When Fighting Evil Creates More Evil

I find it fascinating that, sometimes, the very people who oppose a particular form of darkness do so with the same exact evil they profess to oppose. When terrorists murder innocent people in America, the government rightfully denounces the actions but then responds with invasion and exponentially more murder of innocents. Many self-identified “conservatives” rejoice, turn a blind eye to their government’s injustices and don’t see their double standard. Perhaps they view people from other cultures as less human. Or perhaps their unfettered commitment to authority, flag and uniform blinds them from being able to have eyes to see that the intentional killing of innocents is murder – whether the killing is done instantly by bombs or slowly by sanctions. This is true no matter who “started it”. Tragically, each evil perpetuates exponentially more evils on each side of the conflict.

There are also many so-called “liberals” who rightfully perceive the historical injustices perpetrated towards particular people (e.g. women, African Americans) as evil but then have the exact same level of intolerance for people from other groups (European descendents, males, southerners, Christians). I recently heard an interview where a corporate executive rightfully pointed out that she didn’t believe it right to judge or exclude others from societal functions because of their genitals or skin pigment but then went on to berate “white men” and encouraged women to keep lists of their male coworkers who have crossed them in any way so that they could fire them when they became the boss. Sound like a double standard? When you flip the roles, it’s obviously wrong but, according to “liberal” mental gymnastics, it’s not racism or sexism if the groups that they are criticizing are part of the powerful elite.

Let’s pick this distortion apart. First of all, it’s not true that southerners and Christians are the powerful elite and yet it’s perfectly acceptable, according to today’s “liberals” to be prejudiced towards them. A coworker of mine constantly denounces racism (even going so far as to perceive racism where it doesn’t exist) but then he constantly makes fun of “rednecks” and Christians. I overheard him and some other coworkers sympathize with the Europeans who drove the Christians out of their land hundreds of years ago. Notice they were siding with the persecutors, not the targets of bigotry. I thought liberals were supposed to be tolerant. I thought liberals were supposed to be a voice for the weak and oppressed.

Secondly, the victim/oppressor worldview teaches that victim groups are the good guys and that those in authority are the bad guys. If this perspective is consistently applied, as Orwell points out in Animal Farm, then once the oppressed get into power then they will become the very evil they were fighting against. So perhaps the problem with power isn’t rooted in superficialities like genitals and skin pigment; perhaps the problem with power has to do with its breadth and application. This is a principle that many classical liberals were better at discerning. I struggle to find this consistent perspective with today’s “liberals”. 

Also, group identity politics is a horrendous way to view the world. It perpetuates hatred, division, bigotry, bitterness, violence, revenge, close-mindedness and hypocrisy. During Utah’s last election cycle I was lectured by several “liberals” about how disproportionately white and male the positions of power are, particularly in congress. I responded, perhaps wrongfully by joining their group identity games, by pointing out that it’s possible that these positions were mostly filled by men due largely to the fact that power attracts megalomaniacs and megalomaniacs tend to be mostly men. I may have received some brownie points for dissing on men but they continued to insist that the reason for disproportionate representation was due to systemic sexism and racism. Distinctions of correlation and causality are lost on people infected with confirmation bias.

Just after these conversations, their “principles” (if you can call them that) were put to the test.  An African American congresswoman in their district was challenged by a white, Christian male and guess who these “liberals” voted for? If they consistently applied the “principles” that they espoused then you would reasonably guess that they voted for the African American woman but you would be wrong. They voted for the “white, Christian male”. Why? That “white, Christian male” was also a “liberal”. The African American woman was not. In other words, many of today’s “liberals” don’t care about the things they outwardly profess as much as they do about their underlying ideology and crusade for power. As Malcom X pointed out decades ago, and as I’ve consistently observed from experience, minorities are just meat-shields for “liberal’s” quests for power: 

“The white liberal aren’t white people who are for independence, who are moral and ethical in their thinking. They are just a faction of white people that are jockeying for power…The liberal elements of whites are those who have perfected the art of selling themselves to the Negro as a friend of the Negro. Getting sympathy of the Negro, getting the allegiance of the Negro, and getting the mind of the Negro. Then the Negro sides with the white liberal, and the white liberal use the Negro against the white conservative. So that anything that the Negro does is never for his own good, never for his own advancement, never for his own progress, he’s only a pawn in the hands of the white liberal. The worst enemy that the Negro have is this white man that runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negros, and calling himself a liberal, and it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negros have.” 

An open-minded, self-identified “liberal” friend once asked me about my views on race since I am not white but also not “liberal” (by today’s standards). I’ll paraphrase here what I told him.

I believe it is a fallacy to paint everyone within a group with a broad-brush based on some limited experiences we’ve had or heard of from others. It’s a sin of ignorance. It hurts the accused. Willful ignorance is an even greater sin. Prejudice coupled with hate is the worst form of bigotry. Prejudism is perpetuated when we pit group against group. I believe in being tolerant of all individuals and loving them no matter what. We can’t overcome these painful hurdles of prejudice with more prejudice. We can’t create justice with more injustice. We can’t spread light with darkness. 

Seeing others as individuals rather than groups will help unite rather than divide, a principle that Daryl Davis enacted and that Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt discovered while researching the effectiveness (or rather ineffectiveness) of diversity training, sensitivity training and other forced inclusivity models. When all we can see is our differences, we grow further apart. 

I agree with Dr Martin Luther King Jr when he famously said: “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Today, many are only applying this important principle in particular instances that serve their political ends but completely ignore and act the opposite way when it doesn’t serve their political purposes. 

Some pick at scabs, unaware or not caring that these wounds will never heal with that approach. Many converts to ignorance, prejudice and hate can be gained by merely magnifying people’s focus on a few atrocities (real or not) perpetrated by an extreme minority. Scapegoats are a convenient shortcut to getting our way. Some socialist Germans took this dishonest approach towards some “undesirables” in the 1930s-1940s and were very effective at propagating the basest of human instincts of almost their entire country in the process. Today’s socialists are playing the same dishonest, group-identity games. Through much of today’s movies, media, government and academia, they magnify the horrific words and actions of a few to make it seem commonplace and then slap toxic labels on anyone who they view as their enemies as “racist”, “sexist”, “misogynist”, “homophobe”, etc. They purge their enemies of their voices and livelihoods by merely accusing them of these toxic things. They distort the contexts of the accused’ comments or they dig up something wrong about that person’s past and shine a focal beam on it for the world to see. Or they make things up. Lying is ok; the ends justify the means. “Let us do evil that good may come.” The point is that the “ruling class is evil” so using any means necessary is justified to eliminate them and anyone who looks like them. Many buy into this seemingly righteous crusade. But, as Nietzsche put it,

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”