Hatred Is Not Stronger Than Bonds

One of the most disturbing phenomena during episodes of mass violence concerns individuals who hated a specific group and harmed some of its members while making exceptions for people they had a relationship with. A preexisting social tie, not moral consciousness, produces this aversion to harming a party to the relationship, even if rescuing vulnerable individuals contradicts personal beliefs, orders, or group loyalty. Hatred is stronger than bonds only when the latter are weak, fraught, or missing in the first place. I call this phenomenon relational exceptionalism. Bringing the anthropological literature on interpersonal relationships to bear on studies of mass violence, this article illustrates that to trigger relational exceptionalism, a relationship requires not reciprocity, trust, obligations, affinities, or nearness, but a degree of autonomy.