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As a side-note, you can have a sense of honor, or even consider yourself a good person, and nevertheless murder pregnant women and children as part or your day

by Yoric 2y ago

As a side-note, you can have a sense of honor, or even consider yourself a good person, and nevertheless murder pregnant women and children as part or your day job. They key is to not consider them as human beings or, alternatively, to consider that you're somehow doing it for their own good, e.g. by saving their soul. Nazis (and Imperial Japan, and Crusaders, and plenty of others throughout history) made this possible at large scale by spending years of propaganda dehumanizing the "other". Sadly, we're seeing a trend of doing the same alongside political lines these days. It's not yet as bad as Mein Kampf, but it's very, very worrying.

close04 2y ago
> consider that you're somehow doing it for their own good I was surprised to read about Fritz Haber, the man who catalyzed nitrogen fertilizers and other "nice" things like mustard gas, that he was convinced that mustard gas is the humane solution for ending the war. Since WW1 would end faster from his perspective he was saving lives. Almost perfectly mirrors the view that people dropping atomic bombs on Japan had. Both horrible weapons, one used mainly on the battle field, the other on cities packed with civilians. Both deployed with the same "we're actually saving lives" attitude. Today only one is considered an atrocity almost everywhere in the world. The other still gets the same explanation as it did 8 decades ago.
- bagels 2y ago
  Which one is considered an attrocity? I'd argue both.
  - close04 2y ago
    I agree. But even as recently as last year almost half of Americans still believed dropping the nuclear bombs was justified, with half of these people being convinced that using them on cities was the best thing to do [0]. [0] https://thebulletin.org/2024/08/what-do-americans-really-think-about-the-bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/ https://thebulletin.org/2024/08/what-do-americans-really-thi...
fc417fc802 2y ago
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by Yoric 2y ago

close04 2y ago

> consider that you're somehow doing it for their own good I was surprised to read about Fritz Haber, the man who catalyzed nitrogen fertilizers and other "nice" things like mustard gas, that he was convinced that mustard gas is the humane solution for ending the war. Since WW1 would end faster from his perspective he was saving lives. Almost perfectly mirrors the view that people dropping atomic bombs on Japan had. Both horrible weapons, one used mainly on the battle field, the other on cities packed with civilians. Both deployed with the same "we're actually saving lives" attitude. Today only one is considered an atrocity almost everywhere in the world. The other still gets the same explanation as it did 8 decades ago.

bagels 2y ago
Which one is considered an attrocity? I'd argue both.
- close04 2y ago
  I agree. But even as recently as last year almost half of Americans still believed dropping the nuclear bombs was justified, with half of these people being convinced that using them on cities was the best thing to do [0]. [0] https://thebulletin.org/2024/08/what-do-americans-really-think-about-the-bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/ https://thebulletin.org/2024/08/what-do-americans-really-thi...

fc417fc802 2y ago

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