Tag Archives: Human Rights

The crimes of the leader

When is an entire nation guilty of the crimes of its leader?

In the aftermath of World War II, there was considerable discussion about the collective responsibility of the German people for the horrific actions of the Nazis. By the mid-1950s, it was almost impossible to find a German who had ever been pro-Nazi—everyone was against it from the start. Whether it was from shame, fear of association, or cognitive dissonance, they would have you believe there was only ever a handful of Nazis and their supporters in Germany.

The truth hardly needs defending. The great majority of Germans knew what the Nazi Party stood for. The last free election held in pre-war Germany was in November 1932, when the Nazi Party won 33% of the vote. The March 1933 election, when the Nazi Party won 43% of the vote, was held after the Reichstag fire and in the presence of significant political intimidation. Before the last free election, the German people knew Hitler. He was openly anti-Semitic, anti-communist, and anti-democratic. In the 1920s, he compared Jews to germs, stating that diseases cannot be controlled unless you destroy their causes. By 1925, he had argued for the special entitlement of Germans for Lebensraum and the conquest of Slavic lands in Eastern Europe. He attempted a coup and established a paramilitary force.

Almost immediately after he won the March election in 1933, he established the first concentration camp (Dachau) for any social and political undesirables. He was also openly anti-Roma and Sinti, and anti-Catholic.

The tendency towards everything that followed historically was there for all to see. What responsibility did the German people have in 1933 to resist? What about ‘34, ‘35, ‘36, ‘37, … ‘45? In 1945, actual membership of the Nazi party was at its highest, about 10% of the population. When were the German people collectively responsible for their government’s actions?

In many ways, the question is unfair. How can a Bavarian farmer bear the same responsibility as a concentration camp commandant? Those who joined the party, served in the Einsatzgruppen, or otherwise actively participated in Nazi crimes must bear a more direct criminal and moral responsibility. What of the civil servants? What of those who made sure the infamous trains ran on time, delivering millions to their deaths? What is the moral calculus associated with the flow of benefits—direct and indirect—from the persecution of others, such as cheap farm labour from concentration camps, a new home, more job availability, etc.?

The night of 9 November 1938 was Kristallnacht—a pogrom against Jews throughout Germany and Austria. Over 1,400 synagogues were burned, thousands of Jewish businesses were destroyed, Jewish homes were ransacked, and dozens were killed in the streets. The violence was public, visible, and undeniable. Evidence suggests that many Germans—perhaps most—disapproved of the brutality and destruction. But this disapproval remained private and passive. There were no mass protests, no general strikes, no widespread efforts to shelter Jewish neighbours. The gap between private discomfort and public acquiescence reveals something crucial about collective responsibility: moral squeamishness without moral courage is functionally equivalent to complicity. After Kristallnacht, no German could claim ignorance of the regime’s violent intentions. The persecution was no longer bureaucratic or hidden—it happened in city centres with flames visible for miles. If it hadn’t before, Kristallnacht was the moment when passive opposition became morally insufficient, when continued participation in or acceptance of the Nazi system—even by those who privately disapproved—became a choice that enabled everything that followed.

What does resistance look like? Rolling and continuous general strikes, protests, refusal to deliver to, repair, or assist the state apparatus. It is painful; it will result in loss of liberty, loss of property, and, probably, loss of life. Resistance starts with the most, not those with the least. It will fracture families and friendships.

Where Americans have resisted the Trump administration, they have used polite institutional resistance—lawsuits, protests, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor—all of which assume the system can contain someone who fundamentally doesn’t operate within its rules. It’s the equivalent of Germans relying on Weimar constitutional mechanisms to check Hitler after 1933. The Supreme Court has essentially unleashed a criminal President, because by definition, he cannot commit a crime, and he is only enjoined after he has turned a criminal act into a de facto reality. You cannot un-ring the illegal bells he rings.

That’s an outrageous parallel, you say. Donald Trump is no Hitler. And I agree. Donald Trump is a greedy, narcissistic kleptocrat. And in the name of the American people, he has committed international crimes. He has supported genocide. He has ordered the extra-judicial killing of scores of people. He has threatened allies with invasion. He has had people imprisoned without due process. He has had people tortured. He has destroyed the multilateral system. He has put troops on the streets of US cities. He has attempted (it remains to be seen if he succeeds) to subvert the electoral system. He has compelled universities and multi-billion-dollar corporations to bend to his will. He and his family have stolen and extorted billions.

