EDITO 22
When Humiliation Becomes a Driving Force
By Louis Perez y Cid
From Hannah Arendt to Stanley Milgram, we know that ordinary people can be driven to violence by circumstances. With Ervin Staub, another reality emerges: it is not only orders or systems that lead to violence, but the slow accumulation of wounds, humiliations, and injustices. Where social bonds break down, radicalism finds fertile ground.
There is no easy mystery. Violence does not spontaneously arise. Only trajectories.
Persistent poverty, physical or mental confinement, repeated trauma, a sense of injustice—these factors do not mechanically produce perpetrators, but they create vulnerabilities. And these vulnerabilities, when they encounter neither structure, nor recognition, nor a way out, can transform into anger, then into hatred.
Ervin Staub's work is unambiguous: collective violence rarely arises from a single shock. It is rooted in an accumulation. A slow sedimentation of frustrations, unhealed wounds, and victim narratives that ultimately structure a worldview. At this stage, violence no longer appears as a deviation, but as a response.
This is where the tipping point occurs. When the individual no longer sees themselves as the agent of their own destiny, but as a perpetual victim of an unjust order. When humiliation becomes identity. When the other ceases to be a fellow human being and becomes someone responsible. Then, the logic of revenge takes hold, almost naturally.
Younger generations are particularly exposed to this phenomenon. Not because they are inherently more violent, but because they are more susceptible to these accumulations when no structuring framework is in place to contain them. In these gaps, radical rhetoric thrives, offering a simple explanation, a designated enemy, and above all, a promise of rehabilitation.
But let's be clear: understanding is not excusing.
Naming the causes does not erase responsibility. Refusing to see these mechanisms, on the other hand, is to prevent oneself from acting. For radicalization does not fall from the sky; it grows where the ground is left untended.
A society that tolerates humiliation, that trivializes perceived injustice, that allows frustrations to accumulate without outlet, is itself preparing its own fractures. It is creating the conditions for what it will later claim to combat.
The response, therefore, cannot be solely security-based. It must also be moral, social, and political. It must restore hope, reinstate a sense of fairness, and rebuild connections and structure. Not out of naivety, but out of clear-sightedness.
But this mechanism is not limited to fragile or fragmented societies. On a national scale, too, accumulated wounds become powerful narratives. Some states cultivate them, structure them, teach them. They transform the memory of humiliation into a political driving force. China, for example, has never ceased to recall the "century of great humiliation." This narrative is not merely historical; it is strategic.
It unites, it legitimizes, it projects. And above all, it draws a clear line: never again.
Here again, the point is not to judge, but to understand. Between a society that allows fractures to accumulate without a shared narrative, and a state that channels its wounds to fuel its power, the difference is clear. In one case, anger dissipates. In the other, it is transformed into willpower.
Humiliations never truly disappear. They accumulate, are recounted, and are passed down. But at a certain point, they cease to be a burden; they become a strength.
They can fracture societies… or fuel powers.
It all depends on what you choose to do with it.
From Hannah Arendt to Stanley Milgram, we know that ordinary people can be driven to violence by circumstances. With Ervin Staub, another reality emerges: it is not only orders or systems that lead to violence, but the slow accumulation of wounds, humiliations, and injustices. Where social bonds break down, radicalism finds fertile ground.
There is no easy mystery. Violence does not spontaneously arise. Only trajectories.
Persistent poverty, physical or mental confinement, repeated trauma, a sense of injustice—these factors do not mechanically produce perpetrators, but they create vulnerabilities. And these vulnerabilities, when they encounter neither structure, nor recognition, nor a way out, can transform into anger, then into hatred.
Ervin Staub's work is unambiguous: collective violence rarely arises from a single shock. It is rooted in an accumulation. A slow sedimentation of frustrations, unhealed wounds, and victim narratives that ultimately structure a worldview. At this stage, violence no longer appears as a deviation, but as a response.
This is where the tipping point occurs. When the individual no longer sees themselves as the agent of their own destiny, but as a perpetual victim of an unjust order. When humiliation becomes identity. When the other ceases to be a fellow human being and becomes someone responsible. Then, the logic of revenge takes hold, almost naturally.
Younger generations are particularly exposed to this phenomenon. Not because they are inherently more violent, but because they are more susceptible to these accumulations when no structuring framework is in place to contain them. In these gaps, radical rhetoric thrives, offering a simple explanation, a designated enemy, and above all, a promise of rehabilitation.
But let's be clear: understanding is not excusing.
Naming the causes does not erase responsibility. Refusing to see these mechanisms, on the other hand, is to prevent oneself from acting. For radicalization does not fall from the sky; it grows where the ground is left untended.
A society that tolerates humiliation, that trivializes perceived injustice, that allows frustrations to accumulate without outlet, is itself preparing its own fractures. It is creating the conditions for what it will later claim to combat.
The response, therefore, cannot be solely security-based. It must also be moral, social, and political. It must restore hope, reinstate a sense of fairness, and rebuild connections and structure. Not out of naivety, but out of clear-sightedness.
But this mechanism is not limited to fragile or fragmented societies. On a national scale, too, accumulated wounds become powerful narratives. Some states cultivate them, structure them, teach them. They transform the memory of humiliation into a political driving force. China, for example, has never ceased to recall the "century of great humiliation." This narrative is not merely historical; it is strategic.
It unites, it legitimizes, it projects. And above all, it draws a clear line: never again.
Here again, the point is not to judge, but to understand. Between a society that allows fractures to accumulate without a shared narrative, and a state that channels its wounds to fuel its power, the difference is clear. In one case, anger dissipates. In the other, it is transformed into willpower.
Humiliations never truly disappear. They accumulate, are recounted, and are passed down. But at a certain point, they cease to be a burden; they become a strength.
They can fracture societies… or fuel powers.
It all depends on what you choose to do with it.