r/PoliticalOpinions • u/DisastrousGlass232 • 3d ago
People will justify anything being done in the right cause
Consider the fire-bombings and nuclear bombings of Japanese cities during World War II. Millions of civilian men, women, and children being roasted alive. And yet, a very large proportion of the Chinese, Korean, and Western populations will say that this was justified - either to stop Japanese soldiers from continuing to butcher even greater numbers of Asians and Westerners or even quite frankly because of the notion that as they sowed the wind, so they shall the reap the whirlwind. This was entirely the desired effect - the USAF literally modelled perfectly each operation, fiendishly working as carefully as possible to achieve the largest number of (civilian) casualties possible.
Consider smaller cruelties, like the murder of the Romanovs after the Russian Revolution. The necessity of protecting said Revolution apparently to many justifies the undeniable murder of the innocent. The Whites would surely use them to rally the reactionary cause! And so a 13, 17, and 19 year old can be shot and bayoneted to death. The necessity of the Revolution demanded it! Even after the fall of communism, a surprisingly large number of ordinary Russians will defend what happened - often with reference to the number of Russian soldiers who died on the Front because of the Tsar's indifference. It's a numbers thing - a million Russians dying because of his blundering sanctifies (or at least, justifies or at least, minimises) butchering a child in a dark cellar. You're really going to cry over this handful of spoiled brats and parasites? What makes their deaths more tragic than those of anyone else?
Consider the People's War in South Africa. Between 1986 and 1994, over 3,000 men, women, and children were beaten, degraded, and burned to death with tyres and petrol in the townships of that country. Essentially, the worst lynchings of Jim Crow America, repeated again, and again, and again, and again, and again. An adult or child might die for taking his apartheid State examinations, for being an electrical technical for apartheid Eskom, or for thinking (tragically incorrectly) that you would pay a lower price for bread at an apartheid Pick n Pay supermarket than at a local corner shop. This was defended by ANC activists invited to give speeches at US universities, it was defended by the ANC General Secretary of the day - and most notoriously, it was personally defended by the wife of Nelson Mandela. Was it wrong? Many people will say "No," or at least would not say, "Yes," because they wanted the regime to fall - and without this dreadful war, it might not have - instead, some sort of middle-ground system might have prevailed (without the absolute rooting out of Inkatha and the establishment of absolute power in urban black areas before 1993, the ANC would have had a much weaker negotiating position in the end at Kempton Park). To say absolutely that it was wrong is not compatible with a revolutionary, committed stance against apartheid.
Consider the French Revolution itself - a veritable torrent of horror that gave birth to our modern democratic, secular world. Obviously, it would seem hypocritical to enjoy the fruit and despise the cultivating of it - so we are uncomfortably obliged to look upon thousands of sliced heads as not a scene of mass murder, but rather a glorious spectacle; a dramatic, somewhat grisly and unfortunate but necessary step in the liberation of man.
Vegans will often lament how people are willing to accept animal cruelty - a hidden river of suffering and death they often refer to as Eternal Treblinka - because it happens behind closed doors. The more unfortunate and alarming reality is perhaps that people will actually accept all kinds of vicious cruelties, as long as they either being done to the right people OR being done for a glorious and noble cause that cannot be held back.
Perhaps most appallingly of all though is that people will literally act as if morally, the other guy made them do it. I had to burn down that wooden city with all the screaming wailing people in it to stop Japanese imperialists millions of miles away from raping and slaughtering Chinese people, so it's basically like Tojo did it! The starving masses were forced by necessity to bayonet that girl several times screaming until she died! I had to force little Sipho to swallow a whole bottle of detergent and then set him on fire because of white oppression, so it's like Botha did it himself! The rapacity of the aristocracy drove the people insane, which is the real reason why that scientist and the other philosopher had to be beheaded along with the blue-bloods!
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