Complicity

hobbsyoyo

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I am curious about the concept of complicity - specifically when does someone become at fault for crimes they did not directly commit themselves? I've been reading a whole lot about Warnher Von Braun and the ongoing border crisis in the US and it has me thinking a lot about when people cross moral lines and become part of the problem themselves.

Von Braun can be credibly thought of as a space cadet who's true passion was peaceful exploration of outer space. At the same time, however, he very clearly crossed into moral hazard by developing weapons for the mass-murder and terrorizing of civilians. Moreover, he participated in work camps which resulted in the deaths of more people building the V-2 than were killed by the V-2. Clearly he was complicit in the worst atrocities of the Nazis even as his image was thoroughly rehabilitated after the war.

Right now, the US is perpetrating the same sort of crimes against humanity on the southern border through the practices of massed, indefinite interment and the separation of children from their families. While you and I are not directly responsible for these crimes directly, at what point does our passivity make us complicit?

Does fiery rhetoric on a collegiate corner of the internet absolve us of the crimes of our government? Or do we have to be marching and openly resisting the government on this issue? Does frequent written pleas to our Congresscritters to stop the crimes count as resistance or is it just pissing in the wind?

And how do the motives of the crime perpetrators figure into the complicity of themselves and the populace in the crimes? As @Lexicus pointed out in my book review post, the Manhattan project had many parallels with the V-2 program - indeed they were both meant to end the war even if it meant mass civilian death. While Manhattan was meant to end the murderous Third Reich and Japanese Empire and is thus judged as good, the V-2 was aimed at the British which were carrying out their own atrocities against the Indians in the same time frame.
 
-noble motives never excuse or mitigate crimes
-we are all complicit in the crimes of our government and it is like a blowtorch on my insides sometimes
 
The V weapons killed comparatively few people. Heavy bombers on the other hand killed hundreds of thousands and it was no secret that the allies were routinely destroying axis cities by the end of the war. Is everyone who helped build a Lancaster or a B-29 or any of the bombs they dropped complicit in war crimes?

I'm not a fan of the idea of judging people either for things they didn't do (sins of their ancestors) or for crimes that were not crimes at the time. The second world war in particular, when nations and peoples were literally fighting for their existence is not a period in which individuals can be judged easily. In an era where mass-bombing of civilian populations literally became a normal daily event and it was decided that dropping not one but two nuclear weapons on civilian targets was necessary, even the ethical norms of the day were thrown away.

This isn't to say that punishing war-criminals shouldn't have been a thing, the aftermath of WWII brought much needed change to notions of human rights, international relations and the conduct of hostilities, but one of the important lessons of the war was the one Hannah Arendt illustrated in Eichmann in Jerusalem: 'evil' is perpetrated by ordinary people doing their jobs. Only a comparative few individuals ever pushed back in their time - said 'no' and that things had to change - and frequently even they look wicked in our time. Literally none of the most lauded ancient philosophers ever wrote negatively about slavery for example (I could be wrong, I haven't read them all yet) in fact Plato and Aristotle certainly thought of slavery as perfectly natural. Seen in this light I think that judging ancient peoples by our standards literally makes no sense at all.
 
...So at what point, in your mind, did slavery become immoral?

Give us the year, maybe even the month, day and hour that it became so.
 
Right now, the US is perpetrating the same sort of crimes against humanity on the southern border through the practices of massed, indefinite interment and the separation of children from their families. While you and I are not directly responsible for these crimes directly, at what point does our passivity make us complicit?

Doing nothing is not complicity. You're no more complicit in whatever you don't like about border conduct than you are in gang shootings or the large volume of simple homicides in the US. You're also not complicit/guilty for failing to do more to stop deaths to malaria by wiping out mosquito populations.

No fabricated obligations. The premise of this thread is silly and will not hold up to scrutiny, unless you just want to claim everybody is massively guilty/complicit of a wide swath of things they legitimately haven't even considered/had reason to consider.
 
...So at what point, in your mind, did slavery become immoral?

