Abstract

In the literature on sympathetic resistance (also referred to as ally activism, bystander interventions, or outgroup activism), bystanders’ action against violent oppression is theorized to have substantial political impacts. However, much work in this area reveals bias, assuming a negative set of moral and psychological attributes (e.g., passivity). We argue that this bias arises partly from not sufficiently accounting for the socio-political context. Applying a situated perspective to the case of the Rwandan genocide—an example of ethnopolitical violence in a multi-ethnic, institutionally authoritarian context—we posit that two systemic strategies (instrumentalization of ethnicity and systematic terror) shape bystanders’ subjective perceptions of an outgroup’s oppression, thereby repressing sympathetic resistance and demobilizing solidarity with ethnic outgroups to facilitate bystander passivity in ethnic conflicts. We call for future research to test our theoretical ideas and to better situate the psychology of sympathetic resistance in its sociopolitical context.