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I think it's pretty reasonable to separate injustices by magnitude. If one doesn't do that, one begins to think things like "being asked to wear a mask is like
by throwaway5752 5y ago
I think it's pretty reasonable to separate injustices by magnitude. If one doesn't do that, one begins to think things like "being asked to wear a mask is like the Holocaust because in both cases the government told people what to do". It is a lazy way for one to make a point when they struggle to make a point on its own merits.
In fact it is a special and famous case of sophistry to leverage a tenuous connection between two things and declare they are comparable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence. To quote, "This fallacy is committed when one shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show equivalence, especially in order of magnitude, when equivalence is not necessarily the logical result"
You are correct - in both cases, Japanese Internment camps during WW2 and Norway Chess's banning of Russian competitors in a chess tournament are examples of cases where innocent individuals were harmed by collective punishment. I completely agree with you on that.
However, only a very silly person would think both actions are comparable. It would be extremely offensive to suggest they are. While they exist on a continuum, they are very, very far apart and any reasonable person can see that 1) the forced imprisonment of 100,000+ people for multiple years while being charged with no crime and 2) the temporary exclusion of several dozen entrants from an international chess tournament are not in the same moral universe.
The moral calculus of applying pressure to Russia to withdraw from a war of aggression that is killing thousands still isn't easy, and decent people can disagree civilly about it.