Why Egalitarians Deny Atrocities

Don’t Shut Your Eyes to the Subhuman

The open denial of Hamas atrocities has made the logic of the egalitarian left visceral.

https://x.com/psychosort/status/1733551599887233113?s=20

Let’s take a look at the extreme and transparent nature of the argument I’m responding to, which comes from a former Bernie Sanders spokeswoman. From their perspective, since accusations of mass rape as a weapon of war are “dehumanizing”, they could not possibly be true. She puts their lie of moral equality before the truth. You can see this by how her rhetoric is structured. She states upfront that their big lie depends on atrocity denial. Then, she immediately conclude that the atrocity should be downplayed, if not denied outright.

We’re at the bottom of a slippery slope of desensitization, in which increasingly severe evils are normalized and the people who commit them are treated as the moral equals of ordinary men or women. Being the ones responsible, egalitarians recognize that this slope exists far more than the mainstream does. 

They admit to realizing that most people would perceive a man who mass rapes women as subhuman. Of course, this is because he is subhuman. Someone like you or I would not mass rape women regardless of whether we were at war. That would be completely unimaginable. Surely we might shoot at enemy soldiers, but something so obviously heinous and totally unrelated to winning the war would not even come to our minds. The truth is that whether due to nature or nurture, there is no equivalence between a Hamas soldier and anyone I know. We are not the same. 

Why do egalitarians so predictably downplay these atrocities? It is part of a broader psychological pattern of discomfort about inequality when it comes to both morality and ability. It’s important to draw attention to this blatant example because egalitarians have succeeded in sapping the will to act against lesser evils many times in the past, not just from other egalitarians but from centrists and conservatives. 

Before defending mass rapes by Hamas, egalitarians defended murder and assault in San Francisco. Just as no one I know would mass rape women, no one I know would beat and murder an elderly man walking by. There is no moral or intellectual equivalence between that criminal and myself. We are not the same. 

Less graphic but possibly more impactful to human prosperity in the long run is the denial of positive outliers. Some individuals are far more capable of contributing positively to society, having far more ability to invent technologies, build functional organizations, or work physically. 

The egalitarians are right about one thing: just as the denial of difference is a slippery slope, the knowledge of difference is as well. Hamas presents an undeniable example of the subhuman. We must not look away from it or engage in conspiratorial denial. In doing so, we will naturally start to unravel other egalitarian lies.

It’s true that our logical understanding of the world should take into account these undeniable differences in behavior and ability. But even more important in this case is to take into account these differences in our moral judgment. Mass rapists are evil. Terrorists are evil. Murderers are evil. And the egalitarian attempt to equate them with ordinary Americans who would never commit anything remotely close is a repulsive impulse that incentivizes these evils and disincentivizes practical solutions to prevent them. 

It directly follows that violent criminals are not entitled to the same protections as you or I, because they present a completely separate threat to society than you or I. It follows that we should be willing to punish, or more realistically to neutralize, these distinct threats by imprisonment if possible and swift, merciful death if not. These are bare minimum rules for a functional society, which egalitarian leftists seek to undermine. 

In the context of Hamas, this is undeniable. In the context of domestic violent criminals, there is sometimes an emotional cowardice that is triggered due to egalitarians successfully stigmatizing normal people who recognize the subhuman. In doing so, they promote conspiracy theories such as “systemic oppression” that require pro-egalitarian social stigma for anyone to believe. Without this social stigma, there is a one-to-one parallel between the rhetoric of egalitarians on violent crime and terrorist atrocities. “It is dehumanizing to recognize that violent criminals differ fundamentally from lawful citizens. Therefore we must deny that there are violent criminals.”

Despite the egalitarian left’s best efforts, most normal people still believe the murder of normal people is far more morally outrageous than the murder or containment of terrorists or violent criminals. The egalitarian conspiracy theory of “systemic oppression” reverses this basic moral truth, placing more blame on the nonviolent member with a functional role within society who is treated as fully participating in it than the violent, antisocial criminal with no functional role and operates outside of society.

Rather than use “dehumanization” to oppose the false demonization of a group (for example, what Hamas does to Jews) they use it to mean the correct identification of a groups’ actions. If egalitarian leftists were teleported to 1940s America, they would argue that broadcasting facts about the Holocaust dehumanizes the Nazis. The most important point to emphasize is that the egalitarians understand what they are doing better than most normal people. They understand that once you realize the depth of Hamas’ evil, intuition and logic will help you recognize the evil of domestic criminals. If I’m hopeful, this might even lead you to be thankful for the good in functioning members of society. 

In short, the key to defeating pro-crime, pro-atrocity egalitarianism is to make everything they support as undeniable as the Hamas atrocities. Focus less on intent and platitudes, focus more on the predictable consequences of their actions. Now is the time to act.