incitement and atrocity. After mass violence, processes that combine truth-telling, accountability, and reintegration, such as Rwanda’s gacaca courts, however imperfect, can help communities reckon with harm and rebuild relationships, whereas impunity and denial guarantee recurrence.

Purpose and Tone
The book is concise, unsparing, and practical. By linking the ordinary dynamics of bullying to the extraordinary crime of genocide, Coloroso aims to make the problem legible and the remedies actionable. The message is double-edged: atrocity is never inevitable, but preventing it demands vigilant attention to everyday words and deeds, persistent resistance to dehumanization, and a refusal to be a bystander.