Give us the year, maybe even the month, day and hour that it became so.
Yeah I was expecting a cheap shot.

Here's a challenge: pretend you lived in Athens 2400 years ago, now tell me what you think of slavery.
 
Yeah I was expecting a cheap shot.

Here's a challenge: pretend you lived in Athens 2400 years ago, now tell me what you think of slavery.

I probably would have been left to die In the woods if I was living back then, my friend, as old or disabled people tend to be in the old days.

So in essence there is a strong possibility I might have never gotten a chance to air my views or vote.
 
Providing you actually survive long enough to develop some form of sentience.

True, although I suppose your first response it reasonable then. "No views" is certainly different than having any. Most times in the past aren't very nice. I hope our future can say the same thing.
 
This isn't to say that punishing war-criminals shouldn't have been a thing, the aftermath of WWII brought much needed change to notions of human rights, international relations and the conduct of hostilities,

The problem with punishing war criminals is that it only happens on the losing side. As long as you win the war, you can allow yourself quite a lot when it comes to war crimes. And nobody ever plans to lose a war.
 
When did or does slavery become immoral?
Sometime between around 400BC, when even an ancient Greek you would almost certainly have thought there was nothing wrong with slavery (even if you'd actually been a slave yourself in fact) and today, most people in Europe decided slavery was immoral.

I've thought it was immoral all my life.
 
Doing nothing is not complicity. You're no more complicit in whatever you don't like about border conduct than you are in gang shootings or the large volume of simple homicides in the US. You're also not complicit/guilty for failing to do more to stop deaths to malaria by wiping out mosquito populations.

No fabricated obligations. The premise of this thread is silly and will not hold up to scrutiny, unless you just want to claim everybody is massively guilty/complicit of a wide swath of things they legitimately haven't even considered/had reason to consider.
You were asked "at what point" do we become complicit. You were not accused of being so. In reducing the OP's post to that kind of false dichotomy, you're really reducing the nuance and scope of discussion here.

For example, in your examples, if something is happening so far away from you and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it, the best you can do is raise awareness, assuming you think it's a valid cause. When the thing becomes a nationwide issue, and you're refusing to share or raise awareness of this issue, is that not something that reflects on you? I'd say so, but it also raises a lot of complicated reasons why you might not. For example, you might know that nobody will listen to you. Or you might think this, and the mental toll to convince someone you think could be convinced is something you can't handle given your working week / other commitments that impact on your mental energy.

The thread, to me, is about self-examination more than justification. Everyone has different personal commitments, differing levels of free time, people you live with, care for, and so on. There are things I would like to do, but I have a family, so I do not. Even moderating Internet forums has gotten me a (surprising) amount of attempts on my personal information and verbal attacks on anyone visibly associated with me. My personal activism takes this into account, because my Internet presence started so long ago without the knowledge and safeguarding I have now, that it's relatively easy to find me the person (even if that's all you can find) based on my online footprint.

And yet, I still internally have conflict on how much I want to help the causes I feel are important. Because they're important to me.
 
Moreover, he participated in work camps which resulted in the deaths of more people building the V-2 than were killed by the V-2. Clearly he was complicit in the worst atrocities of the Nazis even as his image was thoroughly rehabilitated after the war.

Right now, the US is perpetrating the same sort of crimes against humanity on the southern border
Oh yes, the famous Trump Holocaust. I thought people were being hyperbolic when they called Trump literally Hitler, who knew that they would be so right :eek:
 
That is itself a hyperbolic reading of Hobbs' post. He specifies "...massed, indefinite interment and the separation of children from their families...", not genocide.
 
That is itself a hyperbolic reading of Hobbs' post. He specifies "...massed, indefinite interment and the separation of children from their families...", not genocide.
He drew a direct comparison between US and the Third Reich. Third Reich, which is most famous for the genocide. He didn't say it directly, but the ridiculous comparison along with the implications are there. It's the same thing as calling detention centers "concentration camps". It's not saying genocide, but it is implying it. It is evoking images and the language of genocide
 
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