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>if the police are after someone "that person must have done something wrong" and therefore "deserved" whatever happened to them This, to me, is one of the pri

>if the police are after someone "that person must have done something wrong" and therefore "deserved" whatever happened to them This, to me, is one of the primary tenants of what is evil about naziism, or tyranny, or whatever you call it. You can see it alive today. Lookup police cam, or "karma justice" kind videos on YT and see people in the comments cheering on the beutality or deaths of people whom they know next to nothing about. A civil and just society would see the human in everybody, and try to afford everyone natural rights. Not a judge, jury and executioner in the form of a uniformed enforcer on streets.

geezerjay 7y ago
> This, to me, is one of the primary tenants of what is evil about naziism, or tyranny, or whatever you call it. One of the biggest disservice that has been made towards humanity is the fabrication of this notion that evil totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany or Communist Russia are exceptional events created by exceptional individuals who are extraoedinarily evil up to a supernatural/cartoonish level. This fabricated sense of exceptionalisn leads people to believe that thesr massive levels of cruelty are impossible to reproduce, thus there is no likelihood that our little world could ever descend into that state of affairs, even when we repeatedly see cases where police forces assassinate citizens with complete impunity.
0815test 7y ago
>>if the police are after someone "that person must have done something wrong" and therefore "deserved" whatever happened to them > This, to me, is one of the primary tenants of what is evil about naziism, or tyranny, or whatever you call it. Indeed, this is what Arendt meant by "the banality of evil". It's what people are cautioning about when they tell us that by far the smallest, most vulnerable, most heavily-oppressed minority of them all is the individual.
- mcv 7y ago
  There have been plenty of (questionable) psychological and sociological experiments that have shown that most people are perfectly capable of evil in the right (or wrong, I suppose) circumstances. That means the only way to prevent evil is to shape the circumstances in such a way that encourage people to do the right thing, and discourages evil. So with police, you can't merely trust them that they will always do the right thing and not mistreat or murder suspects, you have to train them, hold them accountable, and create a culture where bad behaviour is simply not acceptable. My impression of the US police (from reading these kind of stories, as a foreigner, not having any first-hand experience with it) is that US police frequently fails on some, and sometimes on all three of these issues.

geezerjay 7y ago

> This, to me, is one of the primary tenants of what is evil about naziism, or tyranny, or whatever you call it. One of the biggest disservice that has been made towards humanity is the fabrication of this notion that evil totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany or Communist Russia are exceptional events created by exceptional individuals who are extraoedinarily evil up to a supernatural/cartoonish level. This fabricated sense of exceptionalisn leads people to believe that thesr massive levels of cruelty are impossible to reproduce, thus there is no likelihood that our little world could ever descend into that state of affairs, even when we repeatedly see cases where police forces assassinate citizens with complete impunity.

0815test 7y ago

>>if the police are after someone "that person must have done something wrong" and therefore "deserved" whatever happened to them > This, to me, is one of the primary tenants of what is evil about naziism, or tyranny, or whatever you call it. Indeed, this is what Arendt meant by "the banality of evil". It's what people are cautioning about when they tell us that by far the smallest, most vulnerable, most heavily-oppressed minority of them all is the individual.

mcv 7y ago
There have been plenty of (questionable) psychological and sociological experiments that have shown that most people are perfectly capable of evil in the right (or wrong, I suppose) circumstances. That means the only way to prevent evil is to shape the circumstances in such a way that encourage people to do the right thing, and discourages evil. So with police, you can't merely trust them that they will always do the right thing and not mistreat or murder suspects, you have to train them, hold them accountable, and create a culture where bad behaviour is simply not acceptable. My impression of the US police (from reading these kind of stories, as a foreigner, not having any first-hand experience with it) is that US police frequently fails on some, and sometimes on all three of these issues.