This blog post is part of the Seminar Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience, April 10, 2025, funded by the WARFUN project.
In photo and video material of violent conflict, a phenomenon regularly occurs that needs interpretation: perpetrators of violence who appear to enjoy their actions, or bystanders laughing or smiling while others commit violence. While laughter is popularly associated with relaxation, the laughter of perpetrators and bystanders seems to contrast severely with acts of violence and humiliation.
Even more so, watching videos and photos or reading stories about laughing and joking perpetrators arouses incomprehension and sometimes even outrage among a more distant public. Especially for those who connect or sympathize with the victim(s), the combination of humor, frenzy, and violence feels extremely confrontational, revealing shocking apathy or even sadism. Accepting that a perpetrator is cruel is one thing but accepting that a perpetrator enjoys killing or mocks victims certainly is another.
The phenomenon of the laughing perpetrator is widely reported, mainly by those who sympathize with the victims or who are traumatized heirs of victim groups. Laughing at humiliation or killing in the microspace of violence and the ‘afterlives’ of such settings through photos, videos, or narratives raises two questions that I will address in this blog. The first question is, simply put, why do actors (perpetrators or bystanders) laugh in settings of violence? The second question is rougher: how do the – what I call – visual and narrative ‘afterlives’ of these settings produce conflict-interpretations, and why? This second question is important because interpretations of laughing perpetrators are often fundamentally dehumanizing, reducing the perpetrator to a sadist or an inhuman monster.
In the history of conflict and war photography, the laughing perpetrator appears in iconic photos and video footage: The enthusiastic crowd attending the lynching of a black American (Sontag 2003, 72-3; Smith 2021, 2-4); the smiling German soldiers making Jews brush the pavement in Vienna (see: Jewish Shoah Center), the seemingly smiling Ustaše about to sew through the neck of Branko Jungić (see: Free Republic), the American prison guards smiling at the pile of naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib; IDF soldiers mocking Palestinians and Palestinian culture and habits online; these pictures and videos often have assertive afterlives as they reverberate sometimes for generations. They influence how we look at past conflicts, how we distance ourselves from the conflict spaces of these perpetrators and bystanders and imagine our position at the good side of history. This material – videos but mostly photographs – may eventually become part of collective antagonistic memories about monstrous perpetrators and vulnerable victims. If this happens, understanding the laughing perpetrators as human equals condoning them. But not understanding this perpetrator blocks a sharper analysis of why (some) people commit or even seem to enjoy violence under certain circumstances.
In addition to this visual material, the laughing perpetrator, who seems to enjoy war, battle, humiliation, and even killing, appears in many narratives, from zones of exception like concentration camps and prison camps, to war zones, combat zones, and street fights. The narrative about the laughing perpetrator contradicts interpretations of conflict, warfare, and violence as exceptional, serious business (De Lauri et al 2024). In this blog, I will confine myself to the visual witnesses of this perpetrator and ask why specifically photo and video material of laughing perpetrators has such intense afterlives. How do these visualized smiles, cheers, laughs, or gloats contribute to the intensification of memory and the iconization of suffering, and why? In other words, is it a coincidence that at least some of the photos and videos I described above are familiar to you, the reader? I would argue that it is not, but rather that the very smiles seen on this material for viewers contrast sharply with the violence on display and thus contribute to the notoriety or even iconization of the material. This sheds light on how we perceive laughing and how we perceive violence and human emotions.
Let’s be clear about this: the iconization of the laughing perpetrator is not inherent to the setting of violence where killing or humiliation occurs. The microspace of violence differs greatly from the public, political, and academic spaces of interpretation where the iconization occurs. As the Warfun project shows, based on narratives from those who experienced the ‘fog of war’ firsthand, human emotions do not stop at the frontline of conflict. Excitement, release, anger, fear, joy, compassion, camaraderie, cruelty, surprise “coexist,” while together, “these emotions shape the way war permeates the memories and bodies of those who experience it” (De Lauri 2024). Photos and videos become iconized in the external spaces of violence, where strategy, outrage, and interpretation take place. Such photos and videos are snapshots of a situation, often created by those belonging to the group of the perpetrators and frequently intended to impress the home front. However, interpretations are activated as this material survives the conflict and swaps context. The laugh may become a token of the inhumane sadism and monstrosity of the laughing perpetrators and bystanders, and creates spaces for the distant onlooker to morally disidentify.
