Human violence has nothing to do with "male aggression." This is one of those delusions that dominates certain sectors of the academic world.

Human violence revolves around belief and disbelief. This is clear based on my studies of Hitler (40 years) and Bin Laden (20 years).

Belief in (a particulate god or ideology) becomes the basis of identity for certain human beings: the CORE of their identity. Someone (a group) who does not believe in or embrace the god or ideology in which one believes is experienced as a mortal threat to one's identity.

Human violence (a very abstract or symbolic form of behavior) has nothing to do with "genes." Violence erupts when an other group (people who do not believe in or embrace one's ideology) is experience as a mortal threat to one's identity. This is what the phrase "death to the non-believers" means.

Cultural forms of violence resolve around the preservation of identity, the desire to destroy those whose belief system is experience as acting to destroy one's own belief system.

I emphasize "nothing to do with genes" because the idea of "natural selection" has become equivalent--for some academics--to the idea of "divine creation" for some prominent academics.

Of course, human biology is based on evolution by natural selection by natural selection. We all know this. But some evolutionary psychologists (Steven Pinker? Richard Dawkins?) take the concept of evolution by natural selection--and then try to explain every human characteristic according to this concept. Nothing empirical about this project. It's based on deduction. "Human characteristics are based on natural selection, therefore let's try to explain every single human characteristic according to this principle. Music, whatever ("what about baseball?).  This is a fatuous, dishonest exercise.

Fanatic believers worship a god, conceived as omnipotent. Bin Laden worshipped Allah. Hitler worshipped Germany. The nature of the belief is fungible. The dynamic is the same. Whether one worships Allah or Germany, the non-believer is experienced as a mortal threat to one's identity.

For radical Islamicists, the infidel can be anyone. For Hitler, the idea of the infidel was very specific. Hitler identified the Jew as the specific kind of human being that did not embrace the German nation. Killing Jews was killing that group identified as radical non-believers.

Hitler himself never killed a Jew in his entire life. His violence had nothing to do with "instinctual aggression." His violence was an hysterical response to the idea that some people did not believe in or embrace the god that he believed in and embrace.

The Final Solution was not simply violence toward Jews. It was a vehicle toward compelled Jews to submit to the German god. "You do not believe in the omnipotent power of our God, Germany? We will show you. We will teach you a lesson." When the gas was released in the gas-chambers, the disbelieving Jew would become a believer. He would understand the omnipotent power of the German god.

Bin-Laden's attack on the world trade center had an identical structure: NOW YOU UNDERSTAND THE POWER OF OUR GOD, ALLAH.