But whether Trump is Hitler is not the question. The question is: when do the American people bear collective responsibility for their leader’s actions? Like the German people in 1933, they knew their leader when they elected him in 2024—and unlike Hitler, they gave him a majority of the votes (not just the Electoral College). When they voted for him, they knew he did not follow the law. They knew he used violence to take what he wanted. They knew he was racist. They knew he pursued his personal interests above any greater good. They knew he was driven by vanity.

Where the German people opposed passively, the American people have resisted institutionally, at a time when institutions do not constrain power. Both groups chose mechanisms of resistance that enabled the regimes they oppose. Both nations bear collective responsibility for their leaders’ actions.

Postscript. Democracies offer their citizens a get-out-of-jail-free card. We elect a new leader, and we are absolved. We held the previous regime accountable and cast them out. Our sins are forgiven. I have always found it a slightly uncomfortable moral maneuver, but I do understand it.

In 2020, Americans could claim they had corrected their mistake. They voted Trump out. Democracy worked. They could also seek comfort in the fact that he failed to win the popular vote. Yes, he won the Electoral College vote, and that is a flaw in our system, but as a people, we rejected him. Then they voted him back in—with full knowledge of what he had done, who he was, and what he would do. The absolution was a lie. The accountability was performance. And the collective responsibility deepens.

Country X has no right to exist!

Feel free to insert any country’s name in the title according to your personal preferences or animosities. My initial instinct was to go for click-bait and title the article, “Israel has no right to exist”. This would be sure to inflame the passions of all the Israelis who condemn as antisemites anyone who asserts Israel’s lack of a right to exist. Then I thought about using “Taiwan”, “The United States of America”—too long—“China”, “Russia”, “France”…. It really doesn’t matter. Countries do not have a “right” to exist.

Countries either do exist or they don’t. Taiwan exists. Israel exists. Palestine lacks the functional sovereignty—control over borders, defence, foreign policy—that defines statehood. Should its people have the right to functional sovereignty? Absolutely.

My father once observed that there is nothing he found more frightening than a sudden proliferation of national flags. I heard the comedienne Sarah Silverman make the same observation. Flags connote nationalism, and nationalism distinguishes itself by being in opposition to a defined “other”—the quintessential thing that distinguishes us from you. It entitles us to have things and deny them to you, and take things from you without regard to your interests.

Nationalists do not look at other countries as having rights. They look at other countries as a wolf eyes a flock of sheep—an opportunity. Of course if the other country is a bear, they may need to be more circumspect, but even a bear can make a great rug.

Nationalism rest on mythic history to instrumentalise the population towards the leader’s ends, not the people’s interests. Now imagine a world in which, as the US seeks in its National Security Strategy 2025, all countries revive their mythic histories. No country will choose the history of the time when they were weakest, a vassal state or worse, completely absorbed. They will pick historical points of grandeur. Mongolia will claim vast swathes of Russia, China, and Central Asia—and rightly so! Turkey will recall it historical right to the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East. Who amongst us would not acknowledge Italy’s historical claim on England, France, Spain, Greece, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Israel. Neither China nor Russia have need for further over-reach on their territorial claims, but they could. Russia tells the tale of a sovereign need for a Pan-Slavic State that gobbles up Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Egypt should certainly need to have it’s Pharaonic claim to the Levant recognised. Spain will eye its Western hemisphere territories with delight and return to discussions of the Holy Roman Empire. Morocco can start planning it’s revitalisation of Andalusia. Denmark will talk of the glory days when Schleswig-Holstein was not enough—when the North Sea Empire under Cnut the Great included England, Norway, and parts of Sweden. Sweden will promote a modern Baltic State reclaiming its rightful territories in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and parts of Germany. Will France want to revisit the Louisiana Purchase? I think it should. Ecuador, Bolivia or probably Peru can sound the drums for a revitalised Incan empire. Once Burma has dealt with its pesky insurgency it can turn its eye to former glory: Thailand, Laos, and parts of Cambodia. Indonesia’s Majapahit claim to Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand, and the Philippines is entirely justified.

I would like to remind you all that when my ancestors stepped out of Africa, wherever their descendants placed their feet is mine to claim. And maybe this should be a new Pan-African myth of global capture.