Understanding Laughter
The laughing perpetrator is problematic because laughter and violence don’t mix well in most people’s interpretation. Additionally, what is humorous varies among individuals and requires specific commitments to cultural norms and (political, religious) beliefs. What may be benign for some can be offensive to others, which can actually also be part of the fun. For example, Muhammad cartoons may be amusing for those who are not devout Muslims; the artwork ‘piss Christ’ by artist Andres Serrano can be ‘hurtful’ for devout Christians; jokes about the victim-groups of genocides are not well received by those empathizing with the victims; and jokes about traumatic events are generally unwelcome immediately after the event, such as jokes about 9/11. However, sometimes the shocked reactions of others can enhance the enjoyment, as the responses to the Danish Mohammed cartoons illustrate. Additionally, the taunting of victims from a seemingly threatening outgroup can become a spectacle in political arenas, exemplified by Venezuelan immigrant men who have their heads shaved, then are demeaned by their guards and led away. U.S. President Donald Trump presented a video of this during the 100-day celebration of his second term in Michigan in April 2025, as a cheerful crowd chanted “USA, USA” while watching the video. Clearly, humiliation can raise joy and can be seen as benign for a belief-sharing ingroup, but it can be considered offensive and shocking by groups that identify with or sympathize with the target group. This type of humor is generally referred to as schadenfreude.
Schadenfreude is the German term for deriving amusement or pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. It is, nevertheless, a pleasant feeling. According to Niels van de Ven, schadenfreude neutralizes envy, the feeling that often precedes the pleasure of another’s misfortune (van de Ven 2014, 115). Richard Smith (2013) argues that “the more a misfortune seems deserved, the more likely schadenfreude is in the open, free of shame” (xiv). Indeed, at the background of schadenfreude lies a moral universe that directs how we perceive what is just, proportional, and fits our understandings of hierarchy. We feel elevation if a ‘wrongdoer’ or someone who has trespassed our moral perspectives on social situations faces misfortune. Nevertheless), there exist further elements to consider in this context, which extend beyond the relational models that govern human belief and behavior. Generally speaking, people love feelings of being better and superior. People strive towards superiority and self-pride along the lines of culturally valued moral dimensions. As a result, our striving towards superiority continually ‘evaluates’ the efforts of others. Being in the dynamics of competition, the other’s superior position or superior way of doing things, degrades my position. The inferiority of others, however, makes me feel better about myself. This works at an individual, but also, and maybe even stronger, at a collective level where feelings of being superior can be shared and related to the inferiority of categorical ‘others’.
In the domain of social psychology, the concept of humor and laughter is examined through the lens of asymmetry, as evidenced by the use of terms such as ‘envy’ or – even stronger – ‘resentment’. Envy, Niels van de Ven (2014, 115) writes, is an important antecedent of schadenfreude. Envy and resentment could be interpreted as what Cikara and Fiske call “counter-empathic respondings” (Cikara & Fiske 2013). A counter-empathic responding is the result of intergroup empathy bias and points to the pleasure felt in response to out-group members’ pain or suffering. Cikara and Fiske write, based on empirical material, that “[t]hese counter-empathic responses may at best allow indifference to others’ suffering, and at worst facilitate harm against them.” This might turn up in situations of violent conflict and war where people bond strongly with their national ingroup and may feel elevation or even celebration upon the enemy’s violent defeat. The appreciation of humor, Zillmann and Cantor write, is maximal “when our friends humiliate our enemies, and minimal when our enemies manage to get the upper hand over our friends” (Zillmann & Cantor 1976, 100-1). This may also be emphasized further as these ‘enemies’ are not necessarily combatants but can also be civilians representing features that belong to the outgroup, such as religion or dress, or may have been discursively framed as threatening ‘our’ moral society and labelled as rapists, thieves, gang members, and profiteers, like the Venezuelan males led away on the video shown by President Trump in the presence of a cheering crowd. Rejoicing in another’s misfortune is not so far-fetched anyway, especially not if the ‘other’s misfortune’ seems deserved.
