Criminal Heroes (Main Forum)

by James, Australia, Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 16:17 (1091 days ago) @ georgeh

Thanks, George. I am sure people who were "on the other side" during those conflicts would sometimes feel a bit uncomfortable about some of the triumphalism that the winners sometimes go on about.

It is not quite the same as the Protestants marching down the Catholic neighbourhoods in Northern Ireland celebrating the victory of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, but it has that tinge to it.

There was in interesting article by Klaus Ziegler in Colombia's El Espectador about history's criminal heroes, and I really think he is right. Strangely enough, it was from a Colombian writer Antonio Vélez that I first came across anyone in print saying that Truman was a war criminal - although of course I was aware of the controversy over the use of the bomb.

Ziegler's article is also relevant to the issue of the issue at the top of this page about morals and relativism.

Criminal Heroes

Klaus Ziegler El Espectador, Colombia, 12 May 2010

There is a real cult in the West around three of its worst criminals, Alexander of Macedone, Julius Caesar and Napoleon.

Historians, novelists, musicians, playwrights and painters have elevated these genocidal killers to the category of heroes. Their innumerable crimes and horrors committed in the name of satisfying their own desire for glory are considered insignificant, if they are mentioned at all, or even are held as proof of their nobility, and of their wish to bring their civilization, their laws and sense of superior order to ignorant and barbarian nations.

There is undoubted moral progress when, in the words of the Argentinean philosopher, Mario Bunge, people like Caesar or Alexander, celebrated as the greatest supermen for two millennia are seen today by an increasingly large group of historians as murderers and plunderers on a grand scale. For Bunge, in a really civilized world, Alexander the Great should be called Alexander the Small or perhaps with a more appropriate name of “the Barbarian of Macedonia”.

Just like his counterpart, Hitler, - whom nobody would dare to call, “Adolf the Great”, Alexander was sensitive and gentle with animals, but cruel and ruthless with his own species. Both were megalomaniacs, greedy, mystical, and believed they were enlightened and predestined to carry out the great cause that destiny had assigned to them.

A deeply rooted feeling in human nature makes us admire winners more than any other ethical consideration. In other words, how can it be explained that psychopaths like Alexander awake in us the same respect or that the remains of one of the worst genocidal killers of France can rest in a sumptuous mausoleum of red marble and receive the daily homage of thousands of tourists?

The passage of time has the curious effect of making us judge the actions of our predecessors with another measuring stick. Some think that any judgment in hindsight is impossible or even ridiculous. This position is based on an ethical relativism that maintains that we cannot apply the same scale of values for any period of history, and that moral judgments depend exclusively on the cultural context.

Those who maintain this point of view are right in stating that certain practices that today seem to be immoral were considered acceptable at the time. For example, they are right to observe that an American slave owner of the 19th century did not think that owning slaves was in any way immoral or that he might even manage to think it was a Christian obligation.

But we can be sure that this same person would be horrified if he did a mental experiment in imagining that the slave were one of his own sons, which would demonstrate that he perceives slavery as something undesirable and unworthy – although he would see it justifiable for others – at least if we adhere to the Kantian principle that the “bad” is that which we do not desire for ourselves.

Freedom and the right to life are universal values. On the other hand, torture, slavery and the combined suffering and humiliation that wars inflict on people are equally rejected without it being important to which human group, nation or era the people belong.

It is not just the fact that history is written by the winners. Something more primitive and irrational makes us praise these monsters to the heights of hysteria, and it has its origin in that nationalist feeling that we still carry within us, which makes us see greatness in the victor, if he is one of ours, and infamous and savage if he is a foreigner.

Genghis Khan is revered in his native Mongolia, but is regarded as a bloodthirsty barbarian in the West. Harry Truman is considered by many Americans to be a hero of the Second World War, but seen by the Japanese as one of the worst homicidal killers of the 20th century.

In Nuremburg, senior generals and collaborators of the Nazi regime were put on trial and executed. But if all the war criminals had been put on trial equally, it would not only have been the losers. Truman would have to have been hung for the worst terrorist act in history; and Churchill too, for crimes against humanity for ordering the incineration of the defenseless civilians of Dresden and other German cities.

In a civilized world, perhaps still a long way off, these bloodthirsty conquerors, together with other monsters like Pope Innocent III, and other genocidal Popes, should be bundled up together besides these recognized serial murderers like Asurbanipal, Caligula, Attila, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Leopold II of Belgium…and branded for what they really are: humanity’s greatest shame.