Each of these claims rooted in a novelist’s fantasy of historical pride permits leaders to instrumentalise the young as warriors and breeders. And the foolish among us will swell our chests with the false pride of false histories.

For this story shall the good man teach his son;
And a national day shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
Our claim shall be remembered.

If you walk past a United Nations building you will see flags of every nation fluttering. The message is not of history but future shared endeavour.

The sole purpose of a country is to advance the welfare of the people circumscribed by its borders—citizens and non-citizens. When leaders start to instrumentalise the population—treat them asmeans to the leader’s personal ends and ambition—they fail.

Countries come and go. The people are constant: tilling, toiling, and typing. If they choose to come together in unity within a geographic area, that is their right. They may expand that boundary with the consent of those around, and contract it on a similar basis. It cannot be a whimsical destabilising thing that would instrumentalise the lives of others. It needs thoughtful deliberation that takes into account the rights and duties of all. The purpose is welfare—full stop. Not glory. Not destiny. Not at the expense of others.

With apologies to William Shakespeare for butchering the lines from Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3

The Holocaust Indulgence

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church sold indulgences—forgiveness of sin in exchange for money. The most famous indulgence-seller was Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar who promoted them with the catchy jingle: “As soon as the gold in the casket rings, the rescued soul to heaven springs”. And for the right price, Tetzel hinted, you could purchase forgiveness in advance—a moral insurance policy against judgement for tomorrow’s transgressions.

Tetzel’s theological snake oil was the ultimate fuel for the Protestant Reformation.

Today, we are all witnesses to a modern version of the indulgence, the Holocaust indulgence. No longer is money used to purchase forgiveness for future sin. Instead, the Holocaust indulgence trades on the deaths of six million Jews murdered by Germany between 1941 and 1945.

It is a moral license for genocide. Where Holocaust remembrance was once a shield against atrocity, a reminder of the constant need for vigilance against dehumanising hatred, it is now wielded as a sword to enable atrocities.

Not all Israelis are Jews; about a quarter of Israelis are not. And not all Jews are Israelis; just over half of the world’s Jews are not Israeli. Yet, Israel has worked carefully and decisively to conflate the two. It encourages the conversational mistake of saying Jews when what is meant is Israel or Israelis when what is meant is Jews. It is the keystone to the false claim that any attempt to hold Israel to account for its behaviour is a form of antisemitism, the false claim that to label Israel a racist state, an apartheid state, a colonial state, or a genocidal state is equivalent to calling for a pogrom against Jews. It is not.

European collective guilt for the centuries of antisemitism that culminated in the death of six million Jews is the grant of the Holocaust indulgence. They have allowed the State of Israel to trade on the death of six million people, many of whom would not have identified themselves as Jews until Germany did, many of whom would have abhorred the idea of genocide in their name.

Israel wields the Holocaust indulgence as a prophylactic absolution—a moral insurance policy that permits future transgressions in the name of “never again”. European governments grant it as a way of atonement for centuries of antisemitism. We have two different relationships to guilt, flowing in opposite temporal directions, yet both transactions use the same currency—the death of six million—to absolve modern atrocities.

The result is a closed, corrupted moral system where accountability becomes impossible. Israel can invoke the Holocaust to justify its actions, while Europe remembers its (justified) guilt to excuse its inaction or indirect support. Between them, they have created the perfect indulgence—one that absolves both past and future sin, leaving the present moment suspended in a moral vacuum where atrocity is not just permitted but sanctified.

Like Tetzel’s theological snake oil, the Holocaust indulgence has corrupted the very memory it claims to honour, transforming remembrance from a call to justice into a license for injustice.

When Calm Is Not Enough

Douglas Adams fans will know that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has the words “Don’t Panic” inscribed on the front cover in large friendly letters. Useful advice in challenging times, because panic implies thoughtless and impulsive action.

In contrast, in a recent substack essay, Sandro Galea offers a thoughtful and philosophically grounded argument for equanimity in times of political and institutional upheaval. His call is for calm, intellectual humility, and measured action—especially in the face of uncertainty, polarisation, and erosion of trust. And his argument is rooted in moral seriousness and philosophical tradition. His invocation of stoicism, pragmatism, and the idea that passion should be channeled, not indulged, is both admirable and deeply needed in many contexts.

There are certainly lessons in the essay for me, because I am not beyond the cathartic tweet and angry rant.