Laughing in Times of Violence
Can we now better understand the laughing perpetrator? It is not uncommon for perpetrators of violence to deride and taunt their potential victims. The function of laughter (which is thus not necessarily the same as humor) while committing violence can have many reasons, including destressing the situation by ridiculing it, and bonding with peers. But often, escalations of violence presume a severe difference between ingroup perpetrators and bystanders on the one, and (potential) outgroup victims on the other. Indeed, structurally, this is comparable to the condition of schadenfreude discussed above. The two Columbine shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, for example, were reported to have laughed during their attack on the high school kids in Columbine in 1999. Their laughing evolved into a rhythmic bonding that created an alternative space and might have made their attack less stressful. Discussing several instances where perpetrators were reported laughing while killing others, Randall Collins understands ‘laughter’ in such situations as elements of a moral holiday. A moral holiday is a free zone in time and space, “an occasion and a place where the feeling prevails that everyday restraints are off; individuals feel protected by the crowd and are encouraged in normally forbidden acts. Often there is an atmosphere of celebration, or at least exhilaration; it is a heady feeling of entering a special reality, separate and extraordinary, where there is little thought for the future and no concern for being called to account” (2008, 243). Weenink (2013) writes that the term ‘moral holiday’ covers the “the unpleasant and unpalatable fact that people actually enjoy disorder and destruction.” Often, being together allows people in such situations to allow “each one’s mood to feed off the other’s”. As a result, they can be locked into a “mood of frenzy and hysterical elation”. For Collins, this direct social context is decisive. He calls this a hot rush and describes how emotions explode during an attack that remains unopposed. i.e., during a situation of extreme asymmetry between perpetrator and victim: “anger, release from tension/fear, elation, hysterical laughter, sheer noisiness (…) all of these are generating a social atmosphere in which persons keep on doing what they are doing, over and over” (2008, 94). This atmosphere is created through an asymmetrical entrainment: “the winner becomes entrained in its own rhythm of attack”. The winner’s moves are “reinforced by the moves of the loser” (2008, 103; Collins 2022). Although Collins and Weenink use the metaphor of the moral holiday, this does not mean that the emotions they describe that erupt in the microspace of violence are extraordinary or exceptional. What is exceptional is the killing, not the feeling of superiority, or the pleasure of feeling power over others, or the elevation felt if one feels the support of a group of bystanders, or the schadenfreude felt if ‘the enemy’ is degraded. Killing is and remains extraordinary, but what leads up to the microspace of violence, the difference that is discursively and politically created between groups of people, the enjoyment of humiliating the ‘bad guys’, isn’t extraordinary at all.
The Afterlives of a Smile: Haunting Photographs
Now that we have approached the laughing perpetrator through some theories on humor and violence, let’s try to understand why precisely this laughter reverberates throughout history so severely.
Hugo Burkhard, a concentration camp prisoner, recalls how he will never forget the “horrible appearance of a tortured man and the satanic grinning SS scoundrel” who forced him to eat his own feces (cit in Westermann 74). Schadenfreude, confirming ingroup sympathy and outgroup bias, might transform into ‘schadenweh’ (from Weh, ‘hurt’) for those who sympathize or identify with the victims.
In addition to Burkhard’s context, settings of strong victim humiliation and perpetrator power can transcend their immediate contexts through visualities such as photos and videos that migrate into other areas where people empathize with the victims. Here, these materials have afterlives and may gain new meanings. Especially grimaces, smiles, and laughter contribute to the reputation and iconization of such materials.
In 2007, pictures were published in several Western news media outlets showing girls, women, and some men having great fun. In commentaries, these laughing people were placed in stark contradiction to their actual roles in the extermination machinery of Auschwitz. For example, Mail Online journalist Allan Hall (2007) reports that the photos “underline the sickening hypocrisy of the servants of Nazism – morally bankrupt, illimitably cruel – and yet able to laugh, joke, drink and sunbathe as if they were no different to anyone else.” Although this picture didn’t show violence, it was the absence of violence that highlighted the contradiction with the cultural memories of the observers in 2007, in which Nazi guards are labeled as inhuman monsters. This and other interpretations exceptionalize brutality by detaching it from human emotions (see De Lauri 2024), making it more difficult to understand how human emotions and human relations function in places like Auschwitz or during moral holidays, as explained above.
A picture that obtained an iconic reputation and became part of cultural archives guarded by those who identify with the victim group, is the 1942 photograph showing ustaše militia posing while threatening to saw through the neck of a Serbian man (Branko Jungić). This picture has a rich afterlife on the internet and is often shown in online contexts discussing ustaše brutality. Three of the five ustaše are shown smiling in the picture. The picture was found in the pocket of a dead ustaše in 1945. According to a webpage dedicated to him in 2002 (!), Jungić refused to convert to Roman Catholicism. The site continues by stressing that his “martyrdom” represents the culmination of the suffering of the Serbian Orthodox people in Potkozar (Potkozarje).
