Despite my distaste for digging into human misery, today we’re tackling Russell Williams, the Canadian Air Force colonel who has been sentenced to life in prison, including solitary confinement for 25 years, for murdering Jessica Lloyd and Marie-France Comeau, and dozens of escalating acts of depravity including abduction and rape.

Describing someone as evil incarnate doesn’t illuminate much. But there’s a method to the melodrama. By describing the murder as senseless and evil, Williams becomes evil - beyond the realm of inquiry. We must simply condemn and punish him. But what happened to those women is awful enough to warrant a few questions. Is there a link between Colonel Williams’ sadism and his chosen career?



How did a man like this prosper in the military for so many years? Prime Minister Harper said, “Obviously, this is no way reflects on the [Armed] Forces.” The Chief of Air Staff says it “troubles” him that no one knew about Williams’ behaviour. The experts have scoured his past but have found nothing. They’re quick to point out that Williams kept everything hidden: on the surface he was a loving husband. Someone as meticulous as Williams was smart enough not to get caught, and being a high-ranking officer would place him above suspicion, giving him leeway to pursue his crimes until he got careless.

The elephant in the room is the fact that this man was a career military officer. You can see how this might be embarrassing. The Canadian forces have been engaged in ‘saving’ women in Afghanistan from the Taliban for the past eight years. The Taliban are the supposed to be the ones raping and controlling women, not our troops. And yet here’s a commander whose hobby was an escalating violation of women. What's the relation between his sadism, and the violence of his employer?



I don’t think all soldiers are sadists. I have a lot of empathy for soldiers precisely because of the trauma they're exposed to, which can cause sadism, suicidal tendencies and PTSD. But if those pre-existing tendencies exist, wouldn't the army bring them out? Officers in particular have the job of breaking down personalities, making them conform to the arbitrary group discipline of a machine whose job it is to move, work and kill when ordered to.

Here are three examples.

1) Feminists have long noted the link between violence against women and military violence. Women are the object that male soldiers can prove their masculinity against. "Militarism depends on creating an other by declaring distinctions between two groups. The other is asserted to be “less than.” The other must then be controlled or destroyed."

2) An insight from James Bauhaus, a prisoner writing about the psychology of prison guards:

personalities tend to warp toward sadism as certainly as absolute power corrupts absolutely. Sadism results from there being no possibility of real accountability.

A good correctional officer is the new guy: usually one who has had no contact with the military. If he is a good guy despite military service, he's usually one who has never actually killed anyone. Extensive training in efficient mass-murder techniques tends to make life cheap, especially when it belongs to the people we are programmed to hate.

3) Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism:

Sadism originates from ungratified orgastic yearnings. The facade is inscribed with such names as "comradeship," "honor," "voluntary discipline." Concealed behind the facade, we find secret revolt, depression to the point of rebellion, owing to the hindrance of every expression of personal life, especially of sexuality. (192)

This suppression has a function:

a large part of the sadism made use of by the ruling class to suppress and exploit other classes is to be ascribed chiefly to the sadism that stems from suppressed sexuality. (384)

Note the theme: militaries, fascism and capitalism all use repression, and particularly sexual repression, to control men. That gets externalized against women, prisoners and anyone who's weaker.

There are plenty of good fiction books about the insanity of the military. Catch-22, The Good Soldier Schweik, Johnny Got His Gun. But I urge you to watch some non-fiction, Winter Soldier.



Filmed in 1972, it’s the testimony of US soldiers talking about what they did and witnessed in Vietnam. The men are confronting that they tortured and killed real people. You can see the trauma they've faced, recounting what they’ve lived with day and night. Is there really much difference between what these men did and what happened to Lloyd and Comeau? How about U.S. soldiers in Iraq? How about official UK army policy training interrogators in torture? Canadian complicity in torture? These examples scratch the surface. Williams never served in Afghanistan, but there's a disturbing parallel between the horrors he visited on women and the horrors militaries pile on civilians.

Williams' crimes were textbook suppression of sexuality and rebellion. The organisation he worked for relied on suppression. Correlation does not equal causation. But it's worth investigating why there's so much correlation, between different militaries, different wars and a depressingly consistent sadism. Because it's the worst form of hypocrisy to train people to kill when asked to, and then act horrified when one of the enforcers of that system turns that drive on those around them. The army probably didn’t create Colonel William’s sadism. But it may have provided a psychological structure that rewarded his frustrated sense of self with absolute authority. If so, two women paid for that with their dignity and their lives.

Labels: military, Russell Williams, sadism, violence against women