Nonetheless, even while I appreciate his concern about performative outrage, alarm fatigue, and the risks of losing strategic focus, I worry more that equanimity will not fully meet the gravity of the current moment.

Calm is positioned as a centrepiece of a rational response, but in the face of authoritarian drift, this may not be true. Galea rightly warns against seeing every disagreement as existential. But in some cases, that is exactly what they are. And here I must be careful. By “existential” I do not mean that human life will cease to exist. I do mean, however, that political traditions that hold the rights of the individual as core, are at existential risk. The current political landscape—marked by widespread disinformation, open contempt for liberal norms, and attempts to consolidate executive power through legal, rhetorical, and administrative means—is not a policy disagreement. It is a strategic project to transform liberal democracy into a performative, illiberal system.

In such a context, remaining calm (which is different from not panicking) is quite possibly the least rational response. It risks underestimating the nature of the threat—a threat that deliberately weaponises chaos, disorientation, and norm erosion to exhaust democratic opposition. When “everything, everywhere, all at once” (EEAAO) is the strategy for destroying a liberal democracy, false calm doesn’t preserve clarity—it masks danger. We become the poached goldfish cooking in the ever warming water.

Equanimity can blur the line between a policy disagreement and an ethical breech. Galea urges restraint in response to funding cuts, institutional restructuring, and ideological pressure. But what if these are not just isolated matters of administrative efficiency or political difference? What if they are tools in a broader campaign of harming the very system of government best designed to preserve the interests of the people? And that is exactly what the EEAAO strategy would suggest they are—autocracy trumped up as a policy disagreement.

When thousands are dismissed from public health agencies, when HHS disseminates misinformation about vaccines, when the infrastructure for climate science is actively dismantled, when court orders are ignored, when immigration laws a weaponised to silence dissent—this is not a policy disagreement. These are tactics with critical consequences, and they demand a response that acknowledges their moral stakes. Calm analysis may aid clarity, but when calm becomes habitual, it risks normalising that which should provoke action.

Equanimity is not ideologically neutral unless both sides approach an argument with the same calm. And this is one of the structural challenges in Galea’s framing. Equanimity is easier for those with institutional protection, social capital, and professional standing. It can become a posture of the “polite center-left”—technocrats, academics, and professionals committed to liberal norms—even while those norms are being strategically exploited or dismantled by authoritarian actors.

The political right in the U.S. has repeatedly shown a greater willingness to break norms, delegitimise elections, and mobilise extra-institutional power—sometimes violently. The political left, especially its center, remains norm-bound and institutionally deferential. This asymmetry means that equanimity, when over-applied, can function less as a virtue and more as a strategic vulnerability.

The threat of violence is asymmetrical. Before the 2020 election, journalists and political scientists openly worried about the possibility of civil war in the U.S.—largely premised on a Democratic victory being treated as illegitimate by the right. Those fears proved partially correct: Trump lost, and an attempted insurrection followed. In contrast, after Trump’s 2024 victory, those concerns vanished—not because the threat disappeared, but because the side most prone to violent refusal of democratic outcomes had won.

This reveals a deeper point: a center-left government is far more likely to provoke armed reaction than an authoritarian right-wing government is to provoke institutional noncompliance. Equanimity in such a context does not meet the moment. It plays into the imbalance and helps normalise a tilted playing field.

Triage under fire requires more than calm—it requires strategic urgency. “Don’t panic” is the better guide. In a war zone, triage doesn’t require serenity—it requires adrenaline management, urgency, and the ability to act decisively under pressure. Calm may feel virtuous, but if it becomes a default stance, it can dull the moral reflexes at precisely the moment they must be sharpest.

Not every act of protest needs to be loud. The language does not have to be obnoxious. But when the fundamental institutions of public health, science, and democracy are being deliberately undermined, a more direct, even disruptive, form of resistance may not only be justified—it may be morally required.

Sandro Galea is right that equanimity is not the same as inaction. And he is right that outrage alone does not build durable progress. But like any virtue, equanimity must be applied with discernment. When the rules are being rewritten, when the democratic compact is under open threat, and when harm is immediate and lasting, too much calm may serve not wisdom but delay—and delay is its own kind of complicity.

I admire Galea’s clarity of tone and seriousness of thought. My disagreement is with how best to meet a moment shaped not by healthy debate, but by coordinated disruption. In such times, clear-eyed, unpanicked urgency may better serve the cause of justice than calm.