In the TikTok age, soldiers use humor to bond with support groups at home, portray bravery, and tease or mock critics, as seen in provocative TikToks by Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza. Such posts challenge norms, spread schadenfreude, and depict violence with levity. For example, in 2024, “Yazmine” reposted a video of a young man wearing an IDF uniform who says, “We are looking for babies but there are no babies left,” smiling broadly. A woman’s voice asks, “What babies? Say again,” to which the man replies, “No, maybe I kill a girl she was twelve but I looking for a baby.” The video picked up by ‘Yazmine’ was published at a time when international media was focusing on the fate of young children and babies in Gaza, while Israeli shows and press (although certainly not all) were downplaying the number of victims mentioned in international press and by the UN. “There are no babies left in Gaza” is a slogan that has been repeated several times, for example, also by Israeli football fans during the clash in Amsterdam in November 2024. Responses to Yazmine’s TikTok repost are interesting as they show a strong dehumanization of this Israeli soldier and Israeli soldiers more generally. Most respondents to the video take the soldier’s words literally and seriously. Among the more than 4500 mostly shocked comments, the words “disgusting” and “nazi” were very frequently used. Could it be that these shocking responses and disgust arise not only from the violent image that emphasizes the asymmetry between perpetrators and victims but also because this asymmetry is deepened by the smiles of the perpetrators? These pictures lend themselves well to being reactivated in different, or in later historical contexts, as meaningful references to ingroup suffering and outgroup bias. They also lend themselves to reversing the asymmetrical relationship expressed in the photographs, denying the perpetrators their humanity or portraying them as inhumane and incomprehensible.
As mentioned above, most pictures and video footage are created by those belonging to the perpetrator group. Sometimes, pictures and videos are designed to tease or shock. At other times, they aim to demonstrate to the home front what the warriors do to the despised enemy. Interpretations of laughing perpetrators show strong positionalities, disidentifying with the perpetrator’s emotions and actions, which easily leads to the dehumanization of the perpetrator and blocks understanding. However, this iconic dehumanization of the laughing perpetrator not only mystifies perspectives on what violence is and how to prevent it but also risks contributing to the same binary interpretation and dehumanizing dynamics that might have created the setting in which the perpetrator laughed. Taking emotions seriously, recognizing them, and understanding them is an important step to understanding violence and possibly to preventing it. After all, the emotion of being cheerful at another’s misfortune is, as we have seen, an all too human emotion.
References
Cikara Mina, and Susan T. Fiske ST. ‘Stereotypes and schadenfreude.’ In: Van Dijk, Wilco W., and Jaap W. Ouwerkerk, eds. Schadenfreude: Understanding Pleasure at the Misfortune of Others. Cambridge University Press; 2014:151-169.
Collins, Randall. 2008. Violence. A Micro-sociological Theory. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Collins, Randall. 2022. Explosive Conflict. Time-Dynamics of Violence. New York an London: Routledge.
De Lauri, Antonio. 2024. ‘Coda: the experience of war beyond exceptionalism.’ In War & Society, 44 (1): 172–177. https://doi.org/10.1080/07292473.2024.2409534
De Lauri, Antonio, Luigi Achilli, Iva Jelušić, Eva Johais & Heidi Mogstad. 2025. ‘Introduction to the special issue: war and fun: exploring the plurality of experiences and emotional articulations of warfare and soldiering.’ In War & Society, 44 (1), https://doi.org/10.1080/07292473.2024.2409532
Fiske, Alan Page & Tage Shakti Rai. 2015. Virtuous Violence, Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hall, Allen. 2007. ‘Day-Off from Auschwitz: The laughing death-camp guards at play.’ In Mail Online 19 September. Day off from Auschwitz: The laughing death-camp guards at play | Daily Mail Online
Potkozarje. 2002. BRANKO JUNGIĆ (1914 – 8. juli 1942).
Smith, David Livingstone. 2021. Making Monsters. The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization. Cambridge MA & London: Harvard University Press.
Smith, Richard H. 2013. The Joy of Pain. Schadenfreude and the Dark Side of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Van de Ven, Niels. 2014. ‘Malicious envy and schadenfreude.’ In: Van Dijk Wilco W., and Ouwerkerk Jaap W. eds. Schadenfreude: Understanding Pleasure at the Misfortune of Others. Cambridge University Press; 2014:110-117.
Weenink, Don. 2013. Decontrolled by solidarity: Understanding recreational violence in moral holidays. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library November.
Zillmann, D., & J. R. Cantor. 1976. ‘A disposition theory of humour and mirth.’ In Chapman, A.J., and H. C. Foot, eds., Humor and laughter: Theory, research and applications. London, England: John Wiley & Sons: 97-115.